CASE STUDY...

Is it important to tell the Company Goals to the Staff

The chief executive officer CEO for a manufacturing company has just issued a memo to all managers

asking for a mid-year status report on meeting the Company’s annual goals. This year emphasis has

been placed on developing new accounts. Naveed Ahmed the Director of Sales decides to individually

meet with all the employees who report directly to him so that each can give him information to

respond to the CEO’s request.

The first employee is Tanveer Hussain, a junior account manager. Naveed opens the conversation by

asking “how are you doing on those Company Goals.” Tanveer looks up and says. “ What Company

Goals?”. Naveed replies “You know… The ones the company gave me about six months ago.” Tanveer

squirms in his chair with growing uneasiness and says, hesitantly “I don’t think you ever told me about

those”.

Shocked Naveed says, “Well! Never mind then just tell me what you’ve been doing for the past six

months”.

Tanveer says “well! I’ve been spending most of my time trying to reconnect with our old customer

accounts to see if we could make some additional sales. It hasn’t been working well though”.

Naveed sinks! In his chair and then rises up in anger, shouting “But you knew our focus this year was to

increase sales by developing new accounts. Why did’nt you spend time on that?”. Tanveer begins to feel

enraged when he thinks of all the time and energy he put into the old accounts and he says “Well! You

never told me so how was I supposed to know that. I did what I thought you would want me to do. You

seemed to think this was fine last year”.

Feelings continue to escalate between Naveed and Tanveer. This meeting ended abruptly by a knock on

the door by Naveed’s next employee “VICTOM”

Q1: Do you think Tanveer knew the company’s goals?

Q2: Do you think Tanveer knew what performance was expected of him and how it would be measured?

Q3: How did Tanveer’s knowledge or lack of it affect his performance and relationship with his Boss?

Q4. If you were to replay this situation what might you have done differently?