Problem Solution: Gene One

Gene One is a biotechnology company that has grown from $2 million start-up company into a $400 million highly successful large private company. This has created in them the desire to increase their growth and develop into a publicly traded company and develop into an IPO. They are a very talented team that has earned them a place in the biotechnology market. As their desire to enter the public sector has materialized, stresses have increased among the senior members of the Gene One team and have resulted in increased conflict, loss of organizational commitment, and lost confidence in the teams’ ability to lead Gene One into an IPO. Eminently available is the use of emotional intelligence, the need for conflict management, and development and implementation of servant leadership. These are the course concepts that will be visualized and concentrated on in order to help Gene One develop into its much desired IPO.

Don Ruiz, CEO for Gene One, founded Gene One as a $2 million start-up company. He has developed a talented team who has demonstrated organizational commitment by their actions and deeds. They have been highly effective and productive in their quest to build the company to its current status. However, recently as they have received the boards’ approval to seek IPO status, stresses have increased conflict has ensued. Most recently at the first team meeting concerning the approval and plan implementation to achieve IPO status, personal attacks were waged by the talented CTO Teri Robertson. Robertson is one of the original start-up team members and has a world-renowned reputation for her development of technology that eradicates disease in tomatoes and potatoes. This effort has put Gene One on the map. Also, she was recently selected as CTO of the year in CTO International Review Magazine. Therefore, it is evident that she is a key player in Gene One’s lineup. IN the first senior team leadership staff meeting, the company CFO, Michelle Houghton, was congratulating Robertson on her nomination and suggested they enter some really hot areas of research such as cancer research. Roberson immediately turns on her with a personal attack in which the company Marketing Officer, Charlie Jones, tries to defuse only to find Robertson attacks him also. Ruiz tries to defuse the conflict also with a nonaction process.

Furthermore, some of the board members, John Kirby and Susan Wells, have recently expressed to Ruiz at a cocktail party that they do not feel Jones or Robertson have the knowledge or ability to lead Gene One into an IPO. To compound things further, the VP of Technology Research has announce her resignation and Robertson has expressed to Ruiz she is considering the same thoughts of resignation.

Organizational commitment, “the employee’s emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in a particular organization,” has decreased drastically with the announcement of the IPO (McShane, Von Glinow). Conflict, “the process in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party,” has evidenced itself in the form of personal attacks by Robertson (McShane, Von Glinow). It has also been evidenced in the boards expressed concerns that the current team does not have the ability to lead Gene One into IPO status (Scenario). Ruiz has expressed feelings otherwise to the board and feels that his team is organizationally committed to achieve this goal as he has proven their performance in the previous growth stages of Gene One up to this juncture. Ruiz also appears to be blinded by the IPO goal so much so that he is missing the emotional intelligence being expressed by both the senior staff members and the board of directors. Emotional intelligence is “the ability to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion in oneself and others (McShane, Von Glinow). One good thing about this blindness is he is promoting the company culture by simply showing and stating that IPO status is “the way things are done around here” (McShane, Von Glinow). However, he is missing out on enhancing performance, innovation, and growth toward the IPO by avoiding servant leadership. Servant leadership is “The belief that leaders serve followers by understanding their needs and facilitating their work performance” (McShane, Von Glinow).

If Ruiz, the senior staff team, and board are desirous to achieve the IPO status, all parties must realize old culture must be unfrozen and new culture must be refrozen (McShane, Von Glinow). The growth opportunity to be accomplished by IPO status could bring a huge success to Gene One in the biotechnology industry for many years to come, thus allowing Ruiz and his team to leave behind a legacy of determined leadership, stellar team work and collaboration, and organizational culture to be tied to the company’s founders. Therefore, in order to achieve this vision they must realize the opportunity to manage the current conflict into channeled resources of productivity and innovation, use the emotional intelligence that has and will present itself during this transitional phase of leadership towards IPO status, and see the benefits from exercising servant leadership.

A little conflict and disagreement causes people to wake up and take notice of themselves, their peers, and the situation (Matt). When CEO Ruiz quickly brushed over the conflict in the first senior staff meeting to move on to the IPO goal, he completely missed the emotional intelligence shown and used the ugly strategy called nonaction; this is a method of “doing nothing” that most of the time escalates from bad to worse and eventually leads to an organizational tone that “we do not have conflict around here” (Bascal). Some of the most effective solutions to problems come from working through strategically managed conflict (Bascal). Another strategy that needs to be used is to lead by example and serve one another through servant leadership. This will allow for Ruiz to serve his followers by understanding their needs and facilitating their work performance.

“Not all workplace conflict is bad” (Bascal). The problem is that we tend to not look at conflict as opportunity. Conflicts that occur in organizations does not need to be ruinous, if the energy associated with it is channeled and used for problem-based learning and organizational commitment (Bascal). Therefore, CEO Ruiz would be better off to learn the nature of the conflict in his work place and how to channel it. All too often many of us think that when conflict arises, the organization must not be designed or structured adequately (Bascal).