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Lisa Benton Case

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After four months working as assistant product manager at Home Care, Lisa Benton has not been able to combine her inner strengths and her network map in order to establish good basis to launch her career. Whereas she has been hired for her enthusiasm and her academic background, she did not demonstrate neither of these qualities, mostly because of a failure to clearly identify the stakeholders and the interests of all the members of her professional network. Consequently, she could not build an effective network. First of all, at Home Care we have in the one hand the “MBAs” which is the predominant and most powerful stakeholders (overrepresented in the organization) and in the other hand, Scoville and Linton’s group which is a little isolated network based essentially on friendship (or more?) and hard work (task-related network). For example, Scoville is a task oriented person who communicates only for work-related problems and Linton seems to value more relationship, trust and hard work. Lisa perceived her bosses’ attitude as lack of interest or hostility whereas it is partly a lack of motivation due to absence of promotion and decreasing recognition of their skills in the organization that has resulted in isolation. Also, she perceived her direct managers only through the lens of formal hierarchy as legitimate and reward powers whereas they have other strengths that she could have noticed and valued like expertise and commitment to the company. Furthermore, Lisa has successfully got along with the staff groups and the marketing department, but by trying to enhance her influence through informal networking she has been punished through her evaluation for trying to circumvent established channels.
Lisa realized after four months that not only she had to be her ‘true herself’ in order to succeed in the organization, but she needed to ‘match her inherent skills […] and what is required by the context and formal position’. She should have kept her enthusiasm and be in line with her status of MBA that is to say she had to demonstrate curiosity and willingness to work with autonomy on self-structured jobs. By not doing so, she failed to impress not only her direct managers but also MBAs. She should have understood that Linton prefers informal contact and close relationship rather than formal requests: she should not have asked for a formal evaluation from Linton but rather invited her to lunch so that she could freely express her difficulties and concerns and ask for advices on how to succeed in this environment and be more self-confident. Linton might have been an ally instead of a formal evaluator. In addition, she could have treated Scoville with more respect and valued his knowledge by keeping continuously asking for his cooperation and assistance on her assigned task. She should have let him know that she wants to learn from him. By doing so, he would have been more committed to train her. She needs to switch to a different perspective where Scoville and Linton could be perceived respectively as expert’s power and referent’s power. Scoville, even if he is condescending, could have helped her to learn technical skills and Linton, even if she may seem demotivated and cold, could teach her how to make good presentations and look more confident.
All in all, Lisa is not in a desperate situation. On the contrary, now that she has identified all the stakeholders, she is now able to build an effective network. She has contacts with all the groups namely Linton’s group, MBAs and the secretaries whereas these groups do not have strong ties between each other. By acting as an informal bridge between these groups, she could gain more influence. Her network could also be well balanced between task related (ex.: Scoville), friendship (marketing staff), advice (Linton) and status related (MBAs). Additionally, she is in a good position to build a coalition with Linton and Scoville. With Linton, she could try to put her in a position of mentor for her so that Linton would not be viewed as a bad trainer by her supervisors. With Scoville, she could ask to help him to get information from other departments or help him on writing sections of his work. These exchanges of services could help her to get them to be more committed to her but it will work only if it's built on mutual interest.
Finally, it is very important for her to build a strategic network that consists of ‘outposts — individuals who work on the horizon of your world and can see into worlds beyond, both inside and outside your organization’. She should absolutely have access to top management and ask for advice on how to build a successful career.

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[ 1 ]. Nancy Staudemayer and Michael Tuchman - Managing for the future, Organizational behavior & Processes (module 2)
[ 2 ]. Idem
[ 3 ]. Pfeffer, 1992, 77
[ 4 ]. Lisa Benton’s case
[ 5 ]. Idem
[ 6 ]. Nancy Staudemayer and Michael Tuchman - Managing for the future, Organizational behavior & Processes (module 2)
[ 7 ]. Occasio, 2002, 371
[ 8 ]. Harvard business Review blog network - Linda Hill & Kent Lineback
[ 9 ]. Idem

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