Lisa Benton As An Product Manager Home Care Division of Houseworld - Management Assignment Help

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 Early one afternoon in mid-October 1991, Lisa Benton, 27, gazed at the thin partitions of her cubicle and reflected on the past four months of her job as an assistant product manager in the Home Care Division of Houseworld. Benton was bored with her job and lack of responsibility and frustrated by her relationships with her boss, Deborah Linton, and her colleague, associate product manager Ron Scoville.

From her first day at work, when Linton had informed her that she did not like Harvard MBAs, Benton had struggled unsuccessfully to please her boss. A series of stormy exchanges with Scoville had compounded her problems; recently he had accused her of being a "cocky MBA" when she expressed her opinion. Benton was concerned about these events, and especially about her less than-promising performance review, and she contemplated her future in the company with increasing consternation. 

Background 

Between her first and second years at the Harvard Business School (HBS), Benton worked as assistant to the president of Right-Away Stores, a premier chain of convenience food stores based in Chicago. She enjoyed the job and was proud of the new nonmerchandising services that she had successfully introduced, in particular, the in-line roller skate ("rollerblades") rentals, a project she had supervised from concept to execution.

The kickoff to this project, a skating cookout, had been a huge morale-booster for Right-Away employees. Right-Away president Scott Kingston, himself a Harvard MBA, was especially pleased with Benton’s performance. Not only had she been the first woman manager in the company, her "roll-up-your-sleeves" approach won people over and allowed Benton to relate well to employees at all levels. At the end of the summer internship, Kingston offered her a full-time position upon graduation, as well as part-time consulting during her second year at HBS. 

Job Choice 

Benton and her husband finished their studies simultaneously and faced the decision of where they would go next. Chicago held opportunities for both of them, and Benton’s husband would take up residency in a hospital in that city in July. Lisa Benton had to choose between two positions: one 

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As director of marketing at Right-Away, the other as assistant product manager at Houseworld’s Home Care Division. 

The job at Right-Away was clearly appealing. Not only was its salary substantially higher than the offer from Houseworld, Kingston indicated that Benton would be promoted to vice president in a few years. While flattered, Benton was hesitant. She was concerned about assuming so much marketing responsibility based only on a summer’s internship. Benton knew that Kingston believed in her abilities, but she would actually be reporting to the vice president of operations and was unsure about his reactions to her. Moreover, while the offer sounded attractive, Right-Away seemed anything but glamorous: a small company, its headquarters were in a rundown warehouse section of Chicago. And while Lisa had done well as the first woman manager, she also missed having other women managers around. 

In contrast, by taking the position at Houseworld, Benton would receive classical marketing training in a structured environment from an industry leader. The people whom she had met during her interviews struck her as being professional, well-educated, and outgoing. And the company was headquartered in a brand-new office building downtown. 

Houseworld 

Before interviewing with Houseworld, Benton had tried to learn as much as possible about the company. She read the relevant material in the Career Resource Center, and also spoke with a product manager at Houseworld to whom she had been referred by a friend at HBS. Houseworld was an established consumer products company specializing in home care goods, holding the largest market share in many of its product groups. While it was regarded as a conservative company, its reputation for providing excellent marketing training had attracted MBAs from the top-tier business school.

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When Benton interviewed at Home Care, she met with several product managers, and was particularly impressed with Group Product Manager Richard Clark (Exhibit 1). Benton also talked more informally at lunch and dinner with some of the assistant and associate product managers. One, a Wharton MBA, told Benton that the product management staff was a supportive bunch who worked hard but liked to have fun. The 8:30 to 5:30 hours that most marketing people kept seemed very reasonable to Benton, and she planned to lead a balanced life. 

Benton asked what her role would be as a new assistant product manager, and they told her she would assume responsibility quickly and become a product manager within two to three years. Benton knew from researching the other top consumer packaging companies that the route to product management usually took from three to four years, and she was attracted by Home Care’s faster career path. In the first year she would be immersed in the day-to-day brand business through assignments on different product management teams.

Benton learned that product managers generally moved assignments every 18 to 24 months and associates and assistant product managers moved assignments every 12 to 18 months. This practice, typical of the leading brand management companies, allowed product managers to acquire experience in different stages of the product life cycle; it sometimes made it difficult, however, to develop close working relationships. 

