You have four Directors reporting to you, each earning around $100K (see table for salary information):
Sunil Mandathan, 35, Delhi-born Director of Retail Information Systems. Has been with Perigee since its founding – originally hired by Gary Nakamura to head-up IT for SolarFlare.com, and still close to him (they play golf together every weekend, and sometimes on Thursdays, too), although his role has faded in the last couple of years as Perigee signed a tech support contract with an off-shore company, ironically in Hyderabad, India. Sunil was moved over to the Retail Division and has done a good job of keeping the POS systems in the stores running smoothly. Still, his motivation is a bit lacking because he made some good early money with Mark and Gary on the website. Sunil manages a team of three, and he has been trying to cross-train them. But it's been tough. Each one has a highly specialized role: one programmer, who is the expert on the Point Of Sale (POS) system in the stores; one systems support specialist; and one network administrator. Sunil's team has been complaining about the cross-training program, and because they belong to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, IBEW Local 396, which is active on the plant floor at Perigee, this worries management. At all costs, they want to avoid a further expansion of unions into the Retail Division, since that would virtually eliminate all flexibility in contracts and compensation.
Jack Danella, 59, Director of New Product Development. Navy vet, old school, he has always bristled a little bit at reporting to you because he thinks he should have had the job himself, even though he only had one year of company experience when you arrived. He was responsible for producing the second best product Perigee makes, a motion detector lighting system, and he has consistently been a rainmaker. His productivity has fallen off recently, but he supposedly has some products in the pipeline that are destined to be sure-fire winners. No one knows for sure, because Jack is conservative by nature and doesn't like to tip his hand about new products until he has every last detail buttoned up. And, because it is well known that jack has friends among the competition, that secretiveness has always worried senior management. Jack has two New Product Managers on his team, both serving similar functions: Karl Neumeyer (like you, a graduate of tiny Kenyon College in Ohio), whom you originally hired just after you started and before the Retail Division was created; and Neil Cassavettes, whom Jack hired last year when the new store leases were signed in LA. Both of them show some promise, but are clearly first mates to Captain Jack. Also on Jack’s team is Lydia Espinoza, administrative assistant, who was hired only two months ago but is already seen as the glue that holds the department together. Many people have commented that the New Product team would be lost without her. Lydia, however, is not happy in her job, and recently filed a formal complaint about Jack because of what she perceives as derogatory comments about Latinos, though he denies it.
Sharon Christianson, 39, Director of Retail Operations. Sharon was the first person you hired after you were put in charge of the Retail Division, and she is immensely popular within the company because of the primo job she did on getting the Henderson store up and running. She is a retailer through and through, with almost 20 years of experience running stores for companies like Ultimate Electronics and Lowe’s, though she has never done anything but retail. The two store managers report to Sharon and are very friendly with her. She has trained them both well. In turn, each of the store managers oversees five to six employees. Recently, she also told you that after many years of trying, she is pregnant, with her baby due in five months – her due date is on her 40th birthday. Sharon also has an administrative assistant, Gideon Buckminster, of whom she is quite fond. Gideon was a promising young accountant who had a hard time finding a job, so he just settled for this AA position – and grumbles about it to anyone who will listen. Gideon recently filed a Worker’s Comp claim because he thinks he is developing carpal tunnel syndrome working on the computer all day. The claim is currently being investigated.
Carney Kelly, 38, Director of Product Manufacturing. You hired Carney almost two years ago to link the retail group to the manufacturing team in the plant. He is a boy wonder, an engineer with a marketer’s mind, who spent 10 years in Asia supervising production lines for a US-based multinational electronics company. He returned to the States in 2003 and went to work for SunPower Corporation in San Jose, where he helped streamline processes for manufacturing highly efficient reduced voltage-temperature coefficient solar panels for residential use. He’s considered such a star in the industry, Perigee even has a photo and profile of him on their website. A better project manager than people manager, he works best when he is by himself, and so it was no great surprise that he has not tried to fill the empty manager’s role in his group. Mark and Gary, the founders, are unaware of Carney’s work style, although you are quite familiar with the situation and have spoken about it with him on several occasions. Carney's wife, Mary, who is one of your spouse's cousins, is undergoing chemotherapy for a rare kind of kidney cancer.
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