Lazier Industries

Bob Lazier was the CEO of his family’s business that manufactured high quality components used primarily in laundry machines. Despite LI’s strong overall financial standing, Lazier was worried about a plateau in sales over the past six months and wondered if it had been a hiring mistake to bring on Scott Hawthorne as VP of sales. To complicate matters, Hawthorne’s supervisor—the newly-promoted SVP of sales and marketing—was potentially compounding the problem by taking a laissez-faire approach, and had himself been the subject of recent criticism. Unfortunately, Lazier’s concerns did not end there. His VP of manufacturing, a 10-year company veteran, had engendered a lot of animosity within the organization and his attitude just seemed to be getting worse. Lazier knew that it was time to make a decision on how to approach each of these performance issues.