Twentieth Century Concert Dance History

Twentieth Century Concert Dance History Landslide Development Order Description Instructions Analyze the case study. Answer the following questions as they apply to the case study. Use the case study attached- Landslide Development. Also incorporate and then integrate into your analysis three scholastic real estate related articles. This paper must be written in third person. • What are the key leadership activities present in the case • What hurdles were faced and how were they managed? • How did it impact the culture? Followers and the organization? • What structural changes were made, and what was the impact of those changes on the organization’s culture • WHY the results occurred (from a leadership and change management perspective-not just what tasks where completed). Allied Academies International Conference page 27 Proceedings of the International Academy for Case Studies, Volume 19, Number 1 New Orleans, 2012 LANDSLIDE DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION: A CASE STUDY Kevin R. Howell, Appalachian State University Scott Crockett, Keiger Printing Company CASE DESCRIPTION The primary subject matter of this case is a family owned media agency that has found itself in a business relationship that has soured. Secondary issues include ethical dilemmas with a family owned business. This case was designed for use in a Senior Level Leadership in Technical Settings course. The case is also appropriate for use in a undergraduate business ethics course or management course. The case is designed to be taught in one class hour and is expected to require approximately 2 hours of outside preparation by students. CASE SYNOPSIS This case has a myriad of issues involved. It focuses on the management of a real estate development company. The company is growing and is presented with an opportunity to move their operation to the next level. A media company that understands utilizing a specific data mining technique to provide can’t miss contact information to the development company to rent out their properties. Marital infidelity causes one member of the development company to sabotage the whole operation. The media company has invested heavily in the project. They expect a large return on their investment and instead find themselves as an unwitting 3rd member of relationship triangle. INTRODUCTION Jim Benson sat staring at his telephone. He couldn’t believe the call he had just received. He had just celebrated his 50th birthday and no one had ever spoken to him that way. The call was from Richard Williams. Williams and his wife Josephine ran Misty Glen Development. MGD as it has become known is in Big Bear Lake, California. It is a beautiful setting in the middle of the San Bernardino National Forest. The location seemed ideal, almost midway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Who would have known that it could have gone this poorly? Jim had plans on this being the big one for his company. He was the CEO of the Champion Brothers Agency. The agency specialized in digital printing and web development services. Specifically, they specialized in the analytics of sorting through databases to find just the right people for a given activity. The technique was held in highest secrecy by the agency. They had subscriptions to numerous mailing lists. All of the lists had specific information about individuals. The analysts employed here, combed through multiple mailing lists to find the same page 28 Allied Academies International Conference New Orleans, 2012 Proceedings of the International Academy for Case Studies, Volume 19, Number 1 people on multiple lists that had the correct interests. He had matched up numerous groups before. The last successful match was for a golf resort that wanted to increase their occupancy rates. Champion Brothers had promised the resort 30 guaranteed bookings per week. The resort had decided that was all of the new business they could handle. The resort didn’t realize that Champion Brothers could have given them 500 per week if they could handle the traffic. MGD had needed only 15 leads per week. Jim had been working with Williams and his wife Josephine for almost a year now. Even though the process of providing leads for cabins would seem similar to that of the golf resort, it actually required very different information. As it turned out, the “leads” that would almost always book rooms, were dominated by church and family groups on outings. The church group data sets were something Champion Brothers had never invested in. This would be a serious new cost for the agency. Benson looked at this investment as the foundation of a new market that Champion Brothers would soon dominate. There were markets across the country exactly the same as Big Bear. Soon Champion Brothers would duplicate the campaign with similar locations in Branson, Jackson Hole, Hot Springs and more places than he could count. This was the big one that he had been waiting for. MISTY GLEN DEVELOPMENT Misty Glen Development had two operations. Richard ran the construction group and Josephine managed the rentals. Business had been good but not great. The cabins ranged from 800 square foot 2 bedroom cabins to 10,000 square foot 7 bedroom behemoths. The finishes used in the different floor plans varied widely. This resulted in a huge range of prices for ownership in the cabins. The bare bones model could be purchased for less than $300,000. The most expensive model sold so far for just under 3 million. Richard knew that he needed to keep building units to keep the revenue stream strong. The biggest selling point was that the units would stay rented, thus providing the owners with a steady profit on their investment. Richard and Josephine worked closely on finding new