1-What competenciesare illustrated in the case?
2-Using the“Experiential Exercise: Communication Competency” in Chapter 8.6,evaluate Suarez’s communication effectiveness. In what area(s) doesshe excel?
3-Apply the behavioralmodel of leadership found in Chapter 10 “Leadership Effectiveness:Foundations” to analyze Suarez’s leadership style.
4-Is Suarez aneffective team leader?
A Day in the Life of Carolina Suarez
Carolina Suarez,senior vice president for marketing of ClearVision Optical Group,arrived at her office at 7:25 a.m. Settling in at her desk, shebegan to think about the problems she needed to handle in thecourse of the day.[Footnote ]
ClearVision OpticalGroup is a specialty retailer operating under the name of ClearVuewith annual sales of over $40 million. The optical group owns 750stores in 40 states, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, The Netherlands,and England. It is the United States’ largest provider of eye careproducts and services, and it seeks to expand its market share inother free world countries. ClearVision is one group of S. G.Davis, an Illinois-based company that also has pharmaceutical andmedical product groups. The optical group is planning to expandinto other broadly based health-care markets, and in 2015 it beganexperimenting with small shops that sell only sunglasses.ClearVision is a marketing-oriented company that bases its strategyon understanding customer needs and developing and deliveringdistinctive characteristics that appeal to customers. An example ofthis is ClearVue’s in-store labs that cut lenses for eyeglassframes on a “while-you-wait” basis, often getting the customer’sprescription filled within an hour. This service differentiatesClearVue from its competitors, who typically do not offer suchspeedy service.
Suarez’s duties assenior vice president for marketing broadly include determinationand evaluation of the strategic and operational directions for thecompany. Her specific responsibilities include marketing research,advertising programs, the eyeglass frame line, contact lenses, andin-store merchandising-display programs.
A high-priority itemon Suarez’s list of things to accomplish today was to construct aquestionnaire to survey customer attitudes about the firm’s line offrames. This was to be circulated to each of ClearVue’s retailstore managers to determine whether the current frame styles werepreferred by customers and if the selection of frames was adequateat each price level. Suarez realized that she would have a greaterlikelihood of uninterrupted work before most of the other employeescame at 8:30, so she began working on the questionnaire at 7:45.She had scarcely begun clarifying her definition of the problem andstating her objectives when her secretary, Linda Brown, came inwith a list of activities planned for the day.
A meeting with theresearch analysis group working on contact lenses was scheduled for9:15. There was another meeting set for 10:15 with the groupworking on fall displays for use in the stores. Suarez wasscheduled to lunch with a representative of a prospectiveadvertising agency at 12:00, and she had an appointment with thepresident at 3:00 p.m. to discuss progress on an evaluation of thefirm’s frame suppliers. She told her secretary she needed somecorrespondence typed, scanned, and e-mailed before the afternoonand a summary of the supplier evaluation formatted and printedbefore her meeting with the president. Her secretary remindedSuarez that the vice president for finance wanted to see her thatday to discuss the details of financing for the new sunglassstores.
When Linda left,Suarez settled back to work on the questionnaire. She outlined whatshe hoped to accomplish and wrote down a list of specific pieces ofinformation she wanted to get from the store managers. At 8:20 thesenior vice president for operations in the Western Division calledand asked Suarez if she could get a cup of coffee with him anddiscuss some new ideas he had for marketing children’s eyewear.Carolina agreed to meet him in five minutes. They discussed theplans she was currently considering and how the new suggestionswould modify those plans. As she was walking back to her office at8:45, a woman who worked in the optical lab on the premises askedher if she could give her some advice. Carolina said she couldspare a moment. The woman questioned her on career opportunities inmarketing, both in the company and in the entire field. Sheconfessed that she had wanted to get more training and go intomarketing, but had never taken the opportunity. Carolina told herabout her experiences in the field and advised her about the bestroute to take to get into the company’s marketing department. Aftershe left, Suarez called the president and asked for his opinion ofa major new advertising and display campaign for children’s eyewearbased on the suggestions she had received. They discussed variousways in which the advertising budget could be reallocated tofinance such a campaign. They decided that some funds could betaken from fashion eyewear programs, and some additional moneycould be trimmed from other elements of the budget and allocated tothis campaign. The president mentioned that he would like to seethe ideas Suarez had for this campaign before they were sent to anadvertising agency.
