IVK

BUSINESS
REPORT

4/26/2016

JIM BARTON RECOMMENDATION

Caught in the midst of a controversy on your job, you have
decided against quitting. You asked me to help you assess the
soundness of your decision.

120 Sugar Maple Dr.

Sherwood, AR 72120

Phone: 501-681-8174
Fax: 501-944-1984
Jbarton1@ivk.com

IVK

TO: JIM BARTON, CIO

RECOMMENDATION: YOU WOULD BE WISE TO
KEEP YOUR JOB
Caught in the midst of a controversy on your job, resistance from your boss,
and the risk of being fired, you have decided to try and keep your job. You
asked me to help you assess the soundness of your decision. With the
assistance of Jill Lambert, Jaya Raj, and Jintao Jiang, I have studied the issue
for the last two weeks, and identified the major issues. This report addresses
two questions:

Why you should try and keep your job?

Why quitting is not prudent for you?

So that I would better understand the contextual basis on which you made
your choice, you provided me with a transcript of the dialogic communication
that transpired pertinent to your situation. You also supplied me with
information regarding the context of your situation. It appears that the
benefits of remaining in your present position and striving to promote a
healthier communication culture at IVK far outweigh the costs of quitting.

CONTEXT AND SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM

You state that you are CIO of IVK Corporation, a rapidly expanding financial
services firm. You further state that you were chosen for the job because you
and your boss, Carl Williams, share the same vision for IVK. That is, IVK
moving away from the freewheeling, improvisational approach to
management that it has been using, and maturing into a grownup financial
services firm by means of a professional managerial approach. The
companys process for making these changes would be to institute more
formal systems and controls without sacrificing organizational agility. This
shared vision has gained you much favor with your boss, and he has given
you great latitude in making decisions. But neither you nor Williams have
communicated your vision to others. Nor have you begun the process of
implementing it. Williams is on the verge of turning the company around
following a period of slowing business performance when a crisis occurs. An
IT system malfunction is discovered just before you are to make a
presentation to a group of critical stakeholders. At this point, no one knows its
root cause and what long-term effects it will have. Williams is perplexed
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about whether he should disclose any information about the crisis, fearful
that it might tarnish his reputation. He cautions you to remain tight-lipped
about the situation, but you struggle to comply with his wishes.
When you try to implement the companys crisis management plan, you
discover that it is not functional. In the past, whenever you asked your staff
about the status of the, they had always assured that it was up to date. Upon
discovering this was no longer the cause, and at the direction of Williams, the
two of you have resorted to using some of the same whimsical,
unpredictable, and unprofessional tactics to manage the crisis. He has
instructed you to come up with some recommendations about handling the
crisis, and to never let it happen again. He lets you know that he does not
favor a recommendation that would cause him to overact to the crisis
because of the reasons previously stated. You and most of the other
employees believe to the contrary. While in the process of assessing the
damage caused by the crisis, you became aware of inexplicable
communication disconnects between yourself and others, most noticeably
your boss. To make matters difficult, he seems to be taking away much of
your autonomy, ignoring your recommendations, and making decisions that
you consider imprudent. Worse yet, his behavior threatens to dash all hopes
of you or IVK ever realizing your dreams. In the meantime, time is running out
to take advantage of the option you recommended.

BENEFITS--AND COSTS--OF QUITTING

You may sincerely believe that there are many strategic reasons for quitting
your job at IVK because:

You have a difficult work environment.

You are living with chronic uncertainty.
You are no longer able to communicate with your boss William.
No one has the same dreams as you.
Your job isnt letting you grow your skills.
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But given the gravity of your situation, there are no advisable benefits for
quitting, and your decision to do so might even be career-threatening.
Conventional wisdom says, A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.
And, in your case, that goes without saying. If you quit now because you are
concerned about the effects a disclosure will have on your career, you would
be wasting your time. Its too late. Generally, organizations have less than a
day to tell their version of the truth. After that, external stakeholders will
have tapped into secondary and tertiary experts who will have their own
views on what has happened. The critical period for making the disclosure
has ended. But as the saying goes, Whats done in the dark always comes to
the light. And when it does, you will have a tough time convincing
prospective employers that you have a successful employment track record.
Regardless of how well prepared a company may be, the reality is, crises are
inevitable. The traditional managerial approach to handling a crisis was to
Never let it happen again. But this is no longer valid. The modern attitude
is: Success is not measured by how high you are, but by how high you
bounce once youve hit the ground.
Regardless of whether the system glitch was deliberately caused or not, it is
still considered a crisis. And because you did not act as quickly as you could
have, your reputation will take the greatest hit. Even if the threat is never
publicly disclosed, or turns out to be non-material, it will set a dangerous
precedent for the IVK employees and foster a corporate culture that has a low
regard for ethics and the law, and resistant to change. Before quitting, you
should know that when IVK starts to stink, youll be wearing it.

