Celeritas, Inc.: Leadership Challenges in a Fast-Growth Industry

Context:

Celeritas was a leading firm in the enterprise network optimization industry, in an industry where it was becoming highly competitive. Celeritas have lost their market share and they’re steady growth has slowed. SVP’s have stopped communicating and sharing information amongst each other and blame each other for missing deadlines. Boyer is not seen as an effective leader since he doesn’t not involve nor hear any SVP’s opinions on decision-making matters. So did VP’s loose trust in Boyer’s leadership skills.

Key People:

Philip Boyer is the President & CEO who does majority of the end decision-makings himself. He believes in the philosophy where he only takes information from his SVPs and not their opinion on final matters. He has the most influence in the company because not only he makes the final decision mostly on his own but also chooses which information and data to share with the board of directors (VPs) and what not to share. He has the position of the leader in the firm for the managers. However, many argue including the VPs that he lacks traits and character of an effective leader due to mainly his “I” approach in the firm rather than “We as a team”.

Dave Lloyd is the SVP of sales & marketing department. He took most of the heat for firms slowed growth from all sides. At the executive offsite meeting, A lot of SVP’s revealed their frustration on Lloyd with lack of cooperation with the R&D and was blamed for decreasing growth rate. There were angers almost at personal level rather than business level, which already shows how the organization had lost its control within the SVP, levels. Lloyd was criticized for his personality and management style

Rest of the SVP’s:
It consists of Shawna Davis (SVP business & CFO), Vishal Arul (SVP R&D & chief scientist,