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Summary of attached case, 1 page
A Small World After All
Case
Author: Rodney L. Lowman
Online Pub Date: March 06, 2016 | Original Pub. Date: 2011
Subject: Organization Development, Management Consulting
Level: Intermediate | Type: Direct case | Length: 3929 words
Copyright:
© SAGE Publications, Inc. 2012
Organization: Mercury Standard Corporation | Organization size: Large
Region: United States of America | State: Maine
Industry: Other manufacturing
Originally Published in:
Anderson, D. L. (2012). A Small World After All. In Cases and exercises in organization
development & change (pp. 201–208). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications Inc. Print. ISBN:
9781412987738
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781506314204 | Online ISBN: 9781506314204
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Case
Learning Objectives
To explore when it is appropriate to use individual level assessments (tests) as part of an
organization development (OD) effort.
To understand contextual issues that may arise in doing OD in a company located in a
rural community.
To determine what an OD consultant should do when a planned intervention seriously
misfires.
As a specialist in organization development (OD), Sam Shruggins, a short, pudgy man of 50
with a reddish face, had worked with a variety of organizations and on a wide assortment of
issues in his mostly rural part of the state. Being rather isolated geographically, the
companies Shruggins worked with were primarily small to medium sized, but he had built a
successful practice and in time was known as being the “go-to” person when OD was needed.
Over the years he had developed a favored approach that usually worked pretty well for most
of the problems he was asked to address. Typically the approach included some type of
testing as part of the assessment phase.
Mercury Standard
The engagement with the Mercury Standard Corporation, located about 3 miles outside of the
small city of Brewer on a lovely and well-manicured acreage adjacent to a golf course, at first
seemed pretty routine. He had been called in to assist with what he understood to be a team
development effort. Myron Morton, the vice president in charge of operations at Mercury, as
most people locally called it, had heard Shruggins speak at one of the Brewer Rotary Club
meetings. Sam had spoken about creating effective teams and barriers to working together
effectively. The situations he had described in his brief talk included a number of examples
that seemed to describe Mercury’s senior management team to a T. Pleasant to one another
on the outside, the team was generally conflict avoidant and was viewed by Morton as
ineffective in dealing with real issues.
Concerning what Morton viewed as trivial issues (such as whether to take the Martin Luther
King holiday) they could fill an hour-long meeting with lively discussion and points of view.
When it came to discussing a strategy for growing the business or talking about new
marketing efforts, however, Morton had to pull to get any real discussion going and rarely did
anything come of it.
Morton had worked at Mercury only 4 years—still a newcomer and outsider by local
standards. He came there from Capital City, the state’s second largest city, to assume a vice
presidency and what was for him a promotion. Morton’s wife, a home maker, had been raised
in a small town and had looked forward to returning to a similar place so that the couple’s two
soon-to-be teenaged sons could have a tamer, safer place in which to pass their adolescence.
He himself had hailed from a larger city in another state and preferred a less rural location,
but when the offer came in they agreed that they would give it a try and stay at least until their
boys had graduated from high school.
In the third year of Morton’s new job, his boss, Mr. Pettis LeMaster, the company’s CEO,
suffered a recurrence of prostate cancer and became increasingly absent as he traveled to
the state’s medical hub in Metro City, the state’s largest city and commercial center. In his
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absence, and with the board’s approval, he asked Morton to run the executive committee
meetings and to continue to oversee operations. LeMaster continued to manage the work with
the board, most of whom he had known for more than 40 years since he had founded the
company.
Not too much was said directly to Morton about the interim arrangement he was asked to fill.
However, his wife, who had become active in several women’s clubs and civic groups, learned
from an acquaintance that Esther Michelson, Mercury’s chief financial officer (CFO) who had
been at Mercury since its founding, was not too happy about this arrangement. It felt to her, it
was reported, that she and her longstanding service and loyalty had been overlooked when
Morton was asked to take the interim lead. On the quiet side and always the “lady” when
dealing with others in a public context, Michelson never said anything to Morton about her
feelings and after his wife had relayed the information about what she had said to a mutual
friend, he decided to let it pass.
Most of the other members of the senior management team were locals who had worked their
way up in the company to their present positions. Only three of the seven members of the
executive committee (other than Morton and the CEO) had college degrees. All were
considered successes in their local community. If they had had any negative reactions to
Morton, they never told him about them. Although Morton would not have chosen most of the
senior executive team members, he did not feel it appropriate to remove any of them in the
current circumstances, but he did want to take the team to a new level of functioning. In a
small town he knew you could not move too quickly or expect too much too soon without
facing a lot of push back from unexpected sources.
