(1) What are the work styles and personalities of Thomas Green and Frank

Davis?
Thomas Green is a practical person who follows the traditional well defined
rules and regulations with abundant experience in sales field. On one hand,
Green is an ambitious, innovative and confident guy and is concerned with
practicality of a decision. In essence, Green would like to under-promise and
over-deliver. He was interested in the end result performance but not in the
detailed plan.
On the other hand, Greens strong woo talent made him love the challenge of
meeting new persons and winning them over. He likes to work independently
and is more of a face to face guy when delivering his ideas to client and
recommendations to Davis. He prefers verbal communication over written
form of communication and does not like to present his thought through the
aid of presentations, reports etc.
However, lacking of experience in marking analysis and lacking of formality in
business dealings are something cannot be ignored, making him difficult to
work smoothly in Dynamic Displays. He has short term focus and lacks long-
term strategic decision making skills, making himself not well adjusted with
the politics and putting himself in a disadvantage situation in the company.
Frank Davis, marketing director of Dynamic Displays, is an excellent strategic
player and has a micro-managing, intense style of leadership. To put it in
other saying, he is an achievement-oriented person who is serious in details
and less social in relationship. He is also a good reader because he prefers
written content over others. Davids excellent analytical strength along with
his seventeen years of experience enabled him to come up with a 10% market
growth. Additionally, Davis likes to make decision based on fact and his
working style seems to be direct and to the point, therefore, He prefers taking
support of reports, memos and presentations where recommendations and
strategies should be justified using hard data rather than relying on verbal
conversation.
Whats more, Davis wanted the team to be in a positive mindset in order to
keep moral up. He is so aware of the office politics and pays attention to
strong effects and enthusiasm of the employee. He is a transactional leader
who is good at setting goal, sales projections and expectations. For one thing,
Davis values team work, for another he also values good communication with
status update and quick responsiveness. Davis is a veteran employee who has
gained much knowledge over the years and has an ability to show his skill in
planning what would be best for Dynamic Displays. As the leader of marketing
analysis, Davis was expecting a precise plan of every detail, schedule and
documentation from Thomas Green and wanted him to provide
recommendations for changes in attitude, behavior, and communication.

(2) How do the actions of Thomas Green differ from the expectations of Frank
Davis?
In my opinion, there are lots of difference in action of Thomas Green and
expectations of Frank Davis. First of all, Greens previous position of account
executive was conservative and his priority is only to communicate with
productive clients and meet the sales target. After Green skyrocketed rapidly
to the position of senior marketing analysis with McDonalds appreciation,
Green did not transfer well in market sense and work style. Frank Davis
expected Thomas Green to be a reliable and professional person who could
identify industry trends, evaluate new business opportunities and establish
sales goals. That is to say, Thomas Green not only needs to develop general
market and specific strategies to help the account executive enhance sales
and achieve the target results, but also needs to be strategic in identifying
patterns, anticipating problems and providing relevant solutions.
On the other side, Frank Davis is unsatisfied that Thomas Green didnt build
an effective communication channel with him. To be more precise, Frank Davis
was not aware of Thomas Green because Green never informed Davis about
his schedules. It is well known that one of the major tasks of senior market
analysis is to follow up market information but Green failed to give feedback
on the supporting data that required to be put on memos and presentations
before the required deadlines which is violating Daviss work standards.
What's worse, Thomas Green was not enthusiastic and wasted time by
complaining on the problems he faced. Frank Davis was irritated by Greens
negative attitude as he expected his subordinate to be optimistic and
responsible to official work.

(3) What is your analysis of Thomas Greens actions and job performance in
his first five months? What mistakes has he made?
It is universally known that every coin has two sides, the good side and the
bad side. Firstly, let us begin with the good side. Although Thomas Green have
gone through a tough period of the five months, there were a few
achievements which should not be neglected. Thomas Green was effective at
the beginning of the first few weeks after his promotion. Green accomplished
a lot before the Budget Plan Meeting and was able to impress Davis when it
came to selling his ideas to client. As Frank said, We had some good
meetings this week and the clients responded well to your ideas. In the next
3 months, Green worked independently on his individual assignment and went
traveling to meet with his client and market specialists. There's no doubt that
Green was highly appreciated by other market specialists who accompanied
him in few meetings by mentioning that he was charismatic and can think
quickly on his feet.
Nevertheless, there were lots of obvious mistakes which need to be
mentioned. Though he was known for working charismatically, he never
supported his work with convincing data as evidence. Worst of all, the biggest
mistake that was done by Thomas Green was the disagreement with Frank
Davis on the sales target. This was the root causing of the following problems
between Frank Davis and Thomas Green.
In addition, Green failed to maintain an effective communication with his boss
and has not cultivated well with his superior. Davis is an experienced
marketing person who prefers to read information materials rather than verbal
communication but Thomas completely failed to realize this. Green did not
inform his superior about his location and progress, ending up with the result
that he was unable to make Frank trust and depend on him.
Besides, Green mixed the personal with the professional. He thought Davis
was criticizing him for the reason that he was promoted to this position with
the help of McDonald and Frank wanted to offer this position to someone else.
This wrong perception resulted in many poor judgements of Davis in many
following occasions.
Last but not the least, Green has not been able to adapt himself well to the
organization and failed to understand the politics in the new environment. He
was unable to develop a good network with his work colleagues who can
guided him on how to tackle his boss and helped him by sharing job related
resources including information, professional advice, political access and
material resources.

