CHATTANOOGA CASE ANALYSIS ASSIGNMENT 2

Chattanooga Case Analysis Assignment 1
Tomas Thomson
Jack Welch Management Institute
Dr. Earl Richardson
JWI 510
November 14, 2015

Abstract The goal of this paper is to analyze the Chattanooga Ice Cream Case. The Chattanooga Ice Cream case is a case study where senior officers of a food company have opposing views for turning a declining business around during a crisis. The general manager, Charles Moore is faced with several challenges. He has a consensus-oriented style that asks for his team’s opinion before making a decision. His style might not be the best for this situation. He is faced with choosing several competing ideas, managing conflict within his team and a quickly approaching deadline.

Keywords: Conflict, Peer Relationships, Conflict Resolution Style, Group dynamics, Interdepartmental Relations, Management communication, Candor, Teams

CHATTANOOGA CASE ANALYSIS ASSIGNMENT 2 Charles Moore’s conflict resolution style, indecisiveness, and management of group dynamics drove his business unit to near failure. By modifying his style, Charles Moore can turn his team and company around from near failure to a profitable division.
Case Analysis: Introduction – Background on Chattanooga Chattanooga Ice Cream, Inc. was founded in 1936 as a subsidiary of Chattanooga Food Corporation. The Ice Cream Division was one of the largest regional ice cream manufacturers in the United States. (Sloane, 2003) It had a reputation for producing, mid-priced, basic ice cream sold mainly in grocery stores. In the case study, the company has lost its third largest customer. Charles Moore, the division’s president, meets with his management team several times to discuss the future of the business unit and its options. Moore must not only deal with making a decision as to the path that his company must take but with managing the dysfunction and conflicting attitudes of his team members.
Case Analysis The team in the Chattanooga Ice Cream Case is a dysfunctional team. The team was dysfunctional because the level of trust required was absent among the team members. (Lencioni, 2002) All the team members of Chattanooga Ice Cream Division did not admit responsibility for their actions. Instead of accepting their faults they blamed each other for the loss of business. They lacked the level of comfort necessary to develop trust in the team. Trust is an essential element in a healthy team environment. Group trust can dissolve under adversity in a sequence moving from an initial trust to trust-with-trepidation, and then to distrust. (Preim, 2014) When Chattanooga lost their contract with their third largest customer, Stay and Shop, the division went into turmoil. Stay and Shop represented 6.5 million in sales. The drop in sales a big setback in sales for the company. Moore called upon all the division heads to identify the root cause of the problem. Several department heads blamed each other instead of finding a solution to the problem. Production and Sales heads blamed Operations. The production department also blamed MIS, which the Finance head defended. The meetings were not productive.
Team Dysfunction The team lacked trust because they had not worked with each other before. The team had worked under a previous manager that executed a different style than the one Charles used. The previous manager took decisions upon himself without the consensus of the group. The team never really interacted formally with each other. Charles style was different. He wanted his team’s opinion and actively sought it.
Impact of Moore’s Leadership Style on Team Dysfunction Moore’s leadership style also contributed to his team’s dysfunction. Moore’s style is democratic. He seeks every team member’s opinion. Charles encourages group, decision, participation and discussion. (Yang, 2014) He also encouraged a collaborative environment and valued group decision-making. He is a cautious leader who likes working and making decisions with consensus. This team does not value this style. They want guidance and secretly see Moore’s asking for consensus as a weakness and indecisiveness. (Sloane, 2003) Moore doesn’t know how to handle the group when there is conflict in the discussion process. He shows a fear of conflict that is another dysfunction of a team. (Lencioni, 2002) Charles Moore avoided and discouraged his team from having conflicts and debates. He sought their opinions but didn’t follow through with Jack Welch’s principle number five, the courage to make gut calls and unpopular decisions. He wanted to play it safe in an ever-changing marketplace. Charles should have experimented more with different flavors of ice cream as Barry Walkins, the VP of Marketing suggested. The person who is listening to the ideas must have the self-confidence to hear a different side of the story without getting defensive if his position is challenged. Jack Welch explains that by using candor three things happen which he has aptly named the “Candor Effect” (Welch & Welch, 2007) more ideas are allowed to surface. People are allowed to bring ideas forth and don’t fear retaliation if an idea is not to everyone’s accord. Candor generates speed. Ideas are discussed, debated, improved or voted down, but they are put on the table for review. Without candor, people would be afraid of bringing forth these ideas that might help the organization succeed. Candor cuts costs. How? By eliminating meaningless meeting where everyone agrees in front of the boss but might secretly disagree behind the bosses back. For the “Candor Effect” to happen in an organization. Candor and healthy conflict must be rewarded, praised and discussed. The leaders of the organization must demonstrate it in an exuberant and even exaggerated way. ” (Welch & Welch, 2007) Conflict is a good for the team as long as it is handled in a respectful and productive manner. Moore depends too much on the group’s opinion and does not have the guts to make tough decisions without the group. (Welch & Welch, 2007)

