Questions1. Highlight the relevant facts and briefly explain at least four (4) key issues identified in the case that have impacted the organization. 2. From the four (4) key issues identified in (1), evaluate using appropriate theories, principles or models, how these problems impact the team’s performance, (b) the organization’s performance. In your evaluation, be sure to include the factors that contributed to the issues at BLC.3. What is your assessment of Karen’s leadership style? Be specific in outlining at least two leadership practices she did or did not do well, citing examples from the case, your unit readings and external sources to support your answer. Please note that analyses for 1 2 and 3 must be founded on specific theories/principles that you must be able to identify and avoid analysis based on personal opinion or intuition. 4. As a consultant to Karen, how would you recommend she address the four (4) issues identified in part 1 (1) at BLC. These solutions must be specific and realistic. Indicate why you have chosen these recommendations. 5. Assess the benefits and risks of your chosen course of action (s). Caribbean Team Vibes and Whatever!Karen Brown sat in her office and thought about her 20-year career at Bright LightsCorporation (BLC). Her success at BLC has been from her own efforts and management. She hadimproved diversity for the team she led, launched new products and had taken on challenges whichat times seemed insurmountable. Recently, she and her colleagues were part of a team thatlaunched a number of products in the Caribbean region. The successful product launch had createda huge demand for the company's products that required BLC to establish and centralize a callrequiredcenter in Trinidad and Tobago. The call center would create additional jobs, one of which was herown-Senior Vice President for Global Operations and Support, where she was based in Trinidadand was responsible for beefing up operations and customer service given the growing expansionof the business.As she sat in her office reviewing the latest department call logs, and reflected on the heatedmeeting she had with her team members this morning, she wondered whether she was competentenough get the job done and exceed the company's expectations. She wondered whether her teamfully supported her. The call response times were unsatisfactory and if the department continuedon this path, her budgeted figures would turn red. The meeting this morning disturbed her as sherealized that there were disagreements among her team members where there appeared to be adivision along Caribbean and Non-Caribbean groups.The team comprised two Jamaicans, one Trinidadian from the Trinidad headquarters andone Panamanian from the Central American sales office. The two Jamaicans, already thinkingabout customer support, had spent the past few months working with product developers to createweb-based training videos that provided step-by-step product use information, as well as testingcompetitor products. The employee from Panama had also spent time with the productdevelopment team and had been an outstanding sales representative. She had transferred from theCentral American sales office to join the Trinidad call center.The problem was that the Jamaicans and the Trinidadian were angry about the work habitsof the Panamanian member whose call times were longer than theirs, so they accused her ofeffectively lowering their pay. During that morning's meeting, things had deteriorated into a verbalonslaught that culminated in one of the Caribbean members calling the Panamanian member a"chatty Latina." After that, the conflict got personal and highly emotional. Was this the "culturaliceberg" she'd heard so much about? And what exactly should she do to steer the team away fromit?Products at BLCWhen Karen had joined BLC 10 years earlier, it was a small Caribbean company sellingunique light fixtures for modern homes. Since then, it had expanded to selling light fittings forhospital equipment. Aside from the light fixtures, BLC's most profitable product lines includedphototherapy devices for the treatment of jaundice (often called light boxes) and a sophisticatedline of neonatal heart and breathing monitors. BLC's institutional customers included hospitalsand nongovernmental organizations that cared for at-risk populations and pregnant mothers. Thecompany also sold smaller versions of the phototherapy devices to hospitals, All manufacturingand distribution took place in Jamaica. By 2011, BLC executives were ready to expand sales ofphototherapy devices into Latin American markets. The decision was based largely on the region'slack of competitors in the maternal product segments, which, had a low entry barrier. Karen hadbeen part of the team that executed the launch. They had decided to hire locals in each of theirmarkets to create a Latin American sales unit and to focus on direct-marketing distributionchannels to institutional customers (hospitals and NGOs).The product rollout to institutional customers in Latin America was a huge success. Withina year, BLC had established ten sales units: two in Mexico, three in Central America, and five inSouth America. During the first few months of the expansion, the sales representatives were ableto provide some degree of customer support because their clients tended to be large hospitals-sales representatives would train a few hospital employees who, in turn, would be the supportpeople in their hospitals (a train-the-trainers model). By the end of that year, however, themanagement team realized that it did not have the infrastructure to provide customer support forall of the sales it was generating. As customer volume grew, the sales force was too busy to providereliable customer support. The sales force was paid on commission, so was less interested inproviding adequate customer support and was not necessarily made up of the best people to do so.Instead of relying on its sales force, the Karen and her management team decided to providecustomer support via call centers and, after much discussion, to establish these call