As Suarez hung up, sherealized it was time for the meeting with the contact lens group.She walked into the conference room and sat down at the head of thetable. She chatted informally with a few of the people in the groupbefore they got down to business. Suarez listened to theirpresentation, and after they were finished, she stated some newideas on the situation and thanked them for the results. She setsome goals for the contact lens group that she wanted accomplishedbefore the next meeting. This meeting was over at 10:15, and thegroup working on fall store displays came in for their meeting.Suarez told them about the children’s eyewear. The meeting ended at11:20.
As Suarez walked outof the conference room, she was stopped by a man from the displaygroup. He talked to Suarez for a few moments about some ideas hehad for different types of displays for the sunglass stores. Thenhe hesitated for a moment and asked Suarez if he could speak to herabout a situation that had been troubling him. Suarez said shewould like to help with the problem if possible. The man told herthat he had been experiencing conflict with his team leader in thedisplay group: He felt she had not been allowing free expression ofideas and “had it in” for him. The man admitted that he did notknow how to cope with the situation and had been consideringlooking for another job. Suarez promised to look into the matterfurther.
When she returned toher office and found a stack of phone messages waiting for her, shefirst returned the call of the vice president for finance andarranged to meet with him at 1:30. She also returned the call ofthe vice president for manufacturing. He needed to talk to herabout manufacturing problems with one of the new specialty lenses,so they set up a time to discuss the problem at 2:00. Leaving therest of the messages on her desk, Suarez left for her lunchappointment with the ad agency representative. At lunch, shediscussed plans for network TV advertising and asked for ideas andstrategies for effective new messages and the most effective timingfor ads. All the time, she was attempting to evaluate whether ornot ClearVision should hire this new agency for its next campaign.Since this would be ClearVision’s first use of network TVadvertising, it was a particularly important decision.
Suarez was back in heroffice at 1:15. She made some routine calls to subordinates tocheck on their progress on certain projects until 1:30. Then thevice president for finance came in to discuss the acquisition of anexisting chain of sunglass stores. They talked about integratingthese stores into ClearVision Optical Group’s strategic plan untilKeisha Jackson, the vice president for personnel, knocked on thedoor. The vice president for finance stayed to hear what Jacksonhad to say, and the three discussed possibilities for the newcompany employee benefits program.
Both vice presidentsleft at 2:30. Suarez collected her phone messages and beganreturning calls. She had just finished talking with a framesupplier representative in New York and an ad agency reporting thecompletion of a print ad campaign for the next quarter when she hadto leave for her meeting with the president. Suarez talked with himfor half an hour about expansion strategy and another half-hourabout her evaluation of the frame suppliers the firm was currentlyusing.
At 4:00 Suarez wentback to her office and found a report on her desk about aninventory control model that gave appropriate purchase quantitiesand intervals for the current frame line. One of her subordinatesin the frame management group had researched the matter and feltthat frame purchasing could be more efficient. Suarez recalled thatshe had told the man to come up with a better method if he could,and this report gave his findings on the matter. Suarez read thereport carefully and thought about its implications. She called theman in and asked him to explain some aspects of the model moreclearly. They discussed how the model would work in practice andthe dollar savings that would result from it. The man left Suarez’soffice at 4:45, and Suarez began working on the frame linequestionnaire again. Five minutes later, Linda Brown came in withsome letters for her to sign and some personnel evaluations thehead of personnel had sent over to be filled out. She decided toforget about the questionnaire and work on it at home, where shewas less likely to be interrupted. She worked on the performanceevaluations until 5:45, when she packed her papers in her briefcaseand headed for home.