(4) What are the possible underlying agendas of Davis and McDonald?
Agendas of Davis
As mentioned above, Davis is a wise old bird with a working experience of
seventeen years since he joined Dynamic Displays in 1990. He was ambitious
and climbed up the career ladder to the position of Marketing Director.
However, Davis was not a shining eye catcher compared to McDonald who
joined the company later than him but got promoted faster than him, it is
tough for Davis to accept the fact that McDonald got a senior position as Vice
President which he believes should belonged to him as being service the
longest in Dynamic Displays and having more work experience.
More than this, it is unacceptable for Davis that McDonald did not consult
Davis and made a decision to promoted Thomas Green to a senior market
analysis, the position where it took years for Davis to reach whereas Thomas
got easily in just six months and that Davis had expected to choose someone
else but Thomas.
Therefore, the most underlying agenda of Davis is to prove that McDonald was
serving her own personal interest to hire Thomas rather than being sincere
with the success of the company on merit basis. By exposing her manipulation
of bureaucracy to the CEO, the possibility for Davis of replacing the position of
McDonald as Vice President will greatly increase.
Agendas of McDonald
McDonald, in lieu of the benefit of the Travel and Hospitality Division,
possesses the sufficient power in her hands to demonstrate and take decision.
Compared to Davis and Green, McDonald is so clever and familiar with the
politics in the organization. She was also aware that Davis may be threatening
and had all the intention to find her mistake and weaken her position in the
company.
Whats more, McDonald was pretty good at playing politics and using people
for her own good as she knew that Green was from her own state and
graduated from the same university. There are so many advantages that
McDonald could take and she could easily control Thomas compared to any
other employees. Therefore, it is obvious that McDonalds motive is to
enhance her position, increase her network and inforce her influence by
getting information of Davis department from Green.

(5) What actions, if any, would you take if you were Thomas Green?
Supposing that I were Thomas Green, there are only a few options that I would
take in front of me which are.
a. Communicate and consult with McDonald First: since it was McDonalds
decision to hire Green, McDonald would never let this kind of situation go
worse, or her reputation and authority will be terribly affected. By far, Thomas
should urgently setup a meeting with McDonald, clarifying all the
misunderstanding and wrong perception and consulting advices to develop a
further roadmap for him in the company.
b. Prepare a formal and detailed email to McDonald: In order to improve the
situation, First and foremost, accept all my mistakes that has led to the
present misunderstanding and promise to find ways to improve the relations.
Secondly, state all my achievements still date, all the marketing strategies
that I had conducted, all the sales tactics that had increase sales of the
eastern region. Lastly, I would come up with a detailed and comprehensive
plan and schedule in a very professional and respectful manner.
c. Manage my superior in a smart way: I would take into consideration Daviss
strengths and weaknesses, analysis his work styles, and then follow his order
and foot-steps in a preferred work style. Since I have no experience with
forecasting whereas Davis is expert in this field, I would ask for advice to get
more exposure and training from Davis.
d. Create networks in workplace: I would seek suggestions from other Senior
Market Specialists in the department. Having good and cordial relationship
would benefit me in my progress as I would have people to support and guide
me.
d. Adapted to the politics in a quick way: No one cannot just ignore the
political environment and survive well without paying attention to it. If
necessary, I may expose the sales unrealistic figures in a suitable method to
McDonald and show evidence to prove that Franks projection was wrong and
my anticipation was right.
e. Hunt for a new job: This would be the last resort, or the final desperate
approach if Thomas lose out on allies and failed the expectation of McDonald.
But if I were Thomas I would never think of leaving the company because now
his mortgage payment was due and the new furniture was scheduled to be
delivered soon.