centers in-house instead of relying on outsourcing. During BLC's original market research, potential LatinAmerican customers made it clear that being able to speak directly to the company to talk to thesame two or three people about their case rather than having to rely on retailers or third-partysupport- would make them more likely to buy BLC products. Given that the consistency andaccuracy of information from customer service was essential, BLC decided to first establish aCaribbean based call center supplemented by web-based video training. The company did this fortwo reasons. First, Karen and her management team wanted to closely monitor the calls to be ableto communicate quickly with quality control in order to provide onsite training that was updatedon a monthly basis. Second, it wanted to build trust with its customers. Karen was in charge ofmaking this happen. She immediately pulled four people, who spoke fluent Spanish, from the salesside of the organization to serveserves the call center.support represchma Differences in the Call Center TeamAs with most call centers, the team was rewarded based on how many calls it handled. Inlight of their large and growing customer base, the team found itself with high call volumes. Karenbelieved it was important to keep calls short for two reasons. First, it was important to avoid longcustomer hold times in order to create greater case for customers. Second, she had been given afixed percentage of company profit to devote to call-center compensation. She did extensiveanalysis over a six-month period about realistic estimates of the length of time that her team offour could spend with each customer. She had the sales team document the time spent on customersupport, used new customer forecasts and did a handful of scenarios with existing customers to getan average time estimate for a typical call. She then divided the amount of money she had to spendby the number of customers she anticipated would call each day, and determined that she couldafford to have representatives spend about seven minutes with cach customer. This number wasroughly the same as her event-by-event "scenario trials." In order to stay within her budget, shedecided that each representative's pay would be docked by $1.00 per minute after seven minutesof conversation with a customer. While the representatives were compensated with an annualsalary, which was paid to them in monthly pay periods, she decided to make their monthly paycontingent on the team maintaining a daily seven minute call average. So the team membersmonthly pay was calculated as their salary minus $1.00 for cach minute of each day that the teamaverage was over seven minutes. She believed this would encourage the call-center members tocollaborate (rather than compete) with one another about the best strategies for quick and helpfulservice.Karen was discouraged that, at the end of their first month of working together, the teammembers call response average was a little over two minutes off target. She was also gettingcomplaints from the three Caribbean team members. They calculated that together the three spentan average of five and a half minutes with each customer, when customers wanted furtherinformation, the employees referred them to the training videos. In contrast, they observed that thePanamanian member, Maria Perez, spent about 15 minutes with each customer, often walking thecustomer through the videos over the phone. These longer calls were affecting the compensation.of all members, and the Jamaicans and Trinidadians were angry.At the most recent weekly team meeting, the tension had been palpable. The Jamaicans andthe Trinidadian understood Perez's point about the need for customer satisfaction, but theybelieved that helping customers solve problems and referring them to the training video was goodenoughThe complaints in the meeting went like this:Joy Campbell says:This goes beyond being annoyed about how much Maria talks, it now affects my pay-it'sbeing docked. When she does a call, it goes way past product information, she carries on aboutfamily, gets wrapped up in their problems, laughs and jokes-but the thing that really put me overthe edge was when she told someone she'd put the kids who used our equipment on her prayer list!Maria acts like a therapist instead of providing technical support. For the love of Pete, wesell lighting equipment! The less you talk, the more you listen, and the better you do your jobPaul Ross saysMaria talks so much that my mouth hurts-and I'm being penalized because of it. There isno off switch. She thinks her approach is a success. So she builds relationships with her customers,but we're here to provide information. We have training videos for a reason and she needs torefer customers to those videos, not watch the things with the caller while she's got them on thephone!George Cann sayy :I find myself increasingly angry at Maria for prioritizing her need to talk over any workthat needs to get done. She couldn't care less that our pay is being reduced because of her. Shehas it in her head that any conversation under 15 minutes is rude and to cut calls shorter is badmanners. Callers don't need to feel special, they need information to solve their problem, and thattakes five mindes tops for all the rest of us. We are helping solve problems and providing goodcare too.Maria Perez saysWe don't do things that way in my country. You should have studied my culture before youjoined this team. This is serious business. The lives of many children depend upon our product,and their caregivers need to know our company cares about them. We have to build trust that wearen't going to sell them something and then hit the road. No one else on this team takes the timeto earn health care providers respect. We need to make them feel confident in their decision tobuy our monitors and not someone else's. But don't take my word for it-have a look at the howcustomers have rated me: my satisfaction scores are exponentially higher than anyone else's onthis team.Karen worried that both she and the team were at a breaking point.

