1) Since arriving in Singapore, Lancaster has formulated several opinions about the health of the Eastern Hemisphere Organization. What are his concerns both now and for the future?

Bill Lancaster’s concerns stem back to his initial impression when he arrived in Singapore as the new President of Black & Decker Eastern Hemisphere. Lancaster found several concerning areas including: “major disparity” in the management styles of the people in the Eastern Hemisphere, conflicting management styles (employee empowerment and old authoritarian school), and even some just bad managers. Additionally, there was a lack of growth and development. Finally, the most obvious concern to Lancaster was that current managers were using a Management By Objective (MBO) type plan which is believed to be an outdated system that the United States has long since replaced. These areas of concern he found during his initial assessment of the Eastern Hemisphere organization led him to have fear for the future because without immediate attention and action, the future productivity and profitability of the Eastern Hemisphere was grim. Lancaster believed major reform in replacing outdated management systems was pertinent.

2) What problems does Lancaster want ADP to address?

Lancaster wants to update the current employee review process with a more modern approach called the Appraisal Development Plan (ADP). Under the previous MBO program, superiors would meet on an individual basis with each subordinate to discuss that subordinate’s performance, etc. Lancaster wants the new and improved ADP system to address the problem of managers only seeing maybe 10 percent of their employees’ job performance, thus leading to ill-informed MBO reviews. Lancaster also believes the ADP system will help address the issue of employees sometimes getting contentious with a managers review under the MBO