renters to keep occupancy rates up. Out of the blue, some guy called Josephine and introduced himself as the CEO of some agency that was making big promises about new clients. Richard was skeptical. Benson had showed up with a very polished presentation about some golf resort that was doing gangbuster business. The occupancy rates had gone from just under 50% to just over 90%. Williams was doing the math in his head about the money to be made if all of the cabins he was building were full all of the time. Josephine wanted to know about the process and what her role would be in booking the cabins. Richard had questions of his own. Jim flew to Big Bear to make a formal presentation to all of the managers at Misty Glen. After everyone involved signed a non-disclosure agreement. He described his goals for their campaign and all of the details of the process for gathering the “hot leads” for the rental system. Normally, he would book the reservations in house at Champion Brothers. Since that would basically eliminate Josephine’s role, Jim adjusted the system to provide Josephine’s office with all of the contact information. The staff of the rental group would make cold calls or answer incoming calls from direct mail solicitations and book the rooms. Richard asked about the feasibility of generating actual customers. Jim pulled out a Allied Academies International Conference page 29 Proceedings of the International Academy for Case Studies, Volume 19, Number 1 New Orleans, 2012 list that the staff had already generated and asked Richard to pick a name from the list. He looked amused but selected one half-way down the list. Jim pulled out his phone and dialed the number. A woman answered the phone. Jim worked through the prepared script like a pro. Richard could tell the prospect was excited about the offer. She said that her Woman’s Club was looking for a location for an upcoming retreat and Misty Glen sounded perfect. She asked for a number to call him back after she talked to the officers of the club. Jim gave her the callback number and directed her to the website for more specific information. After they hung up, he looked at Richard and said there is your first client in our new program. Richard was still skeptical. He said that it couldn’t be that easy. Jim explained that his system gathered information from many sources and only selected people that really wanted to hear about the offer. He explained that it was like reading peoples minds about their needs. Jim looked at Josephine and said imagine you were out of bananas. You were getting your coat on to go to the market and buy a fresh bunch. All of a sudden there is a knock on the door and there is a person on your porch selling bananas. How great would that be? Every name I give you is looking to rent a cabin in the vicinity of Big Bear California. All you need to do is get to them before your competition does. Jim answered a series of other questions about technical things and expectations. Richard said that he and Josephine needed to think for a couple of days and then make a decision. THE WILLIAMS SITUATION Josephine and Richard had been having some marital problems. She was loosing trust in him. There were all kinds of signs that didn’t look good. He seemed to be coming home later and later. There were all of these trips to trade shows and vendor meetings. She finally got up the courage to confront him about it. He denied it and a huge argument ensued. After the name calling subsided, they went to separate bedrooms and called it a night. Josephine decided that she needed some proof before confronting him again. Josephine called a few of her friends to go out and talk about her suspicions over drinks. Her friends happily met her at the Brigantine, a local bar and grill. She told them the whole story. They talked for several hours about her suspicions. They decided to have some of their other friends to perform some detective work. Her friends were afraid of being spotted, so they talked to a private investigator. For a couple of hundred dollars he would do a quick analysis of the situation and if he thought something was actually going on, recommend the proper course of action. Wes Chamberlin had been in the private investigation business for 15 years. He had seen a lot in his time, some very sneaky polished cheaters and some others that were oblivious to anyone seeing their transgressions. Richard Williams fell into the latter category. In the first hour, Wes observed Williams meeting a brunette at a local restaurant. He left the eatery and went to an apartment complex and disappeared inside. An hour later he emerged and went back to work. Three other days that week, Wes observed similar conduct. That was all he needed to hand proof to Josephine of Richard’s affair. page 30 Allied Academies International Conference New Orleans, 2012 Proceedings of the International Academy for Case Studies, Volume 19, Number 1 Josephine was stunned with the proof of her suspicions. Armed with a packet of photographs, times and locations, she decided to confront Richard with the facts. The argument was epic. Lots of loud voices, accusations, tears ensued, followed by admissions. Richard was hesitant to admit his wrongdoing. Faced with the facts, he told the whole truth. He told Josephine that he really didn’t want to be married to her anymore and she could leave with the clothes on her back and nothing else. She protested and told him at he was in the wrong and she would get everything. Richard explained that all of the business components were in his name. As were the house, cars, beach house and motorcycles. He asked Josephine to think about the prenuptial agreement she signed. He reminded her that if they were to divorce, they would leave with their own individual