Jamie Turner, competent but capricious

James Kim & Abbey McDowell

Texas A&M University

MGMT 372

Dr. Chiaburu

04/20/2014

Modern Lighting Industries, Inc., MLI is a family owned organization that sells lighting units and bulbs to office and warehouse. It has recently been acquired by Specialty Support Services (Triple S) from several financial setbacks due to the death of its founder. It is based outside of Chicago, with fabrication and systems assembly facilities in Illinois, Missouri, and Mexico, and sales and distribution centers in Kansas City and Chicago. There are four departments in this company which are Directing, Controlling, Marketing/Sales and Operations. The company was desperately needed for its vice president position to be filled. So, its new president followed by founder, Pat Cardullo offers to recent unemployed, Jamie Turner with bonuses and possibility of promotion. Turner accepts the offer carelessly, and problems arise.
(Intro ends)
Jamie Turner, 32 with MBA, started his first job at Wolf River which sellspaper products. He soon became product manager and then senior product manager in three years. He was really successful in Wolf River, but applying same procedures repeatedly made him feel like stagnating and Turner started wanting to challenge himself with autonomy. Looking for a challenge, Turner finds a position at Lambowland.com, a new Internet-based sports shop company. Blinded by new challenges that he sought and benefits such as 15% premium and stock options, Turner gets himself into a predicament by signing on as VP for Lambowland.com without careful research and thoughts. Less than 18 months later, Turner is forced for a second job search due to Lambowland’s serious cash flow bind. Turner looks for a new job and hears about MLI from an executive search consultant. With necessity of job and sweet talks from the president of MLI, Cardullo, Turner accepts the offer from MLI without further research again.
Pat Cardullo, the current president of MLI, was a president of Triple S’s mobile systems and support group. He has an interview with Turner, and Cardullo tells Turner that MLI needs a young manager to take Cardullo’s current place as steward within next 12-18 months which most likely would be Turner. Also, Cardullo lures Turner with benefits such as Turner is a strong candidate, promising autonomy that Turner seeks, and high possibility of running MLI in the future. After Turner accepts the offer at MLI, Cardullo starts to show his impatience, arrogance and autocracy, which makes Turner stressed and regret joining MLI.
(1 ends)
Pat Cardullo, was open and enthusiastic in the beginning. He completely believed in Turner’s ability which seem to ensure success. On the other hand, Cardullo gave full autonomy to Turner over pricing less than a month of Turner has joined which breaks a promise that Turner and Cardullo agreed on Cardullo retaining control over pricing. Cardullo puts Turner into control over sales when Turner has not learned and experienced enough yet. Cardullo is putting Turner into a role overload, “a state in which too many expectations or demands are placed on a person” (Noe, p. 305). Cardullo has way too high expectation from Turner who just joined company and has few knowledge. As a result, Turner is going through lots of stresses and pressures. Also, Cardullo, being impatient, wants to fire a good employee who takes time checking records and asking others before answering to Cardullo’s questions. Lastly, Turner and his second product manager, Juanita Swenson find an impending cash flow problem and show to Cardullo, but Cardullo dismisses them saying there is no problem. Shockingly, at the next management committee meeting, Cardullo strongly points out how firm company’s cash position is, which Turner feels rebuked. It seems that Pat Cardullo brought many more factors to MLI which ensures failure than success.
Jamie Turner starts his career at MLI with meeting new people, learning more about MLI, and settling into his new responsibilities. He was ready to go against his boss if he thinks it is not right, such as firing Tim Kelly, who turned out to be a great help to Turner later. Turner also tries to manage his sales employees as best as he can. But he also knew how to lower himself and follow an order when necessary, such as releasing five salespeople in Kansas City. His first project about new business plan on reorganizing the marketing department and communication system was successful. He hires Juanita Swenson as product manager and they try best to higher the margin. All these things done by Turner in first three months seem to ensure success, but Cardullo was not very helpful to Turner on this. Although Turner did many things which seem to ensure success, he also made few decisions that seem to ensure failure. When Turner thinks it is right, he just directly goes for it without thinking about his situation or surroundings. Turner really liked Bill Cook one of Julie Chin’s star performers in the controller’s office. So, he hires cook as his product manager even though Julie Chin does not really want to let Cook go. This later on explains about a conflict between Chin and Turner.