Question

Questions1. Highlight the relevant facts and briefly explain at least four (4) key issues identified in the case that have impacted the organization. 2. From the four (4) key issues identified in (1), evaluate using appropriate theories, principles or models, how these problems impact the team’s performance, (b) the organization’s performance. In your evaluation, be sure to include the factors that contributed to the issues at BLC.3. What is your assessment of Karen’s leadership style? Be specific in outlining at least two leadership practices she did or did not do well, citing examples from the case, your unit readings and external sources to support your answer. Please note that analyses for 1 2 and 3 must be founded on specific theories/principles that you must be able to identify and avoid analysis based on personal opinion or intuition.  4. As a consultant to Karen, how would you recommend she address the four (4) issues identified in part 1 (1) at BLC. These solutions must be specific and realistic. Indicate why you have chosen these recommendations. 5. Assess the benefits and risks of your chosen course of action (s). Caribbean Team Vibes and Whatever!Karen Brown sat in her office and thought about her 20-year career at Bright LightsCorporation (BLC). Her success at BLC has been from her own efforts and management. She hadimproved diversity for the team she led, launched new products and had taken on challenges whichat times seemed insurmountable. Recently, she and her colleagues were part of a team thatlaunched a number of products in the Caribbean region. The successful product launch had createda huge demand for the company's products that required BLC to establish and centralize a callrequiredcenter in Trinidad and Tobago. The call center would create additional jobs, one of which was herown-Senior Vice President for Global Operations and Support, where she was based in Trinidadand was responsible for beefing up operations and customer service given the growing expansionof the business.As she sat in her office reviewing the latest department call logs, and reflected on the heatedmeeting she had with her team members this morning, she wondered whether she was competentenough get the job done and exceed the company's expectations. She wondered whether her teamfully supported her. The call response times were unsatisfactory and if the department continuedon this path, her budgeted figures would turn red. The meeting this morning disturbed her as sherealized that there were disagreements among her team members where there appeared to be adivision along Caribbean and Non-Caribbean groups.The team comprised two Jamaicans, one Trinidadian from the Trinidad headquarters andone Panamanian from the Central American sales office. The two Jamaicans, already thinkingabout customer support, had spent the past few months working with product developers to createweb-based training videos that provided step-by-step product use information, as well as testingcompetitor products. The employee from Panama had also spent time with the productdevelopment team and had been an outstanding sales representative. She had transferred from theCentral American sales office to join the Trinidad call center.The problem was that the Jamaicans and the Trinidadian were angry about the work habitsof the Panamanian member whose call times were longer than theirs, so they accused her ofeffectively lowering their pay. During that morning's meeting, things had deteriorated into a verbalonslaught that culminated in one of the Caribbean members calling the Panamanian member a&#34;chatty Latina.&#34; After that, the conflict got personal and highly emotional. Was this the &#34;culturaliceberg&#34; she'd heard so much about? And what exactly should she do to steer the team away fromit?Products at BLCWhen Karen had joined BLC 10 years earlier, it was a small Caribbean company sellingunique light fixtures for modern homes. Since then, it had expanded to selling light fittings forhospital equipment. Aside from the light fixtures, BLC's most profitable product lines includedphototherapy devices for the treatment of jaundice (often called light boxes) and a sophisticatedline of neonatal heart and breathing monitors. BLC's institutional customers included hospitalsand nongovernmental organizations that cared for at-risk populations and pregnant mothers. Thecompany also sold smaller versions of the phototherapy devices to hospitals, All manufacturingand distribution took place in Jamaica. By 2011, BLC executives were ready to expand sales ofphototherapy devices into Latin American markets. The decision was based largely on the region'slack of competitors in the maternal product segments, which, had a low entry barrier. Karen hadbeen part of the team that executed the launch. They had decided to hire locals in each of theirmarkets to create a Latin American sales unit and to focus on direct-marketing distributionchannels to institutional customers (hospitals and NGOs).The product rollout to institutional customers in Latin America was a huge success. Withina year, BLC had established ten sales units: two in Mexico, three in Central America, and five inSouth America. During the first few months of the expansion, the sales representatives were ableto provide some degree of customer support because their clients tended to be large hospitals-sales representatives would train a few hospital employees who, in turn, would be the supportpeople in their hospitals (a train-the-trainers model). By the end of that year, however, themanagement team realized that it did not have the infrastructure to provide customer support forall of the sales it was generating. As customer volume grew, the sales force was too busy to providereliable customer support. The sales force was paid on commission, so was less interested inproviding adequate customer support and was not necessarily made up of the best people to do so.Instead of relying on its sales force, the Karen and her management team decided to providecustomer support via call centers and, after much discussion, to establish these call centers in-house