you are pam vice president of marketing for

Question

• You are Pam, Vice President of Marketing for Superior Products, Inc.
• You joined the company two months ago, replacing an individual who hadbeen the VP of Marketing for the company for the last 17 years.
• The CEO for the company changed in the last 6 months.
• The CEO and Senior Leadership team has made it very clear to you thatthe company's strategic objectives have changed drastically given serious global competition and that you have been hired to drive a strategic marketing strategy to support the company's overall strategic objectives.
• You have spent the first two months on the job, listening, learning, getting to know people in your organization and the company in general, as well as key customers, suppliers, etc.
• Your organization consists of 8 Regional Marketing Directors scattered around the globe, as well as a Senior Director of Advertising and Promotions, A Trade Show Manager, and other support staff.
• Your total Marketing organization globally is 137 people.
• Your predecessor left prior to you arriving and you had no opportunity to talk with him.

• Your initial assessment of the culture of your organization and really that of the company is one of "go along, get along" - very respectful, and polite and clearly non-confrontational. In fact you have learned that no one ever takes exception to anything. This appears to not only be true for your organization, but also is what you have observed with some members of the Senior Leadership team as well as your peers across the business. You have learned that no one is really held accountable, that when organizational or individual objectives have not been met, that the approach has been to find reasons outside of one's control as the reason, and leadership has gone along with that approach.

• In spite of what appears to be a lack of accountability, the company has continued to be profitable, and has maintained a fairly large market share for most of its products.
• As you reviewed the individual performance records of your direct reports and their directs, you have found that with only two exceptions that everyone was rated as either meeting or exceeding expectations, and in several cases, rated in the exceptional performance category.
• You also found that there were little if any comments and discussion regarding areas for improvement or any development plans.
• You asked the HR Partner supporting your group about what development actions had been taken for your people in recent years and you discovered that many had gone to a wide variety of external training programs, and a couple leaders were enrolled in completion of their master level degrees. You discovered, however, that many of the external programs had little and some cases no relevance to the business or the skill and knowledge development of your people in relation to their jobs.