LEADERSHIP WORKSHOP

SYNOPSIS

THE PERILS AND PITFALLS OF LEADING CHANGE:

A YOUNG MANAGER’S TURNAROUND JOURNEY

Date: 04.02.2023

Submitted by:

Abhirup Chowdhury 2022PGP010

Chandrachur Paul 2022PGP109
Deepansh Goyal 2022PGP119
Aniket Negi 2022PGP063
 SYNOPSIS

The paper shares the story of Daniel Oliveira, a young manager of a leading fashion retail
company called ‘Clothes and Accessories’ after graduating from a business school in Sao
Paulo a year earlier. Being awarded one of the twenty positions among 10000 applicants
was a dream come true moment for Oliveira. The fashion retail industry in Brazil was on a
steady growth trajectory for the past two decades. The focal problem of the paper is how
Oliveira as a store manager can bring about a change in the declining performance of the
store assigned to him and effectively communicate with the employees to accept the
change.
The paper narrates the incidents in different phases as follows:
1. The Honeymoon Phase
 Initial Excitement: Oliveira was excited upon being assigned to manage the
store in Vitoria. In addition, he was also excited the work under Prado, who
was known to be a great mentor.
 Pandora’s Box: On the very first day, Oliveira started meeting the employees
and tried to understand the workplace. Soon, he identified ample
opportunities of operational improvement that he could leverage to
turnaround the store’s performance.
2. The Downward Spiral
 Initiating Change: After meeting all the employees over the first two weeks,
Oliveira was confident about sharing his vision and strategies for turnaround
at a meeting with them. But he received bored stares from the employees
and a lack of enthusiasm among them.
 A Vicious Cycle: Confident about the fact that his proposed changes would
yield positive results, Oliveira was surprised to see that none of the changes
had been implemented at the departmental levels. He worked with the
employees of each department to ensure that the changes were made but
when he went back to visit the departments a week later, he found that all
the changes had been reverted.
 A Reality Check: Upon meeting Rodrigues who shed some light upon the
situation, Oliveira realized that he was not respected by the employees and
that was the reason behind the changes being continuously reversed.
3. Judgement Day
Oliveira could not accomplish the task he had been assigned. The store supervisor
and two other team leaders left the company for a competitor after informing Prado
that they did not believe in Oliveira as he was too young. Oliveira was left in
disappointment with a lot to fix.

The paper tells us a story of real life challenges that young managers often
encounter upon entering the industry after graduating from B-school.