Case Summary

Miguel A. Diaz Velez

Feb /14th ,2016

Case Summary

The Director of training at a large training company is launching a new product line that the company has never offered before. LDC (Leadership Development Center) is well recognized for offering programs targeted at mid –level managers. However, the corporate level of the company decided to expand their business by providing a new program for Senior managers, that would have the effect of attracting more mid-level managers after senior managers had experienced the quality that LDC offered in their programs.

After long discussion, it was agreed that the program had to be of great quality, even though it was already noticeable that the program itself wasn’t going to be very successful. Even if the program was going to operate at a loss, they thought that it will balance out in the long term with more applications at the mid-level programs after senior executives experienced the quality.

The monitoring stage of the new program was going to be measured in three ways including, the amount of participants that had to be registered in the program to cover the costs, surveying participants regarding satisfaction, and keeping track of applications over time to determine if there was an increased participation level.

To allocate the necessary resources for the launching of the program, Pam (the director of training at LDC) analyzed and investigated the costs of launching new programs in the past, and determined a proposed budget of $35,000 to launch the program. After analyzing the firm’s internal resources, she noticed that only 51% of the proposed budget was available, however, she got the remaining $ 15,000 from the general contingency budget of the company.

In developing the action plan, Pam thought that the first step was to select the instructors and faculty director, whom would be in charge of designing the program’s content. After the content was ready, a brochure had to be designed as well. She estimated 6 weeks necessary to design the plan and have the brochures ready for mailing and 1 week more for delivery. She also had two people assisting her (Tammy and Dan) that were in charge of contacting the designing firm, the printing company, the delivery company for the brochures, nearby hotels for lodging, and the assembly of all training materials.

LDC, has always given a window of 12 weeks to people between the moment they receive the brochures and the due date for applications and fees recollection having a ratio of inquiries to registrations of 1 application for every 10 that called. The plan was put into action and 1 week before the expected and the response for the program was a 100 % higher than usual, however as the deadline for the applications came closer, the ratio changed from 10:1 to 100:1 and one week before the deadline only 10 people had registered for the program.

After analyzing the plan implemented by the director of training at LCD, I must say that is lacking a few fundamentals aspects in order for the plan to have better chances of being successful. Pam does many adequate things like: analyzing internal resources, developing monitoring measures for the plan, setting the steps to follow with good timing and sequence and allocating the necessary resources for the launching of the program. However, I think that a strong external analysis, commitment, and correct recruiting of accountable people (lacking customer service) were necessary for success.

     LDC is already a positioned brand in the market, however it is quite new and unexperienced in providing senior executives programs. People may perceive LDC as a great program for learning, but they see a company that is great at the mid levels of managing and not at the senior levels. Pam failed in her external analysis where things like benchmarking and forecasting would have been of great help providing her with information of the best practices used by competitors (Michael A. Hitt 2012), so that a similar practice used by successful companies at the senior level would have given LDC a greater chance to compete in the uncertain environment they were getting into. Having said that, it was also necessary before the implementation stage to forecast the business environment, so that they new what was likely to affect the area of responsibility (Michael A. Hitt 2012) and keep track of any changes to develop appropriate objectives and action plans to compete effectively within the projected environment (Michael A. Hitt 2012). Pam didn’t do a bad job at all, but another key aspect was missing and that was the commitment that the people involved had with the product. Based on the closing case, it was very noticeable that the goal was very realistic and in some way they were already expecting a low degree of success, however in my opinion, acknowledging the fact that they wouldn’t have success, lowered the motivation and true commitment after they saw that it was very unrealistic to achieve the goal. The training director needed their team to believe and commit to the goal rather than being superficially committed (Michael A. Hitt 2012) and even though they could have given Pam great advice, the case doesn’t provide any information regarding changes and adjustments from Tammy and Dan , so there wasn’t a feeling of ownership (Michael A. Hitt 2012) from their behalf. Nevertheless, I truly believe that the plan failed due to poor recruiting or in other words, Pamela didn’t actually know who she really needed to launch the program. The case tells you that they have already fail in the past launching new programs, but this time there is a higher level of inquiry from people. However, even though people were interested they didn’t end up registering. Why? Well … who was managing this calls? The case doesn’t provide information about how Pam allocated and recruited the teams that were in charge of the customer service. Where this people trained well to provide information about a product they knew nothing about? Were they highly motivated? I truly believe they weren’t and based on the facts I could say that their greatest weakness was not being able to truly deliver the value of the program at the last stage of the action plan.

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