Mercury was one of three employers in Brewer that had more than 100 employees. With 500
employees, Mercury was the second largest employer in the city, the local general hospital
being the largest. Mercury was considered to be one of the best employers by many locals
because it paid good wages and because its benefit package was particularly attractive with
generous health, dental, and retirement benefits. Although Mercury had had its ups and
downs over the years, salaries and benefits had always been protected for those who
remained with the company. In fact, Pettis LeMaster was something of a local hero for what he
had done with Mercury and his loyalty to the community. Several attempts at buying out the
company had been made, but on each occasion LeMaster fended them off, even at a cost to
his own financial well-being. Personally, LeMaster didn’t really need any more money—he
had no plans to leave Brewer (where the cost of living was fairly low) although he did want his
wife, children, and grandchildren to have a sufficiently large inheritance that they would never
have to worry about money.
The First On-Site OD Meeting
To someone who did not live there, Brewer was a rather uninviting town located on the Frazier
River, which connected Lake Suffrage and Lake Bedrock, two of the larger lakes in the region,
both of which were popular with boaters in the short chilly summers. While Mirishmar, 3 hours
west of Brewer, had developed into an attractive and thriving college town, Brewer always
seemed frozen in a time that was at least a century or so ago. Called a “blue-collar town,” that
term may have accurately described what Brewer once was but was no longer accurate since
most jobs these days in Brewer had become white collar and in the service industry. Still, the
self identity of being a blue-collar town lived on. As in many small towns, a small group of
professionals and business leaders controlled much of the money locally, there was a
moderate-sized middle class, and a larger poorer class who were still struggling to make ends
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meet.
Sam Shruggins had been to Brewer on many occasions; earlier in his career he had done
some consulting work with the local hospital when it planned what turned out to be a
successful expansion strategy. This particular wintry day for his first return visit to Mercury
was one of the worst of the already long and bleak winter that year, but Shruggins was an old
pro at getting around icy snowed-over roads and he took pride in never once having missed a
consulting engagement due to weather. When the weather was predicted to be dangerous he
came in the night before, as he had done this time. When he did so, he typically stayed at the
Native Hotel and Casino, which usually had a mid-week special, and was a little nicer than the
franchise motels that plentifully lined Grand Avenue, the city’s main commercial street.
This morning it was slow going getting the 5 miles to the company headquarters. His four-
wheel drive truck moved along fast enough but too many amateurs, as he liked to call them,
were out on the road that day, slowing everyone down to their timorous pace. Fortunately he
had allowed enough plenty of time and still arrived with time to spare at the Mercury plant.
Despite the beautiful landscaping at Mercury, the company’s buildings themselves were quite
unattractive. An old transmission plant from the 1920s had been purchased by LeMaster and
the company’s other founders when they had started the Mercury Standard plant. What was
distinctive, at least in the few nonsnowy months, were the lovely grounds. Trees and paths
had been intermixed and the company had installed a popular walking trail that in winter was
used by cross-country skiers. The sidewalks and parking lots were always (almost instantly
and somewhat mysteriously) cleared of snow and what the buildings lacked in beauty the
grounds made up for.
Shruggins parked his truck with no problem that day and walked up to the visitor’s entrance
to the company headquarters, a beige brick building with steel awnings over the windows.
Inside he was greeted by a middle-aged woman with frosted hair and a huge smile. “You must
be Mr. Shruggins. Cold enough for you?” she asked, a little impishly. Shruggins returned his
best, most jovial smile, the one he used with company gatekeepers. He was friendly, smiling,
and a little flirtatious.
“Mr. Morton is waiting for you on the fourth floor,” she said. “Just put your hat and coat over
there and you can take the elevator up. Mary will take care of you there.” Her voice sang and
made him feel warm and happy, as it did most people who were greeted by her.
The hat and coat rack were empty—a slow visitor’s day he assumed. A puddle of water
quickly accumulated on the floor when the steamy heat from the radiator quickly warmed his
black coat to room temperature.
Miss Mary Feldenstein was just off the elevator on the fourth floor. A woman of about 60, she
was expecting Shruggins and greeted him cordially if a little crisply. She’d seen a number of
consultants come and go since Mr. LeMaster had turned over so much authority to Mr.
Morton. There was just the slightest note of coolness in her voice when she offered him coffee
and a place to sit.
His coffee had just been served when Sarah Scott, whom Morton had brought with him from
his last company, opened a door and cheerfully greeted him. “Come on back, Mr. Shruggins.