Recommendations: Improving Team Understanding
Building Peer Relationships This group of employees needs to understand better the perspective of each other and their boss by building peer relationships. They must stop viewing their peers as competitors. They may feel they have nothing in common with their peers, and may not recognize any interdependencies that need to be managed. This is particularly true when the relationship is between an internal customer and an internal supplier such as the Production department with Sales. (Steckler, 1995). By breaking the communication barrier and cooperating with each other instead of blaming each other better peer relationships can be established.
Building Trust and Developing Group Goals Moore can help his team by not being so dependent on his team for decisions. Moore should gather as much information as he can from his team but ultimately make the final decision himself. He should also encourage a healthy dialog and conflict amongst his team. The short term goals that need to be galvanized are to ensure that the team builds trust and collaboration over the next few months. Moore needs to communicate clearly to his team their mission in a way that is simple enough to grasp, and actionable to all. For instance, a good group goal would be “We will increase market dominance by building a marketing campaign to promote a larger size of our standard brands ice cream containers.” The group members should agree on the group's goals. These shared goals act to spark group effort by providing clear direction and buy-in.
Conflict and Facilitating Buy-in The reason conflict is so important is because teams cannot achieve commitment without engaging in healthy conflict. People will not actively commit to a decision if they have not had the opportunity to provide input, ask questions and understand the rationale behind it. "If people don't weigh in, they can't buy in." (Lencioni, 2013) (It should be noted that such goals could have been unilaterally set by the leader, jointly set by the leader and group members, or set by group members independent of the boss.) (Mealiea & Baltazar, 2005)
Returning to Profitability a 6 Month Plan To return to profitability within six months, Charles Moore should increase revenue in three ways. First he should expand the product line by adding the new mix-in flavors. Second, he should start up a five-gallon bulk packaging line to sell to scoop shops. Both of these suggestions were suggested by the Vice President of Marketing. Lastly, he should give the research and development department funding to finish developing their non-fat formulation. This formulation looks like it would be a big winner shortly. (Sloane, 2003)
Conclusion – Including long term plan Charles Moore’s needs to modify his leadership style to turn his company and team around. According to the DISC, assessment Charles has a style called an S style for steadiness. He maintains a calm approach and does not like to be rushed. Charles needs to have more decisiveness and not delay decision making. He needs to get their buy-in quickly and move on to make a decision. Charles needs to build trust between his team members by allowing candor and conflict to flourish. A sense of mission must be developed within the team. The team must also be guided to build inter-relationships amongst each other.
References
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Lencioni, Patrick1, patricklenoioni@tablegroup.com. 2013. "Building a Healthy Organization." New Superintendents Journal 10-14.Education Source, EBSCOhost (accessed November 15, 2015).
Mealiea, L., & Baltazar, R. (2005). A strategic guide for building effective teams. Public Personnel Management, 34(2), 141-160 20p.

Priem, R. L., & Nystrom, P. C. (2014). Exploring the Dynamics of Workgroup Fracture: Common Ground, Trust-With-Trepidation, and Warranted Distrust. Journal Of Management, 40(3), 764. doi:10.1177/0149206311412191
Steckler, N., & Fondas, N. (1995). Building Team Leader Effectiveness: A Diagnostic Tool. Organizational Dynamics, 23(3), 20-35.

Welch, J., & Welch, S. (2007). Winning (International paperback ed.). London: Harper.
Yang, Y. (2014). Studies of transformational leadership: evaluating two alternative models of trust and satisfaction. Psychological Reports, 114(3), 740-757. doi:10.2466/01.04.PR0.114k27w2