(2 ends)
Pat Cardullo should have been honest with Turner and let Turner decide whether to take the offer or not after showing him in and outside of MLI. Turner was pretty much lied when Cardullo told him that Turner might eventually have executive potential and how he cares about communication when he actually does not listen to his employees. Also, Cardullo should have not promoted Turner too soong. After Turner joins less than a month, Cardullo already wants Turner to take over sales with pricing control, which put Turner into lots of stressed and responsibilities. Just how Turner wanted, Cardullo should have let Turner learn and get used to the department first, then ask whether Turner is ready for promotion or not. After Juanita Swenson and Turner discussed about impending cash flow problem at MLI, Cardullo just dismisses them and emphasizes strong cash position at next meeting to make them feel wrong. Instead, Cardullo should have explained in details about why Turner and Swenson’s suggestion is not right and persuaded them privately instead of humiliating them in public. After all, Swenson and Turner did that for company’s own good. Another thing Cardullo does it that he does not care about his employees if he disagrees. When Cardullo hears of Turner’s decision about selling halogen bulbs at lower than the break-even point, he just rages and bursts into Turner’s room yelling. No matter how much Cardullo disagrees with his employees, he should never take it emotionally. He should have let Turner explain first, and discuss whether Turner’s decision was good or poor. Cardullo really needs to work on managing his emotion. When he is angry, he yells and avoids Turner who was trying to reconcile. On the other hand, when he is in a good mood, he is actually open and considers Turner’s suggestions to discuss whether it is effective or not. Last but not least, instead of covering his ears and forcing certain amount of margins required on all products, Cardullo should have talked to his employees about solutions and resolve as a team. Then it would not have become a complete failure with the worst performance within past months.
What Jamie Turner should have done is doing more research about MLI instead of having a talk with just Cardullo. After joining the company, first thing he does wrong is taking a valuable human capital away from other department. When Turner transferred Cook, Julie Chin was very dissatisfied. Also, when Turner saw Cardullo’s new pricing scheme in August, he should have performed expert power, which is “an individual’s or work unit’s capacity to influence others by possessing knowledge or skills that they value” (McShane, 2012, p. 183). Turner is well knowledgeable about pricing from his past experience in April to July, so he knows that Cardullo’s new pricing scheme would not work. Other thing is that when Turner approves halogen bulbs to be sold at below break-even point. Even though he was in charge, he should have discussed it before making such a decision. Lastly, Turner, with anger, asks Julie Chin why she has alerted Cardullo about halogen bulbs sale instead of to himself, and then he says “if she wants to behave that way, he can play that game too.” That was too emotional of Turner. Turner seems to forget that he actually unpleased Chin first by taking one of her start performers away. Turner should have asked Chin in a manner why she has not directly come to Turner about halogen bulb situation, and try to reconcile with Chin if there was any discomfort instead of “playing that game”.
(3 ends)
Since Turner and Cardullo already have gone through many conflicts and emotional dissastisfaction with each other, Turner, as a subordinate, should first apologize to Cardullo if there was anything that he did wrong. Knowing that Cardullo is emotional, I can see that Cardullo will be in a good mood which Cardullo will be gentle and friendly back to Turner. After that, Turner should talk about all the things that he felt unfair or mistreated to Cardullo. And then, Turner should ask Cardullo for a help or suggestion about what to do about company’s current situation and how to report this to Alan Oliver since Cardullo has a good relationship with Oliver and known him for long. (4 ends)
-Conclusion-