We’re delighted you could get through to us on this snowy day.” Sarah seemed like a woman
who could not stop talking and she went on and on, barely stopping for him to reply. “Did you
get caught in the snowstorm? I was almost late coming in today and I’m never late. I sure
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hope you didn’t have any trouble.” Shruggins just let her talk, smiling a little, and soon he
was in the conference room with the long, dark, black wood table, paneling on the walls, and
photographs of the current board members—all white males who appeared to be over 60. The
lack of windows lent the room a sense of importance, as did the tall chairs, but the cheap
wood paneling on the walls sent a mixed message.
“Mr. Morton will be right in,” Sarah said. And before he could even sample his coffee, in
walked Mr. Morton. At the Rotary meeting he had worn a suit and had a cordial air about him.
Today, however, he was in a shirt and tie with black slacks. He greeted Shruggins quickly,
made the obligatory comments on the weather and sat at the head of the long table.
After the small talk (perhaps a minute’s worth) Morton said, “I appreciate your coming. I’ll be
frank with you. This team needs to move faster than they are going now and I’d like your help
with that. I also have some duds in the group but I feel like I’m stuck with them for now. I’d like
you to get this team more aligned and at least pulling in the same direction and to perform at
a higher level.”
“I’ll do my best,” Shruggins said. Just as he was formulating how he would best ask his usual
string of questions about the team and Mr. Morton’s perceptions of the issues, Morton said,
“I’ve arranged for you to meet the team now as part of our regular Monday morning meeting.
You’ll have a chance to get to know them and we can determine the best way to proceed.”
Before he could respond to that statement, in came Sarah Scott, letting her boss know that
the team was ready to join them. She noted that Mr. Appleby (the head of marketing) was not
there yet because of car problems. Morton’s face briefly turned red but he quickly said, “Bring
the others in, please.”
Shruggins was not too happy with this beginning but he concluded that if he wanted this OD
job he had to go along, at least for now. For starters, his goal was to engage with the entire
team, not just with Morton. The group assembled but most looked a little apprehensive and a
couple of them downright anxious.
Like most first OD meetings, this one went fairly well. Participants were polite and after a
while, when the purposes of the OD effort were explained by Morton, a little humor crept in.
Shruggins explained that he would like to meet with each member of the team individually to
get better acquainted with them all. People seemed relieved that they would have a chance to
privately present their point of view. Since Morton had indicated the time for this meeting was
up, they agreed to get together again in 2 weeks on the same day and time. After the group
meeting, he said he would begin the individual interviews.
At the end of the meeting, Shruggins distributed an assessment for participants to complete
individually and to bring back to the next meeting. It was a short form of a five-factor measure
of normal personality commonly used in personnel selection (see, e.g., Rothstein & Goffin,
2006) and Shruggins had often used this test early on in OD efforts. He had found it to be a
harmless measure that served as a good ice breaker and tension reliever. Although he did not
train as a psychologist, Shruggins had attended a course by the test publisher, who on this
basis allowed him to purchase the measure. The participants all laughed a little and made
comments about the “shrink” finding out all their secrets, but no one objected to completing
the measure either in the meeting or thereafter.
The Second Meeting
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Two weeks later the snow in Brewer had mostly melted, the roads were clear and the sun
actually peeked through. People greeted him pleasantly and the management team seemed
to be in a good mood. This meeting had, with some effort on Shruggins’ part, been scheduled
for 2 hours. The first part of the meeting was spent talking about the individual interviews that
would commence that day and the general way that he liked to work to help teams grow. He
applauded the group on its willingness to agree to work together and to tackle the issues
before them.
The second hour of the meeting was spent reviewing the results of the assessment measure
that each had completed and brought with them to the meeting. Shruggins had found from
experience that having people take a short measure like this was a good way to open people
up and to demonstrate that there were many differences in peoples’ personality and that this
had implications for how they could best work together successfully. Shruggins had used this
particular test and approach dozens of times before and it had always been an effective way
to get people thinking and to break down some of the barriers to beginning serious work
together.
After a brief discussion of the purposes of the assessment process, and the reminder that the
results were just for their own use and were confidential to them, Shruggins had the
participants self-score the measure. He had given them a self-scorable form and asked the
staff to pull the measure apart, which resulted in the scoring template being made visible.
Within 5 minutes, all participants had their numbers, which they then plotted on a graph that
assigned them to a category (e.g., high or low openness) on each of the five dimensions
measured by the test. He then presented a short lecture on the five personality factors using
the abbreviation OCEAN to describe the five variables of openness, conscientiousness,
extroversion/introversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (McCrae, 2009). Many in the group
asked relevant and sometimes lively questions. A few were silent and Esther Michelson in
particular seemed preoccupied and unengaged. When he discussed the neuroticism
dimension, she seemed to be blushing. Shruggins also noted that several of the participants
seemed to be sneaking peaks at their neighbor’s results so he reminded the group that these
results were just for one’s own use, not to be shared.
