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How Westerly took Charge and Established Herself as Assistant Producer Owner

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OBJECTIVE
This written case analysis provides you with an opportunity to apply concepts learned up to this point in the course 
please copy and paste, and address the following questions.
CASE QUESTIONS
1. How effective has Westerly been in taking charge and establishing herself as assistant product owner at Kauflauf? Explain.
2. What made her first attempt to change sales calls patterns fail?
3. Assume you are assigned to lead this change. Describe how you would enact the eight stages of Kotter’s eight-step model(attached) to change the call patterns? For each stage describe, what you would do, how you would do it and who you would involve. Explain your thinking.
4. What would you do to overcome resistance?
Professionalism –This paper should be written at academic level and free of typographical and grammatical errors. Use headings and subheadings and literature to support your discussion. Use APA style to cite these references ad include a reference page. Points are deducted for spelling and grammatical errors.


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Case Analysis
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How Westerly took charge and established herself as assistant producer owner
Westerly engaged in an interaction with RSD and field consultants in order to learn more about their clients’ requests and evaluate them, which is a responsibility of an assistant product owner in understanding the customers and their needs (Gabarro& Kaftan, 2014). Westerly effectively managed taking charge through establishing a strategy and empowering action between the RSD and field consultants. This was in effect to using their skills to achieve a shared value. She also used her support group and development group of contacts to gauge a feasibility and time frame so that they can meet the requests of the sale groups. This showed her priority in establishing development priorities and understanding the market. She used her leadership skills to encourage action from her contacts to communicate the vision of Kauflauf and its organization culture (Stuyfzand, 2015).
Westerly also attended trade shows and she would maintain contact with outside sources that would help establish the value proposition and profitability of Kauflauf within the product group (Gabarro& Kaftan, 2014). This made her understand more about the market and its competitors, and be more educated about the current trends that are very effective aspect as a leader. Westerly would guide the developers of Kauflauf in coding, debugging and delivering customized apps and upgrades all through the year (Gabarro& Kaftan, 2014). This lead to the release of new products annually through creating a collaborative team work effort to deliver the organization`s vision and core purpose. Since her orientation program, she gained a corporate culture that extended towards collaborating ethics, mutual respect and technical excellence, which led to solution oriented and relationship driven work community. She gained the skills and learnt the purpose of the company and since then, she took charge of the skills and knowledge that she could deliver to Kauflauf (Stuyfzand, 2015).
Westerly also identified a gap in Kauflauf staff`s concentration of field consultants on smaller accounts. She then developed a proposal that would shift the focus to larger customers who would bring in higher profit margins (Gabarro& Kaftan, 2014). This placed her at a higher position as opposed to other managerial hires at the time of orientation. She initiated a proposal that would benefit Kauflauf as compared to other companies through focusing the field consultants’ time to be spent on larger customers. She saw this as an opportunity for the organization to accept change that is beneficial. This familiarized her potential to the company and her bosses (Stuyfzand, 2015).
Failure of the first attempt to change sales call pattern
The response from Westerly’s best field consultant, RSD was that the proposal was arbitrary and she did not fully understand how the market works (Gabarro& Kaftan, 2014).The staff, department and both the RSD and field consultants resisted the changes that the new proposal envisioned. Westerly wanted the computer and office supply products group to move to a new stage of growth and she had a rationale for deploying the time of the field consultants.
Change is first seen as a shock before it gets resistance and denial and later on accepted and implemented. The first attempt failed because the RSD and field consultants were surprised by the change. When decisions are imposed on people without the consequences or getting used to the idea, they will resist it. This is because it is easier for people to say yes than to say no. In addition, it created a level of uncertainty for the staff and other regions of the organization, and this led rumbling and no support for the change (Stuyfzand, 2015). People would prefer to remain in mystery than to head towards the unknown. Changing the time for the field consultants and their usual roles of dealing with certain level of customers made the workers uncertain of the progress they will make dealing with a level one to three as compared to level four to six, and it could result to fewer and less frequent opportunity to close on sales (Kanter, 2012).
Another cause for the failure was that it meant more work for the staff as opposed to how they used to work before. Those that the change impacts directly will be overloaded with work. Getting larger customers means stepping up the staff`s game in maintaining contact, navigating to a more complex and larger bureaucracy, and it meant that the consultants would share the same workforce with the RSDs in meeting and dealing with larger firms (Gabarro& Kaftan, 2014). This would make the consultants feel like they are losing control of their positions and job description through letting RSDs do their work for them. Another reason for the failure of the proposal was the concern for competence. Middle and Larger companies and accounts of Kauflauf were handled by the consultants and the marketing and developing team. The other field consultants and RSDs were comfortable in handling and getting smaller accounts (Gabarro& Kaftan, 2014). The rejection comes in from the level of competence between the field consultants and the marketing and developing team in handling larger accounts and maintains a seamless relationship with larger firms. The field consultants were not ready to face to the challenge of meeting a larger account (Kanter, 2012; Stuyfzand, 2015).
The ripple effect is another reason for the failure of the proposal. The change would disrupt other departments, important customers like the managing and development teams, the consultants, and people in other depa...
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