Boldflash

Paper – BoldFlash

BoldFlash Inc. was founded in 1982 in Waltham Massachusetts and was involved in

manufacturing of computer storage media like floppy disks as well as various other product

mixes. Presently the company is facing turbulent times because of the inability to keep up

with highly dynamic market and customer demands. There have been various reasons for

breakdown in communication and teamwork. Bad management and autocratic style of

leadership led to a decline of the company in regards to product innovation. At present, there

is an urgent need for introducing a new innovative product in the market to make a comeback

and an organizational change for a longer term.

Conflicting performance metrics and Goal Incongruence

Different performance metrics let to competitive efforts among different departments.

Departments were concerned about their own goals at the expense of other teams. The system

can achieve its goals more effectively and perform better when organizational goals are well

aligned with the goals of different subunits. This organisation was ultimately working toward

the same goal, but all the departments had different ideas and purposes. Manufacturing plants

operated as individual profit centres and were evaluated on gross margin while Sales

department was evaluated on revenue. Consequently, Sales, in order to meet their revenue

goals, sold the products at any price they could without looking at the impact on margins.

Additionally, Product development frequently made requests to run trials of new products

which lowered the efficiency and margins of the plants and jeopardized delivery dates.

Performance metric for Product Development team was academic criteria i.e. no. of new

patents approved, presentations made at industry conferences, academic papers published in

journals which led to the research which didn’t align to the market needs and they missed a

big opportunity of excelling in storage devices used for tablets.

the...