The Story

Gerry Reynolds was the very frustrated Chief Executive Officer of Blair Wood Products, Limited (BWP). He had directed the activities of some 5,300 employees working in the forest sector for the past two years. Despite his best efforts, he hadn’t been able to get any movement on some of the key issues affecting the company. For example, he wanted his people to enter new markets out West. Not only had his staff not prepared any plan of how to enter those markets, his desire to have a Western office as a focal point for this venture had never been acted upon.

There were always good reasons why this and other issues were not being managed: market conditions, talk of recession, cost of financing, local restrictions, labour costs and any other factor to support what he considered to be inaction. This was forcing Gerry to examine his tenure in office as CEO. He wondered what he was doing to cause the company to ignore key issues despite the best of intentions from his managers.

At the last management retreat, where company Directors were called in to prepare the coming year’s Strategic and Operational Plan, Gerry was quite direct in raising the issue of indecision with his charges. There were some sheepish looks around the table. Nobody wanted to discuss what was preventing the company from being proactive. Harry Desmond, a senior Director and 18-year veteran of the company finally spoke up:

“Gerry, we want to meet your expectations of expansion. But I have to tell you what’s holding me back: I don’t know how to do it. I don’t like to do anything till I am absolutely sure of how to approach it. Also, I’m too darn busy with other things to figure it out.”

Heads nodded as everyone agreed. People acknowledged for the first time how helpless they felt when they were placed before Gerry’s very fair expectations. But these were new expectations which they had never had to work towards before; they simply didn’t have the necessary knowledge or skills to pull it off so, no motivation to do so.