Aston Blair Inc.

 3rd Largest developer of children’s educational products

 headquartered in Chicago and had four major sales offices throughout the United States
 Aston's great grandfather founded the company in 1910 as a producer of children’s books,

 Most profitable firm in the in the industry
 the company was the first firm in the industry to develop a marketing organization where market
managers and product managers were responsible for focusing on specific market segments and
applications areas.
 Products: books, music, educational computer software, and films
 Aston had made a concerted effort to hire business school-trained managers
Problem:

 Losses in almost every product line,

 Company’s premier author entered in to retirement, no replacement to make up for the loss of
revenues
 Children’s music and film sales fluctuated to much resulting in inventory surplus and shortage
frequently
 No blockbuster product in the software market for a long time
 Even firm’s hit language series “Round the world” were down

Plan

 Wynn Aston III, CEO and Chairman of the Board wanted Peter Casey and Chris Trott to seriously
reexamine the company’s procedures for forecasting sales in order to achieve better inventory
control, financial planning and production scheduling.
 A taskforce was established with a major focus on the Marketing Division because it was the four
market managers that made the final forecasts for product demand.

Interpersonal Relationship Between Task force

 Randy Meir and Bacon had worked together before and had disagreed over several issues.
 Emile Bodin was well liked and respected within the company. For the last 5 years was a trouble
shooter for the sales department.
 Paulson, Kolinsky, and Ratliff all product managers did not know or work with Bacon.
 Bacon knew Vicki Reiss and Robert Holt fairly well because they also worked for Trott in
Corporate Planning.
Initial Meeting

 Slow and awkward start with little input from the 3 product managers
 Meir was very vocal about the need to develop a model for internal forecasting. He stated it was
essential for the taskforce to identify basic assumptions on which the present product demand
forecasts were based, and then make a model of the entire process.
 Holt suggested the taskforce divide into subgroups –the 3 product managers and Holt would
concentrate on marketing, Meir could gather whatever hard data he felt needed for the model and
Reiss and Bodin would concentrate on the sales divisions input into forecasting(Rushing to
decision)
 The individual groups would stay in contact with Bacon

Initial Report

 Bacon spent much of his time working with Holt and the 3 product managers on the marketing
divisions part of the study and with Reiss and Bodin on the sales divisions input.
 Meir spent his time traveling to various sales offices gathering data on historic trends and
interviewing the product managers. Bacon and Meir’s contact was brief and infrequent.
 Bacon suspected that Meir was jealous of his progress in the company and that his boss Dr
Cornelius was upset as he was not asked to look at the company’s forecasting.
 Meir was not present for the taskforce meeting held on July 23 to prepare for the August 4 report
to the board.
 Holt and the 3 product managers had several recommendations to improve the quality of the
product demand forecasts.
 Bodin and Reiss found some systematic biases in the sales division inputs into the forecasts but
they felt they needed more time before they can make specific recommendations.
 Bodin at the end of the meeting told Bacon he had very sensitive information on how the regional
managers made their sales estimates, but wanted to discuss it with Jed Burns the VP of Sales
before proceeding further. He would prepare a confidential report for Bacon and Reiss and after
discussion would give to Burns.

Final Day:

 Prior to the meeting Bodin shared the confidential report with Bacon which was clear that the
sales managers were consistently overstating their sales estimates in order to insure adequate
inventory and rapid delivery. Bacon chose to not report these findings at the presentation.
 Meir made his portion of the presentation and was laughed at by the market managers
 Holt presented for the product managers so they would not appear critical of their bosses. They
felt the conclusions and recommendations were sound. However, the market managers were very
argumentative about the conclusions and the meeting was adjourned to give everyone time to cool
off.
 During this time Meir had discovered the confidential information and was upset and shared it
with his boss Dr. Cornelius and they were planning to meet with Jed Burns to share his report.

Issues:
Communication
Group Dynamics
Leadership
Interpersonal Trust
Cooperation conflict
Designing Effective organization
Communication:

 Lack of horizontal as well as vertical communication (Bacon and Meir’s contact was brief and
infrequent.).
 Lack of regular meetings to compile the findings of the team as a whole
 Upper management involvement was minimalistic
 Poor sharing of information
 Lack of Feedback
 Hostile attitude towards crtitcism

Group Dynamics:

 Though the task was marketing oriented, no Market Manager was a part of the team
 Lot of distrust and jealousy between the members
 Members knew very little about each other and formed subgroups very quickly
 Group Cohesion of product managers
 Self-centered approach towards task

Leadership:

 Bacon did not setup a well-defined structure for the taskforce in which they were supposed to
function(No brain-storming for a better suggestion)
 Did not initiate the conversation between the members
 No valued input from bacon; instead he readily accepted Holt’s idea of sub grouping
 Did nothing to safeguard the confidentiality of Bodin who gave him the report with a lot of trust
 Lack of responsibility/accountability
 Did not show for support his team member