Throughout our daily lives at work, we can deal with and run into all types of people. We can deal with those who are perfectly fine to work with, as well as those who are quite difficult to work with. Co-workers, employees and even managers could come off as nasty and hard-hearted. In What a Star – What a Jerk (2001), a Harvard Business review case study, we see a problem that is exemplified by a real life situation. The case is about Jane, a manager who has recently joined the organization, TechniCo, and Andy, a top performer who comes off as a jerk in his behavior. We see that in the beginning of the article, there are back and forth correspondences between Jane and Rick Lazarus, who is an old colleague.
People like Andy and people like
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Mckenzie (2001) states, “Jane’s facing a classic situation: the rainmaker who drives everyone around him crazy. She can't get rid of him, but she can't let him destroy the team, either” (HBR). Jane needs to bring forward some changes. With that being said, Mckenzie mentions that Jane needs to make changes in four areas: organizational structure, attitude, roles, and culture. This means that Jane and her team need to collaborate and work together to come up with the different roles in her group, as well as setting an expectation when it comes to attitude and behavior. Jane herself needs to alter her own attitude so that she can be a leader. Moreover, the group needs to understand the culture and organization structure of TechniCo in order for there to be improvement in the groups overall performance and …show more content…
Row (2001) mentions that rewarding Andy for excellent behavior may be more effective, especially if the specific behavior of Andy that is rewarded blocks the behavior Jane wants to change (HBR). With that being said, this could inspire Andy to treat Jane and his coworkers with a respectful attitude so that they can perform well, whereas if there is a lack of performance, no rewards will be given. Waldroop suggests the idea of hinting to fire Andy indirectly. If he adapts to the organization and displays a better behavior, then there is no reason in getting rid of