John Gabarro Case: Aston Blair, Inc.

The John Gabarro case on Aston-Blair, Inc. presents a team situation involving a task force directed by the owner, Wynn Aston, III, to rescue the company from several quarters of bad losses. The task force’s main objectives were to improve product demand projection that would provide better inventory control, improve financial planning, and align production scheduling. We have identified the main issues with the case, revolving around the following themes: (1) Team Structure; (2) Communication; (3) Leadership and (4) Trust. Below is a detailed background of the case, our analysis, and recommendations to the identified problems.

By 2004, Aston-Blair, Inc., which was founded in 1910, expanded its production from children’s books to multimedia

The task force met only twice, once during the initial meeting and a second time during the preparation for the August 4th Report of the Task Force. They failed to meet prior to the final delivery of the report to senior management, and this violated a basic tenant of teams, being that no sub-groups kept in contact, nor did they keep upper management abreast of their progress. They failed to manage down or manage up. Also, the task force failed to brainstorm during their first meeting. It appeared that each member came into the team with preconceived notions of how to solve the problem at hand and either attempted to convince the team that they were right, or they set out to prove their position as the correct one. Lastly, although the mandate was clear from Aston, through Casey, Trott, and Bacon, the task force had two different focuses; one group of individuals felt the issue was with the Sales Division and the other sole individual (mostly Meir) believed the issue was with not having an internal forecasting

Bacon should have immediately applied cognitive goal instructions to dispel the divergent mindset of “the goal”. In Meir’s mind, the goal was to develop an internal forecast model, and in the team’s mind, the goal was to analyze Marketing Division forecast models and inputs. The cognitive goal instructions that Bacon should have applied were to clearly and concisely describe the goal, identify an explicit set of rules (for example, confidentiality and focusing on the task at hand), and finally set the expectation of increased individual accountability. A clear set of goals would have organized the team’s functions and schedules, better preparing them to properly investigate the forecasting