Initiation 

Arriving at 8:30 a.m. on June 15 for her first day at Houseworld, Benton was taken to meet her new boss, Deborah Linton, a woman that Benton had not met during the interview process. Benton was immediately struck by Linton’s attractive office on the twentieth floor and her boss’s sophisticated appearance and confident manner. Linton greeted Benton pleasantly, and said that she was not expecting Benton for another week and that her office was not set up yet. She then called in Ron Scoville, the associate product manager, and asked him to help Benton get settled.

First Two Months 

The next morning, Benton read more company and product literature, and at 10:00 a.m. she walked over to Linton’s office to see if there was anything she could do. Scoville was sitting very close to Linton discussing some aspect of the brand review. Benton thought they seemed somewhat intimate, and she felt like an intruder. Linton suggested that Benton keep reading and getting to know her way around the company, and that she would meet with her to tell her about Pure & Fresh’s history in about an hour. In that meeting, Benton learned that Linton had been in her present job eight months and that Benton was the first assistant product manager assigned to the brand.

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Early in the morning of her fourth day at Houseworld, Benton jotted down some questions she had about Pure & Fresh, and around 9:00 a.m. she walked over to Linton’s office hoping to get some answers. She tapped on the door and inquired, "Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?" When Linton looked up and realized that it was Benton, she quickly covered up what she was writing and replied, "I’m doing something right now, why don’t you come back later?" Benton thought her boss looked as if she was not quite awake and once again Benton felt she was intruding. Benton left disappointed that Linton did not want to make any time for her. 

Making her way back to the other side of the floor, Benton decided to ask Scoville her questions. He leaned back in his chair, and in what was to Benton his familiar all-knowing manner, gave her his answers. He ended by saying: "Don’t worry about asking me questions. You’re in a learning mode as an assistant and can’t be expected to know that much." Benton did not enjoy what she felt to be his condescending attitude, but she appreciated his taking the time to answer, and began turning regularly to Scoville when she needed to know something.

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succeeded were "enthusiastic, but not pushy, and were ambitious, creative, and analytical." Brenner cautioned Benton about working long hours: 

Don’t stay at the office after 6:00. You don’t get points around here for working late. I heard about an assistant product manager who didn’t get promoted because he was really disorganized and was always at the office until at least 7:00. 

In Benton’s fifth week, Linton asked her to analyze some sales data and to write a memo on her findings. Benton knew memos were important at Houseworld, and that writing good ones was a key to receiving top management visibility. Linton had Benton revise her memo four times before she passed it up to the group product manager, Jack Vernon. The memo was well-received, and Vernon personally commended Benton on her work with a scrawl at the top of the memo saying "Nice job." Even so, Benton derived little sense of accomplishment because she had not been allowed to make recommendations or take any action beyond the analysis.

Instead, Scoville and Linton used the analysis to develop plans for Pure & Fresh television ads, which looked much more exciting than her assignments. From what she had been told in the recruiting process, and given her responsibilities and accomplishments at Right-Away, Benton expected to be more involved in all aspects of the brand business, and after developing action plans every day for two years at HBS, she was dissatisfied with only performing analyses. 

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The Typing Incident 

One afternoon in August, Benton was trying to complete a memo and she noticed that the headings on one of her charts, which had been created by the staff secretary, were not lined up properly. Since error-free reports were expected in Home Care, she decided it must be corrected. The secretary was now on vacation. Benton knew the other secretaries were extremely pressed for time while the brand review was being formalized, so she sat down at a computer for five minutes and redid the chart herself. As she returned to her cubicle, she noticed Vernon walking in her direction, and she was surprised and disturbed by his insistence that she come to his office immediately.

Performance Evaluation 

Two weeks later, Benton went out for dinner with Carol Patlin, another assistant product manager with whom she had become friends. Patlin had been with Houseworld for four years and had moved from finance into marketing, and she knew a lot about company practices and office rumors. She asked Benton if she had received her performance review yet, explaining that it was customary to have one after three months on the job. During the evening, she also told Benton that Linton and Scoville were rumored to be having an affair.

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