Essay Question (Situation, response) 4 page

4 Page Response Essay. No Plagiarism or copying from Internet and changing words around to make it appear original.

Due Saturday 28 June NLT 6pm CST

****(For this exercise – – Describe the approach you will use to select the “right” person for this position.  What do you want to know about these individuals that you do not currently know?  What are the critical issues that will guide your choice?)

You are that Strategic Business Unit executive Dr. Henman
describes on pages 166 and 167.  You lead
a product division of a major multi-national consumer electronics company.  You report directly to the CEO and have
profit and lost (P&L) responsibility for a division that designs, produces
and distributes a variety of products in the audio entertainment segment of the
worldwide consumer electronics market. 
Among your current products are radio receivers of all types, CD
players, MP3 players, components for home entertainment systems, car stereo
components, boomboxes, amplifiers, speakers and even clock radios.

You have a functional organization of over 10,000 that spans
many time zones. Your business unit designs its products in the U.S. and
manufactures them in Asia. Your primary markets are in North America and
Europe.  Your direct reports include a
CFO who leads the Finance organization and VPs for Marketing, Engineering,
Supply Chain Management, Operations, Legal & Contracts, Human Resources,
Information Technology, and Quality & Performance Excellence.

Your VP of Engineering has been with you for 2 ½ years and
was just last month selected by the CEO and Board to become the head of one of
the other divisions of the corporation. She will be taking the new assignment
in three weeks.  You have to find her
replacement and convince the CEO to approve your choice.

You weren’t taken completely by surprise by this move; in
fact you recommended your subordinate for this new role.  You have been her mentor of sorts for the
last 18 months, put her in the lead position on a critical new product roll-out
and coached her on what she needed to learn and do to reach the next level ( in
reality you were grooming her for your job … just in case the CEO position came
open).

You have narrowed your search for a new VP of Engineering
down to three excellent candidates.  They
are 1) John Adams, a seasoned leader 
within the current Engineering organization,  2) Mark Lawson, the Senior Engineering
Manager of the new products development group, and 3) Susan Hernandez, a Senior
Engineering Manager at Cre8, your #1 competitor’s product design organization.  You know Adams and Lawson quite well.  You are acquainted with Hernandez through a
trade association and are aware of her excellent reputation in the industry.

John Adams has been with the company for 15 years.  He is 55 years of age and has a BS degree in
Mechanical Engineering as well as a MS in Engineering Management from Southern
Methodist University.  Earlier in his
career he was an innovator in packaging design.  In the past few years he has driven process
and technology selection that has significantly reduced the production cost of
several of the company’s “flywheel” products.

Mark Lawson has been with the company 8 years and he is 46
years of age.  He is an electrical
engineer by training and received his MBA from Texas A&M University – Commerce
two years ago.  Mark has a reputation as
something of a visionary, an inspiring team builder and a team player.  His intuition and insight on product features
that Customers will “pay extra” for is in a word, uncanny.  New products his teams have brought to the
market in the last three years account for slightly more than half of the
division’s current annual sales.

Susan Hernandez has been with your competitor for 4 years
and is 38 years of age.  Her educational
background is in Software Engineering and she holds a MBA from Stanford
University.  Susan has worked for
several high-tech firms in Silicon Valley. 
With the exception of Cre8 she has not stayed with any of her employers
for more than 3 years.  She has been
something of a “star performer” for Cre8 and is that rare mix of engineering
expertise, artist and unabashed “marketeer”. 
In fact, the latest MP3 player her group launched 6 months ago is
“kicking your butt” in sales.

“For this exercise – – Describe the approach you will use to
select the “right” person for this position. 
What do you want to know about these individuals that you do not
currently know?  What are the critical
issues that will guide your choice?”