instead of relying on outsourcing. During BLC's original market research, potential LatinAmerican customers made it clear that being able to speak directly to the company to talk to thesame two or three people about their case rather than having to rely on retailers or third-partysupport- would make them more likely to buy BLC products. Given that the consistency andaccuracy of information from customer service was essential, BLC decided to first establish aCaribbean based call center supplemented by web-based video training. The company did this fortwo reasons. First, Karen and her management team wanted to closely monitor the calls to be ableto communicate quickly with quality control in order to provide onsite training that was updatedon a monthly basis. Second, it wanted to build trust with its customers. Karen was in charge ofmaking this happen. She immediately pulled four people, who spoke fluent Spanish, from the salesside of the organization to serveserves the call center.support represchma Differences in the Call Center TeamAs with most call centers, the team was rewarded based on how many calls it handled. Inlight of their large and growing customer base, the team found itself with high call volumes. Karenbelieved it was important to keep calls short for two reasons. First, it was important to avoid longcustomer hold times in order to create greater case for customers. Second, she had been given afixed percentage of company profit to devote to call-center compensation. She did extensiveanalysis over a six-month period about realistic estimates of the length of time that her team offour could spend with each customer. She had the sales team document the time spent on customersupport, used new customer forecasts and did a handful of scenarios with existing customers to getan average time estimate for a typical call. She then divided the amount of money she had to spendby the number of customers she anticipated would call each day, and determined that she couldafford to have representatives spend about seven minutes with cach customer. This number wasroughly the same as her event-by-event &#34;scenario trials.&#34; In order to stay within her budget, shedecided that each representative's pay would be docked by $1.00 per minute after seven minutesof conversation with a customer. While the representatives were compensated with an annualsalary, which was paid to them in monthly pay periods, she decided to make their monthly paycontingent on the team maintaining a daily seven minute call average. So the team membersmonthly pay was calculated as their salary minus $1.00 for cach minute of each day that the teamaverage was over seven minutes. She believed this would encourage the call-center members tocollaborate (rather than compete) with one another about the best strategies for quick and helpfulservice.Karen was discouraged that, at the end of their first month of working together, the teammembers call response average was a little over two minutes off target. She was also gettingcomplaints from the three Caribbean team members. They calculated that together the three spentan average of five and a half minutes with each customer, when customers wanted furtherinformation, the employees referred them to the training videos. In contrast, they observed that thePanamanian member, Maria Perez, spent about 15 minutes with each customer, often walking thecustomer through the videos over the phone. These longer calls were affecting the compensation.of all members, and the Jamaicans and Trinidadians were angry.At the most recent weekly team meeting, the tension had been palpable. The Jamaicans andthe Trinidadian understood Perez's point about the need for customer satisfaction, but theybelieved that helping customers solve problems and referring them to the training video was goodenoughThe complaints in the meeting went like this:Joy Campbell says:This goes beyond being annoyed about how much Maria talks, it now affects my pay-it'sbeing docked. When she does a call, it goes way past product information, she carries on aboutfamily, gets wrapped up in their problems, laughs and jokes-but the thing that really put me overthe edge was when she told someone she'd put the kids who used our equipment on her prayer list!Maria acts like a therapist instead of providing technical support. For the love of Pete, wesell lighting equipment! The less you talk, the more you listen, and the better you do your jobPaul Ross saysMaria talks so much that my mouth hurts-and I'm being penalized because of it. There isno off switch. She thinks her approach is a success. So she builds relationships with her customers,but we're here to provide information. We have training videos for a reason and she needs torefer customers to those videos, not watch the things with the caller while she's got them on thephone!George Cann sayy :I find myself increasingly angry at Maria for prioritizing her need to talk over any workthat needs to get done. She couldn't care less that our pay is being reduced because of her. Shehas it in her head that any conversation under 15 minutes is rude and to cut calls shorter is badmanners. Callers don't need to feel special, they need information to solve their problem, and thattakes five mindes tops for all the rest of us. We are helping solve problems and providing goodcare too.Maria Perez saysWe don't do things that way in my country. You should have studied my culture before youjoined this team. This is serious business. The lives of many children depend upon our product,and their caregivers need to know our company cares about them. We have to build trust that wearen't going to sell them something and then hit the road. No one else on this team takes the timeto earn health care providers respect. We need to make them feel confident in their decision tobuy our monitors and not someone else's. But don't take my word for it-have a look at the howcustomers have rated me: my satisfaction scores are exponentially higher than anyone else's onthis team.Karen worried that both she and the team were at a breaking point.

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