assets. Since everything was in his name, there was nothing for her to take. As for the affair, he was happy with the arrangement and it would continue. If she wanted to leave then she should leave. If she wanted to stay that was fine too. He was very clear about his future actions. REVENGE Josephine read and reread the contract. How could she have signed such a thing? How could she have let Richard put everything in his name? She consulted a lawyer later in the day, who gave her a glimmer of hope, but only a slight one. She could fight it out in court and maybe win only to have him appeal the decision. He could win, which would lead to an appeal of her own. No matter which route she took, any closure would be, at best, years away. It was then that she decided what her plan would be. The great life with the big house and lots of money was getting ready to go away. Her husband would continue on without her. She was going to sabotage the business, hopefully to the point that it would go under and take Richard with it. She immediately stopped renting cabins. She let the phones ring when she thought a potential customer was on the line. Voicemails were routinely disregarded and deleted. The only cabins that were rented were to walk up customers. Those customers got very low prices for their rentals. Richard came by frequently and asked why the cabins were empty. Her standard answer was always the same, “Jim hasn’t sent us any contacts”. As a few weeks passed, the cabins started to sit vacant, potential buyers started asking Richard why the existing cabins were empty. Sales ground to a halt almost immediately. Richard asked Josephine to call Benson about the lack of contacts. Josephine said she would and continued on with her day. Later when Richard checked in she told him that Jim was checking on it. The same discussion played out the same way for 3 more days. Josephine never called Benson. The next day Richard was as the end of his rope with Champion Brothers. He called Jim Benson himself to get to the bottom of things. He started the call with an accusation that Champion Brothers had ruined his business. The banks were threatening to foreclose on several of his properties, next week would be the last week they could meet payroll and without workers, MGD was in serious trouble. Benson replied that Champion Brothers had provided MGD with 150 contacts over the past 10 weeks, just as their contract had specified. Williams called him a liar, said his lawyer would be in contact and slammed down the phone. Benson called his IT manager and asked about the contacts. Shelly, the IT Manager said Allied Academies International Conference page 31 Proceedings of the International Academy for Case Studies, Volume 19, Number 1 New Orleans, 2012 everything was perfect on the data side of the house. The issue seems to be that no one at MGD was retrieving the names. Jim couldn’t believe what he was hearing. They had trained Josephine on the system and she was consistently logging in. Why was she not using the contacts? Benson decided to go in person to MGD to get to the bottom of things. SHOWDOWN AT MGD When Benson arrived, the situation was nothing like he had seen earlier. The cabins were empty. There were probably 4 cabins under construction with no activity around them. The place was a ghost town. He started toward the rental office and stopped. Should he have brought some security with him? He pressed on. Richard and Josephine were the only ones in the office. Both had aged considerably since he had seen them last. Richard started toward Jim and asked why he was there? Jim said that he wanted to know why MGD wasn’t using any of the contacts he had provided to them. Richard screamed that there were not any contacts. He said that Josephine hadn’t had a contact in more than 2 months. Jim said that wasn’t true and started walking toward Josephine’s computer. Josephine didn’t want to get out of her seat. She said the system didn’t work and there were no names. Jim asked to see her screen. Reluctantly, she did give up her seat. Benson wiggled the mouse and the screen jumped to life. He clicked on the Champion Brothers icon and in a few seconds there were screen after screen of contact information. Benson said that his company has invested more than $200,000.00 in the system. It was his turn to be upset. What is going on here? It looks like you want the place to go under. You have all these names that want to come here and you never contact them? Do you want to go broke? It was at that moment, it hit Williams what had happened. He looked at Josephine and said you did this on purpose! She replied calmly but firmly, you were going to leave me with nothing. Now we are equal. She rose and walked out the door without speaking. Benson was beside himself. Williams stood with his mouth open not knowing what to say. Benson walked out the door into the beautiful California Mountains to see Josephine’s car disappearing in the distance. He got in his own car and drove in silence the 5 hours back to his office. What was he going to do? MGD was done. His company was down 200K. He called a meeting with his brother and the management at Champion Brothers. They had some serious decisions to make. Should they fold up the operation with MGD? The cabins were still there. Even though they were empty, they were in fact rentable. Champion Brothers knew the correct formula to put people in the cabins. Is there any hope of reconciliation with MGD? Knowing how much money was already invested, could they devise a plan to salvage the whole project? Copyright of Allied Academies International Conference: Proceedings of the International Academy for Case Studies (IACS) is the property of Dreamcatchers Group, LLC and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.