WHY STAYING ON AT IVK IS YOUR BEST BET

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There are many practical reasons why you should try and keep your job:
You will be faced with a crisis in every workplace situation.
You are in the best position to help make your dreams come
true.
You can mitigate the damage caused by the crisis by
encouraging a positive communication culture.
CRISES ARE THE RULENOT THE EXCEPTION. The frequency and
severity of crises suggest that they are an inevitable part of business. That is
the shared conclusion of two thoughtful analyses (Prates, 2013 and Turner,
2014). Thus, crisis management is not a special but an indispensable skill for
management that you must master in order to be successful at IVK.
NOBODY WANTS YOU WHEN YOURE DOWN AND OUT. Although it may
seem counter-intuitive, that recruiters and potential employers have a
preference for passive (someone who is not looking for a job, but would be
open to taking one if the right opportunity came along)or still employed
applicants. In fact, the longer you are unemployed, the harder it is to get a
new job. Employers generally regard unemployed candidates as being less
desirable than their employed counterparts. Many assume that unemployed
candidates are substandard and are therefore willing to work for anyone
who will hire them, which makes them less valuable employees. It is an
unspoken recommendation from one employer to another similar to that old
saying about men being more attractive to women when they are already in a
relationship. Being in a [work] relationship is a validation (albeit often
erroneous) that someone can put up with you. This implies you are worth
putting up with. If you are jobless [single] and looking, there is always the
chance that it is because you are a loser.
CULTIVATING A HEALTHY COMMUNICATION CULTURE. Communication is
as much an issue of character as it is a skill. No one can tame the tongue. It
will speak out of what fills the heart. The key to managing the heart is not the
tongue itself, but the spirit of the organization as manifested in its vision, and
communicated by employees (ORourke, 2006)
Ethical communications from managers to employees are critical because
studies show that an overwhelming majority of employees will override their
own ethical assessment of a situation and accept an ethically purged
interpretation if their manager conveys it. When a crisis strikes, organizations
face potentially devastating legal consequences as well. One study
(Fitzpatrick, 1995) which examined organization responses in times of crisis
found that in almost two-thirds of the cases studied, a legal strategy was
applied, with three of the top five approaches taken by organizations being:
say nothing, say as little as possible and release it as quietly as possible, and
say as little as possible, citing privacy laws, company policy, or sensitivity. By
5

cultivating a greater understanding of legal issues, you and Williams can

better position yourselves for leadership roles.
Open, honest, direct communication practices can really make a difference in
staff morale. Encourage staff members to practice direct communication by
modeling good communication yourself and offering advice and training on
communication skills. Ensure that other managers at IVK are being held
accountable for healthy communication, too. All staff members must be
willing to take responsibility for both sending and receiving clear
communication. Your degree of ability to communicate will either evoke trust
or distrust in those you lead. It will instill either confidence or fear. It will
determine to a large extent how eagerly your followers will follow you.

CONCLUSIONS REACHED

Your decision to continue as IVKs CIO appears to be a wise choice. It is the

most difficult one to make but the rewards greatly outweigh the risks. Being
on the inside and learning how to communicate effectively with your boss
and others gives you the prime advantage of helping to create a positive
communication culture that will be shared by internal and external
stakeholders alike. And as complex and challenging as it may be, compared
to the first option considered, staying on the job and successfully managing a
workplace crisis will be much more rewarding to you, both career-wise and
personally. The least prudent option considered is quitting. It is the simplest
to take but has the greatest consequencesmostly negative.
References
Fitzpatrick, K. R. (1995). Ten guidelines for reducing legal risks in crisis
management. Public Relations Quarterly, 40(2), 33.
Herndl, C. G., Fennell, B. A., & Miller, C. R. (1991). Understanding failures in organizational
discourse:
The accident at three mile island and the shuttle challenger disaster. Chapter
12. In C.
Bazerman & J. Paradis (Eds.), Textual Dynamics of the Professions: Historical
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and Contemporary
WI: University of

Studies of Writing in Professional Communities (pp. 279-305). Madison,

Wisconsin Press.

ORourke, J. S. (2006). Management communication: A case-analysis approach (3 rd). Boston,

MA:
Pearson.