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Case study

Case Study: What a Star, What a Jerk
Please read the case study thoroughly. You may “mark-up” the case study itself. If you do, please send this back along with your written response.
Once you have read the case, you are to articulate a position and defend that position by citing readings from the class as well as other sources (optional).
In framing your response, consider the following questions:
1. What is the extent of the decision Jane is facing?
2. Describe the work culture at TechniCo.
a. How is it different from Jane’s prior place of employment?
b. Should that be a factor in her decision? If so, how?
3. By what criteria is Jane’s performance being measured?
4. What should Jane do? Why? What are the consequences of this decision and how will they be dealt with?

What a Star—What a
Jerk
by Sarah Cliffe
•
What should Jane do
about her top
performer’s mean
streak?
Reprint R0108X
HBR CASE STUDY
What a Star—What a
Jerk
by Sarah Cliffe
harvard business review • september 2001 page 1
HBR’s cases, which are fictional, present common managerial dilemmas
and offer concrete solutions from experts.
COPYRIGHT © 2001 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Sometimes an employee can be nasty, bullying, or simply hardhearted.
What should you do, though, when that person also happens
to be a top performer?
From: Jane Epstein
To: Rick Lazarus
Sent: 5/14/01
Subject: settling in
Hi Rick. I’m starting to get settled in at
TechniCo—I miss you and the rest of the gang,
and the adrenaline of working with clients
when I’m *on,* but I’m thrilled not to be living
in airports anymore. Hope Mary and the kids
are well.
I’ve inherited a good team here. They’re all
strong performers, and most of them are nice,
too. I’m sure they’re still wondering about
me—but so far, so good. Partial cast: Caroline’s
been here longest; she seems pragmatic, very
good with people. Juggling work-family issues
and a recent divorce—but she pulls her weight
and then some. She’s universally trusted (I
think). Tom’s the joker. A natural sales guy—a
bouncy golden retriever personality that cloaks
real drive, know what I mean? You never really
get inside, but there don’t seem to be many internal
climate changes anyway. Jack’s intense,
maybe an intellectual—I haven’t quite figured
him out. I think he may be shy (?). Anyhow,
then there’s Andy Zimmerman, who’s got me
slightly worried—maybe because he intimidates
me just a bit. He’s very bright, but he’s
aggressive—doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He’ll
bear watching, I think.
Better run. By the way, I love being back in
Minneapolis. And, glory be, the hometown
team is making us proud.
From: Rick Lazarus
To: Jane Epstein
Sent: 5/14/01
Subject: Hey stranger
Good to hear from you, Jane. The Twins have
got people talking, all right. Though of
course they’ll fold when the Yankees hit their
stride.;)
What a Star—What a Jerk•••HBR CASE STUDY
harvard business review • september 2001 page 2
Sarah Cliffe is an executive editor at
HBR.
What’s got you nervous about this Zimmerman
guy?—R
Sent: 5/15/01
Subject: re: Hey stranger
Nothing I can put my finger on. Here’s a little
incident. My AA, Maureen, flubbed a meeting
time—scheduled over something else—and
he really lit into her. Not the end of the
world—she had made a mistake, and he had to
rearrange an appointment—but he could
have gotten the point across more tactfully.
And she is *my* AA. (And I am *his* boss, and
he did it in front of me.)—Jane
Sent: 5/15/01
Subject: don’t be a softie
J—The guy doesn’t necessarily sound like a
problem to me. I hate it when people screw up
scheduling, and you’ve always been too patient
with that kind of thing. Clearly you have
to establish your own authority with him,
though, or he’ll step all over you.
What’s the place like in general? Are the
folks there patient with incompetence? Or is it
crisp and cruel, like here? 😉 By the by, Mary
sends her love.—R
Sent: 5/16/01
Subject: tougher than you think
Funny you should ask. It’s hardly crisp and
cruel. In fact, it’s probably a little too niceynice.
Support staff’s not up to the same standards
(not paid as well, either). And there’s a
little more coasting among professional staff
here. (Culling out the bottom 20% of performers
every year sure keeps people on their
toes!) Senior managers talk a lot about lack of
hierarchy, which seems to translate into tolerating
barely average performance if the people
are well liked. (Then again, this could be
all wrong: I’m describing a place I’ve only
been part of for a few weeks.)—Jane
Sent: 5/22/01
Subject: FW: good for a laugh…
You have just received the Amish virus. Since
we have no electricity or computers, you are
on the honor system. Please delete all of your
files on your hard drive. Then forward this
message to everyone in your address book.
Thank thee.
Sent: 5/22/01
Subject: ha!
Speaking of honor (not), here’s another anecdote
in the the continuing “Who is Andy Zimmerman”
saga. Yesterday we were doing some
strategizing as a group. (We need to be more
aggressive about growth, and this was a pretty
open-ended meeting to think about new markets.)
Jack (the intense, possibly shy one that I
haven’t figured out yet) was going on a bit too
long about a pet idea of his. I was about to redirect
the conversation when Andy cut him
off: “What you’re proposing makes no sense,
and here’s why.” Then he laid out all the flaws
in poor Jack’s thinking, one by one—really
made him squirm. The thing is, he was right.
On the other hand, it was a preliminary, semibrainstorming
kind of meeting, so his tirade
stopped the free flow of ideas in its tracks.
