Evaluate Igor’s decision to bring a new COO. What effect did this decision have on his ability to influence the company’s employees and product?

Since the company has grown too big, it has become difficult for the founders to manage the firm purely by themselves. Hiring a new COO was expected to bring in outside expertise in terms of management skill. Even though the Ivanovics had realized that this decision will weaken their influence on the company, they seem to have not expected that this will threaten Iggy’s most basic mission. According to the case study text, “many of the employees at Iggy’s perceived the new management team to be too isolated from the operations and culture that were at the heart of the company.” It is surely a prudent decision to hire a COO to handle the big company that has grown too big to control effectively. However, the problem was that Igor and Ludmilla didn’t consider enough which part of the company work to hand over and how this decision will change the company. While the decision to hire a new COO in itself was commendable, the problem lies in the fact that they just had some vague anticipation of hiring an expert and did not take full account of the individual-organizational fit.

Overall, the net effect of bringing in McRae as the new COO was negative. McRae, who is highly competitive and profit-oriented, contributed to Igor losing much of his ability to influence the company’s employees and products. The new management team that McRae brought in was distant from the operations and hindered Igor from projecting his ideals to his employees and between each other. They created new management layers and an unrewarding environment that made effective permeation of Iggy’s culture difficult. As a result, the culture that made Iggy’s unique