CASE STUDY: CELERITAS, INC.

; LEADERSHIP
CHALLENGES IN A FAST-GROWTH INDUSTRY

Slide 2
Celeritas was a leading firm in the highly competitive enterprise network
optimization industry and was threatened with declining growth and
revenue over the last few years. Its late entry into cloud computing
technologies had further weakened its position in the market.
Celeritas was established in 2003 by three MIT engineers of which CEO
Philip Boyer was one of the founders. Celeritas’ success was due to strong
teamwork among the founders and company’s initial employees. It
capitalized its strengths and established a reputation for quality and
innovation with product enhancements and new solutions. However, its
market leader position was weakened over the years with slowed growth
than its competitors. Philip realized that high employee turnover, low
morale across the organization and lack of cooperation among divisions
were the primary reasons affecting the business.

Slide 3
Philip searched for an organizational development consultant, experienced
in working with fast-growing high-tech companies and hired Carla Reese to
create team building and provide solutions for Celeritas problems. Her role
was to reorganize the company and deal with the human part which was
the most complicated. It included relation among the department and all the
process of decisions, communication and the vision and goals of the
company. Carla had one on one sessions with SVPs to understand their
interests and concerns. Based on the conversations with them, she learned
that there was lack of trust and communication amongst the senior
executives, and the inconsistent decision making and follow-through lead to
confusion about the company goals and priorities , and poor coordination
among business functions and units made things worse.
She conducted an executive offsite meet for two days to have an honest
discussion on each issue and find some agreement to move forward.
During the meetings she learned that there were issues with Boyer’s
leadership, causing team’s dysfunction. There was no internal feedback
from the department and none of them showed any bonding or personal
connections. Among the chief problems identified by her during the
discussions was the sales SVP David Lloyd’s inability to handle conflict. On
the whole she found that the SVPs lacked trust, openness and refrained
from sharing business information.
Six weeks after the completion of team building workshop, the 3 rd quarter
results of the company showed continued decline in revenue. This led to
backlash against SVP David from other SVPs for his inability to increase
sales. It also reiterated other SVPs lack of confidence on David’s ability to
generate sales as observed by Carla. After seeing this Boyer consulted
with Carla and board of directors, and asked David to resign. David
accepted severance package and left the organization without any issues.

Slide 3

What’s Next for Celeritas

Now Boyer feels that he has taken an important step towards reviving the
organizational change process, but he needs to empower the VPs by
honoring the established schedules and consult them in decision making
process and provide them opportunities for their professional development.
The company needs to formulate well defined goals incorporating the
inputs from the senior team. They need to inculcate trust and commitment
to achieve the organization’s goals through teamwork. Organization has to
adapt well defined communication strategy to convey the goals to the
bottom level. There should be focus on improving interpersonal
relationships among the team members.
Boyer has to take the assistant of Carla to work with SVPs to remove all
barriers and create an environment of cooperation, coordination and
consistent decision making. Carla needs to address the problems with
Boyer’s leadership style and help him become more transparent,
collaborative with his team, and make decisions based on facts. He should
ensure there is employee involvement and recognition at all levels of the
organization.

We would like to conclude that Boyer needs to act as role model with a
strategic vision, good management, leadership qualities, consulting and
taking everyone along with him to propel the organization to achieve the
desired growth.