Northouse Case 9.1 – The Vision Failed If I was consulting for HTE board of directions, I would advise them to re-examine their entire business plan and organizational structure. The mere idea of introducing a new executive that begins transforming organizational structure and allowing an operations officer to run up a large debt seems asinine. There was a cascading failure from top to the bottom due to multiple weak links in both organizational structure and leadership. Harold did not seem to have the kind of vision that included a clear path to see it to fruition. It is not enough to have a clear vision if the path taken to achieve it is not defined. Harold was not able to implement it because of this. Harold was ineffective as a change agent and social architect for HTE. His ideas about what the organization needed were not in line with what the organization actually needed. I would advise that Harold try to understand the organization that he was trying to change first. In his mind, there was an issue that needed to be fixed, however he did not try to find the issue first before trying to fix it. Implementing an advanced organizational structure to bolster a vision was inappropriate. He should have understood the actual issues before trying to fix any issues. For example, if there were issues of ineffective use of company resources, or underutilized worker hours, he should have addressed those issues. The bottom line in any organization is to grow the business and make money, not to implement complex changes that add to complexity of running a business. The more appropriate decision would have been to eliminate the middle management and empower the workers to be responsible for their own success. It seems if they had 3 bosses to report to at any given time, there were far too many management types in the organization and not enough actual workers to get the job