SITUATION ANALYSIS

Wendy Peterson held the position of Vice President of Sales at the Plano office of Account
Back, an accounting software development firm. At this point of time Wendy was facing a
dilemma regarding one of the company’s sales executive Fred Wu.  
In order to tap the perceived booming Chinese market in Plano, Wendy herself had personally
hired Fred Wu , who being a former entrepreneur here himself, was well familiar with the big,
established Chinese business leaders of Plano. Being born and raised in China, he was quite
proficient in Mandarin, which made him best suited to deal with these influential stakeholders
of the target market.   

Initially, after joining the company Wu was very engaged with his colleagues and tried to
understand business knowledge from his coworkers. As a result, he started devoting more time in
office.Besides Wendy was an enthusiastic person who liked to be constantly updated by her
subordinates about their work while Wu was someone who preferred working independently, as
he denied any, other sales executive to join him for accompanying him for client meetings. Wu
was very formal in his approach and didn’t like to get involved much in office activities. His
working style was very different where he likes to meet with his clients at popular restaurants
instead of the office. He believed in working remotely and showed up only a few days a week at
the office. In addition, he gave vague updates to Peterson and was negligent in entering data about
clients on the online tool. 

Since Wu brought the largest Chinese client which led to increase in revenue, his performance on
paper was excellent. Wu also charged more from his clients by adding extra services without the
consent of his supervisor. This went against the company policy, Wu tried to justify his action by
saying that he had legitimate proof of these requests being made by the client
themselves.Moreover, Wu gave much attention to his existing client rather than bringing multiple
clients for the company. All these actions taken by Wu created a drift from Wendy’s expectation
from her subordinate. The same was reflected during an annual review of Fred, where he made an
unreasonable demand of requiring sales assistant who would answer his phone calls and perform
administrative actions. The company had a flat structure where an assistant was only provided to
senior sales executives who handled more than 30 accounts. Wendy explained the situation to him
but Wu was persistent on his demand. Later that day, Wu came to Wendy and told her that he had
got an offer from a competitor and threatened to dismantle his association with the firm if his
requirement was not met. Wendy was thus in a dilemma whether to cater to his demands or allow
him to resign.

Problem?