Later, I heard him *reaming* out the
group’s other AA, Danielle: “This is an important
customer. He’s called three times—WHY
CAN’T YOU GET IT RIGHT!?!?” Once again,
he was right. But that kind of tongue-lashing
*causes* people to make mistakes.—Jane
Sent: 5/22/01
Subject: bottom line?
Ignoring his niceness quotient for a moment,
how’s the guy’s performance?—Rick
Sent: 5/22/01
Subject: re: bottom line?
I don’t think he’d have gotten away with his
nastiness for so long if his performance
weren’t topflight. As another group leader
said to me over coffee, “The guy won’t win any
personality contests, but you’ll love his numbers.”
He brings home the bacon: He’s smart,
efficient—the best we’ve got (in terms of pure
performance). I’d have to be crazy not to want
him in my group.—J
Sent: 5/22/01
Subject: re: re: bottom line?
Well, then, I don’t see the problem. I think
you’re overreacting.—R
Sent: 5/23/01
Subject: re: re: re: bottom line?
That’s what I like about you, Rick—never one
to sugarcoat…
Sent: 5/30/01
Subject: Holy jelly, Batman…we’re in a jam!
Can I bore you again with Andy, my lowWhat
a Star—What a Jerk•••HBR CASE STUDY
harvard business review • september 2001 page 3
likability, high-performance guy? Until now,
I’d thought he was just nasty to lower-level
people (which I quietly asked him to tone
down, btw, after the incidents with the AAs)
but at least grudgingly civil to colleagues. But
he’s gone and alienated Caroline, the one
who’s going through the divorce. Background:
She has huge social capital built up here; she’s
the one everyone turns to with their problems,
either professional or personal. She’s a good
egg, but she isn’t at her best right now (a custody
issue got messy and her mother’s sick).
She probably should have taken some time
off, but it’s a bad time of year—so I asked her
to hold off. Okay, so here she is, this normally
centered person who’s hanging on by a thread,
and Andy got under her skin. She forwarded
me this e-mail he’d sent her, and when I went
to talk to her about it, she cried. It was a
*horrible* scene. Anyhow, take a look:
Caroline, you screwed up big time. We had a
meeting with people I’d been trying to cultivate
for eight months, set up well in advance,
and you blew it off at the last minute, which
embarrassed me and endangered the business.
I can just hear you whining, “Things are a
mess at home right now”—but you know
what? Tough. Everybody’s got problems, and
they should stay out of the office. If I don’t land
this business, it will be because of your incompetence,
and you can bet that Epstein and everyone
else who counts will hear about it.
After she was done crying—which embarrassed
us both a lot—she expressed remorse
for making the mistake. Then we talked…she
explained how she has sort of “handled” Zimmerman
until recently (which is why she felt
betrayed by his accusations). Evidently, he’d
often vent to her about what he saw as allaround
stupidity. She’d listen, calm him down,
and occasionally chide him extremely gently
for being out of line. And other people would
come to her and complain when he’d said
something nasty, and she’d calm *them* down
(explaining the pressure he was under, whatever).
Since he exempted her from his nastiness,
she was shocked when he turned on her.
Anyhow, she wasn’t trying to blow the whistle
on him—not really—but I could see that she
was fed up with the smoothing-over role. (I
gather that my predecessor completely ignored
the whole situation—in part because
Caroline kept it under control. Sure wish I
could do that.)
Obviously, I have to have a chat with the
big bad wolf. You know, when I left BCP to
take a job with a real company, I imagined focusing
on numbers, products, customers—on
*building* something. Instead, I feel as if people
issues—stupid little blowups like this—
take up most of my time. Sheesh. These are
all highly paid people, mostly with advanced
degrees… Why do I feel like a kindergarten
teacher?
Sent: 5/30/01
Subject: could be worse…
J—In some ways, he sounds like your bad cop:
He keeps laggards in line, you get to be the
nice guy. I could imagine worse set-ups.
I’m surprised she showed you that memo,
since it makes her look bad. I know you’re
going to tell me it’s abusive, but is it, really?
Sent: 5/30/01
Subject: re: could be worse…
Abusive? I don’t know. But it is threatening.
And it makes someone who’s good, and who’s
defended him in the past, feel like garbage…
Oh, I don’t know what I think.—J
Sent: 5/31/01
Subject: whew
Okay, so Andy and I had a long talk. I think it
went reasonably well. With Caroline’s permission,
I told him about the leave she should be
on. And he said he had to admit that he’d
never seen anything like that from her before.
Looked very slightly ashamed (but maybe I
imagined that part).
I wanted to establish some kind of rapport,
as well as call him on inappropriate behavior,
so I got him talking about his own role in the
group and how he sees the work developing
over the next several months. And—surprise,
surprise—we had a good conversation. He’s
got great insights, energy, and smarts. We
talked for quite some time, in a way that was,
to be honest, more productive and visionary
and (simultaneously) down-to-earth than
would have happened had the whole group
been present. We were sort of firing off each
other in the same way you and I used to—it
was fun.:)
Of course, I went back to the question of
how he acts in the group. I said, basically,
“Look, you’re talented and quick and
impatient, and you just have to slow down and
What a Star—What a Jerk•••HBR CASE STUDY
harvard business review • september 2001 page 4