In a Small Town, There Are No Secrets
Later that evening, Sarah Scott, who sat in on all the meetings to take notes and as the
secretary to the senior management team, and who also had completed the test, called her
best friend Louise Carson to discuss what had happened that day in the meeting. She talked
about the measure of “normal personality” they had completed and noted that Esther
Michelson, who she had sat next to, had seemed quite upset during the meeting. She told
Louise in confidence that Esther had scored high on something the consultant had called
“neurotic” (something like that; she remembered the names of the scales spelled out OCEAN)
and the two laughed at how accurate that test was in nailing Esther’s rather acerbic and
sometimes brittle personality. She also stated that her boss, Mr. Morton, had told the group he
had come out introverted on this test and that she had heard someone who had been in the
group say after the meeting about his remark, “well that sure explains a lot of things.”
After the call, Louise, who, since her retirement from Mercury, had become an active volunteer
in the community, spoke to her friend Barbara Jackson and in passing mentioned the “juicy
gossip” from Mercury. Barbara in turn spoke that evening to her acquaintance and bridge
partner Millie Talson, who then spoke to her best friend Betty Buran, a columnist for the local
newspaper, The Brewer Morning News. Buran’s husband had formerly worked for Mercury
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1.
2.
3.
4.
and had been laid off in one of the cut backs that took place last year. He had not found new
work and was getting by doing odd jobs.
Around town, especially among those who subscribed to larger newspapers, the local
newspaper was something of a joke, snidely known as the Morning Snooze. It mostly
consisted of birth, death, and athletic contest announcements and the arrest records from the
day before, along with a few by-then stale national news stories. The writers on the paper
were poorly paid and they took their solace when they could by writing opinion articles
disguised as news stories that made their targets look bad. The maligned individuals usually
cancelled their subscriptions, especially when the paper refused to print letters to the editor
with their side of the story. The paper’s editor fancied himself a muckraker and was
independently wealthy, so he did what he wanted and did not much care if the circulation was
declining.
Within a week, Barbara Buran’s “About Town” weekly gossip column featured a short item
about the personality test results of Mercury’s executives. In it she opined, “Your humble
columnist is no psychologist but she has learned that some of the senior executives at
Mercury Standard took a test administered by a visiting consultant and that certain executives
came out on the test as being neurotic and introverted. Far be it from this source to say who
should be working as executives at one of our city’s major employers, but might the
company’s recent layoffs have been avoided by—well—a better adjusted group of senior
executives?”
Like most newspapers, this one was available online. Soon the comments about the Mercury
executives were available on the Web. Readers could write in online comments and a number
of snide comments (e.g., “They didn’t need to bring in an overpriced OD consultant to find out
that some of the honchos at that company weren’t playing with a full deck. I could have told
them that for nothing!”) were posted. Some members of the board read the story and
contacted LeMaster to find out what was going on with this unfavorable publicity. “Was Morton
really the right person to fill in for LeMaster?” some asked.
The Monday after the item appeared, Morton had Sarah Scott call Shruggins to tell him they
were not going to be pursuing the planned OD intervention at this time due to “other pressing
business matters” but they would get back to him if additional help was needed. Morton
declined to return Shruggins’ several calls. There was no further discussion of the incident in
the senior executive group and, once the dust blew over, business went on as it had done
before the ill-fated OD efforts. However, whenever behind-the-scenes conflict arose among
some of the senior team members someone would refer privately to the other parties as “that
neurotic,” “the introvert in our midst,” or that “closed minded progress-blocker,” depending on
who was doing the talking and who wasn’t around to hear.
Discussion Questions
Should Shruggins have used the personality test in this manner? Was he qualified to
use it?
Were there steps that Shruggins might have taken before using the assessment
measure that could have minimized any misuse of the test?
Did Shruggins (and did Morton) have any responsibilities once the situation blew up as
it did?
Would it have been better not to have used the assessment measure at all?
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References
McCrae, R. (2009). The five-factor model of personality traits: Consensus and controversy. In
P. J. Corr & G. Matthews (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of personality psychology (pp.
148–161). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rothstein, M., & Goffin, R. (2006). The use of personality measures in personnel selection:
What does current research support? Human Resource Management Review, 16(2), 155–180.
Further Resources
Eyde, L., Robertson, G. J., & Krug, S. E. (2009). Responsible test use: Case studies for
assessing human behavior. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Groth-Marnat, G. (2009). Handbook of psychological assessment (5th ed.). New York: Wiley.
Lowman, R. L. (Ed.). (2006). The ethical practice of psychology in organizations (2nd ed.).
Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
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