Chattanooga Ice Cream Division Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Introduction

Chattanooga Ice Cream Division (CIC) has been a solely owned subsidiary / corporation of the Chattanooga Foods Corporation established in the year 1936. The company has been offering products that are reasonably priced ice cream products to the supermarkets and food outlets nationally. It has been observed in the last few years that the company has been facing serious issues of decrease in the market awareness and a decline in sales as well for various reasons.

The major reason for the decline of sales is the entry of some big names of the in the industry with which the competition has increased to a huge level and also the products of these premium giants of the market are easily available. The analyst states that in the year 1995-96, the company was compiling total revenue over $150 million, which saw a drop of about $30 in the recent past which compiles a period of around four to five years. Understandably the main reason for the decrease in the sales plus a decline in the revenue for the Chattanooga Ice Cream Division was the lack of variety in the product line (Solane, 2003).

CIC being a well equipped company and serving for years offers the traditional flavors in comparison to a variety of flavors offered by other competitors of the markets which included candy bar, nuts, cookies, fruit mix in flavors, etc. to overcome the competitors and being profound in the market. Keeping in view the competition and decline in the sales CIC introduced a line of frozen yogurts; also they hired Charles Moore to the position of division president and the general manager.

Dysfunctional Team

Absence of Trust

According to researchers and analysts, a company can grow and do well only if the employees are cooperative to each other within the organization, but in the case of CIC the team was dysfunctional as the level of trust within the employees was not a positive one.

No one was really efficient enough to admit their mistakes or even their weaknesses instead the rule of blame game was scattered among the employees of CIC. As the case reflects the comfort level among the employees was missing, which made the decline in trust level as well.

CIC lost its contract with Stay & Shop, which was Chattanooga’s third largest customer. This made a great setback to the company as the company generated $6.5 million itself from Stay and Safe. Noticing this Moore set a meeting with all the Heads of their respective divisions to understand and develop and generate possible solutions. In the meeting, Moore observed that blame game strategy among all the divisions heads as instead of identifying the root cause (Patrick, 2006).

Production Head blamed operations, Operation head blamed the Sales division, whereas, Sales were more focused to point out Operations for the loss of a contract. The basic purpose of the meeting was to clean up the errors and not the blame game strategy that discouraged and demotivated employees within the organization. Even Moore observed that the members of the team never worked as a team instead the previous manager imposed decisions himself and did not let the members to interact and work in a formal way.

Charles Moore’s Leadership Style

Steadiness

Charles Moore as the General Manager of Chattanooga Ice Cream Division faced the drawback to head / lead the team in an appropriate manner, certainly the main reason came out to be was the team members were free to take decisions on their own without concerning Moore’s point of view. Despite the efforts to compile the team and make them work with unity Moore failed to do so. On DiSC assessment, Moore lies on “S”, where he maintains a calm approach and does not like being rushed into things.

Moore believed in group or collaborative decision making instead of individual decision making. Even though Moore was not satisfied with the skills, attitude and behavior of his Team members, but being a leader, he had to hide this so that there was no demotivation factor prospered among the team members.

Moore, as leader and designated for the post of General Manager, should have stood up with the final decision making and should have worked and made efforts to improve the weaknesses of the team members.......................

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