Problem Solution: Intersect Investments

Running head: PROBLEM SOLUTION: INTERSECT INVESTMENTS

Problem Solution: Intersect Investments

Bobbie Barrett

University of Phoenix

Transformational Leadership

MBA520

Marco Faggione

January 29, 2008

Introduction

Intersect Investments has struggled since the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001. The company has barely managed surviving since this event along with other internal and external forces such as an industry downturn and high rate of employee turnover. All these events have made CEO Frank Jeffers realize a change is necessary for his company to survive. He has developed a new vision for the company that focuses on a "customer intimacy" model. This vision relies on building a longterm relationship with their customers and becoming the customer's trusted advisor. Reluctance to change has cause high employee turnover and has created a barrier for the company from implementing the customer intimacy program. As a result, Intersect Investments recently fired their Senior Vice President of Sales and hired a replacement, Janet Angelo, who has been given the task of turning the company around in only 12 months. Janet needs to leverage her experience and transformational leadership style to implement this new vision, change the company culture, and organizational behaviors to ensure ongoing success and adaptability.

Issues and Opportunities

The biggest challenge that Intersect Investment's is facing is getting the sales organization to execute Frank Jeffer's new vision. The previous Executive Sales Vice President did not believe in Frank's vision, and he continued to operate without changing the organization's approach to sales. Senior Vice President of Sales, Lyn Chen, believes in the new vision and has tied to get the sales organization to change there ways due to the mixed signals of the leadership staff has led to the sales organization still has not embracing the cultural change necessary to make the customer intimacy model happen. On top of them not embracing the new vision of the company thus has also frustration among many sales associates. Employee morale is low and turnover is high as result. With the company having internal issues with there employees has caused their customer loyalty and satisfaction to decline. Intersect Investments can look to improve their customer satisfaction by improving employee turnover and satisfaction. To improve employee turnover Intersect Investments need to improve there leadership team, they need to have a leadership team all working towards one goal.

Intersect Investments still has opportunities to develop despite these challenges within the sales organization. Frank has hired Janet Angelo who has many years experience with implementing a successful customer intimacy model with her latest job because she has created a customer intimacy model at another financial institution. Her leadership style appears to be what Frank's is looking for in order to achieve is vision of customer intimacy throughout the full company. She has already started too reached out and improved the communication channels between the frontline workers and the leadership staff. In addition, she has identified where there are small pockets of success within the organization, and where are there are poetical problem areas within the company. The company has a talented workforce with many years of experience and many of the employees trust their bosses and the company. This is the fundamentals of good and effective teamwork. Janet now needs to develop a plan to further help lead the team through the implementation of the customer intimacy model.

Stakeholder Perspectives

CEO Frank Jeffers strongly believes in the "customer intimacy" model and he has been very clear that this is the direction of the company. Within his 25 years of working at Intercept Investments Frank has been able to lead the company through several restructuring efforts regarding strategy and focused change before. Frank has been able to build a strong sense of trust amongst his staff and manages based on clear objectives and lets his leaders execute his vision. Frank requires a transformational leader who can properly communicate, implement, and manage the ongoing change necessary to realize the "customer intimacy" model. This is why he recognized the importance of having a Senior Vice President of Sales that believes in his visions and that is why he hired Janet Angelo.

The company's employees appear to have mixed feelings about Frank's vision, due to the mixed communication they have received in the past. Because the employees were never explained the importance of moving to a customer intimacy model some are not clear on the reason for this change in staff. On top of the old Senior Vice President of Sales, Lyn Chen, the senior vice president of sales, has also been vocal about her opposition to a change to a "customer intimacy" model; others simply do not believe this is the right model to increase sales. Hank Tolinson, an employee for over 15 years, feels staying on the phones longer to provide additional support to the customer will not help with revenues. A large portion of the sales staff has not bought into the plan and still performs their sales calls the same way they always did them. As Janet states in her memo, "past success is closing their minds to change."

Other employees seem to embrace the vision and have managed to have some successes. Several employees spoke up about out about their support for the new vision during Janet's all-employee meeting. One of the customer service employees stated many customers call-in looking for additional suggestions from them and believed that the trusted advisor model will be the key to customer satisfaction. Nancy Felkins, manager of a sales group in small business, stated that in her previous experience the "customer intimacy" model has added trust by adding value to improving customer satisfaction. By highlighting these successes will help gain further buy-in and commitment from those who are not yet supportive of the customer intimacy model.

Problem Statement

Intersect Investments can realize increased customer satisfaction and revenues by becoming more focused on the customer's wants and making the necessary organizational and cultural adjustments and leveraging the strengths of