Techno Greats Case Study: Leadership and Work-Life Balance

This case study focuses on Ed Worthy, the General Manager at Techno Greats, who is facing significant leadership challenges. The case highlights his dissatisfaction with his performance, lack of work-life balance, and inability to fully utilize his executive role. The problems stem from issues such as poor prioritization, excessive dependency from other employees, and a lack of clarity regarding his responsibilities. The analysis explores these root causes and proposes potential solutions, including prioritizing work, establishing more points of contact within the organization, and clarifying roles to improve efficiency and effectiveness. The decision criteria favor increasing points of contact through the establishment of new leadership roles. This decision, which involves training and empowering new leaders, aims to relieve Ed of clerical work, foster employee growth, and improve organizational structure and communication. The implementation plan includes steps for selecting and training the new leaders, and the success of the decision will be measured by the time devoted to strategic tasks, and the ease of communication within the organization. The provided references support the analysis with relevant literature on leadership, motivation, and work-life balance.

Running Head: Techno Greats – Case Study
Techno Greats
Case study

Techno Greats – Case Study 1
Contents
Synopsis...........................................................................................................................................2
Problems..........................................................................................................................................2
Root cause........................................................................................................................................3
Option Analysis...............................................................................................................................4
Decision criteria...............................................................................................................................5
Decision...........................................................................................................................................5
Implementation................................................................................................................................6
Measuring success...........................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

Techno Greats – Case Study 2
Synopsis
The case throws light on the day of Ed Worthy who is the General Manager at Techno Greats.
Ed is shown to be an extremely dedicated and motivated employee with a brilliant career
spanning ten years with Techno Greats. He started his career as a researcher in Vancouver and in
the next three years, he was promoted as a lab supervisor. Two years post that, he became
assistant to manager and from the last one and a half year he has been serving as an assistant to
GM in Calgary.
The case explains how Ed has been unable to work on an investment and stock option idea
conceived two years ago. He aspires to provide for a simpler procedure of recording numerous
blood tests and finalize a new courier partner for the firm. He put these three things on his
agenda for the day. However from the time he entered the office till he left late, his plate was
completely full and found himself too busy to focus on either of these tasks. His time was spent
in discussing brochures with Jean, communicating with Jill, taking feedback from every
supervisor, helping Jon find extra storage space for chemicals, reviewing a researcher, discussing
the new marketing plan with the marketing director, approving purchase orders, analyzing
regulatory changes with health and safety supervisor, sorting enquiries from hospitals and
medical schools, handling few HR concerns, answering Vice president’s questions on the launch
of phase 2 trials, attending a number of conference calls and similar planning and organizing
activities for different departments of the organization.
On his way back, he has been frustrated for not being able to work according to the agenda and
realized that the strategically inclined tasks are taking a back seat owing to other small projects
as mentioned above (Azanza, 2013). This makes him feel that he is unable to justify the role of
an executive in the firm (Nooraie, 2012). Another thing which has been bothering him is the lack
of time that he is devoting to his family.
Problems
From the case study, three major problems have been brought to notice:

Techno Greats – Case Study 3
1. Not satisfied: One of the biggest problems expressed in the case is Ed’s dissatisfaction
with his own performance. Often enough emphasis is not paid to job satisfaction but it is
a very important aspect in an employee’s career (Goodwin, 2017). McClelland provided a
motivational theory laying emphasis on three important needs of every employee. Need
for power, need for achievement and need for affiliation (McClelland, 2015). In this case
we can see that Ed’s need for power and achievement is satisfied but his need for
achievement leaves him dissatisfied.
Ed feels that he is not working to his full potential. He strongly believes that the major
contribution of an executive level employee is through innovation and he is unable to
deliver that. And this is a major source of demotivation (McClelland, 2013).
2. Lack of work life balance: Ed is usually the last employee to leave from office and
reaches office early. Every day he is putting in extra hours at work which is affecting his
time with his family (Isaacs, 2016). He understands his obligations towards them and
finds it unfair that he is unable to spend time with them. This shows a lack of work life
balance which is a major source of demotivation for employees and can adversely impact
employee performance in the longer run (Wiese, 2015).
3. Inability to justify the role of an executive: A Manager has to be two efficient and
effective. Efficiency refers to doing things right whereas effectiveness refers to doing the
right things (Tones, 2013). No doubt Ed is efficient with his work but he is not effective
as most of the strategic tasks have taken a backseat in his day. By this logic, he is not
doing justice to his role as an executive (Millan, 2013).
Root cause
It is slightly difficult to put a finger at the root cause for all these problems as usually such major
problems are caused by two or three combining factors. However, it can be noticed in the case
that Firstly Ed is unable to prioritize his work and focus on more important tasks. He is a top
level executive and it is imperative that managers decide which work requires their attention.

Techno Greats – Case Study 4
A top level manager requires conceptual skills because he is hired to perform strategically
important tasks. Second cause behind these problems is excessive dependency of other
employees on Ed due to him being the point of contact for everything. The case indicates that Ed
is contacted for brochures, to help find temporary storage, to discuss poor performance of a non-
managerial employee, to decide work timings of a field placement student and to check stock etc.
This is a major issue as every department considers Ed a one stop destination for all their
problems. This high level of dependency is making Ed unable to focus and prioritize his work
(Nagano, 2014).
Option Analysis
1. Prioritizing work: Ed must focus on prioritizing his work and making a planner on a daily
basis. He must sincerely allocate a certain part of his time to these strategic decisions and
plans (Barak, 2013). However, this does not mean that he should spend more time in
office but rather plan his day to the best of his abilities.
2. More points of contact: Every department must be given a point of contact who would be
the sole decision make for that department. All these new leaders could in turn report to
Ed about the daily workings of their department. This will help in saving time as now
they can meet with Ed and discuss department problems rather than different people
meeting him at different times over different issues. Secondly, this will make things more
organized and the organization culture would also become more professional.
3. Clarity of role: For an executive level employee, the top management should clarify
roles. This is how everyone in the organization would know the exact job that needs to be

Techno Greats – Case Study 5
done by every employee (Nancarrow, 2013). Currently, Ed is doing haphazard works of
various departments and this leaves him no time to do what he was hired for. This clarity
of role and a crisp job description will also help him prioritize his work
Decision criteria
1. Option 1: Prioritize work:
Pros Cons
a. Strategic tasks would be
completed
b. Increased efficiency
c. Saves time
d. Organized work
a. Small tasks may remain
undone
b. Might bring about a cultural
change as currently everyone
goes to him.
2. Option 2: More points of contact
Pros Cons
a. Organized work
b. Relieves Ed of clerical work
c. Prioritization of work
d. More leadership roles
e. Saves time
f. Increased efficiency
a. Training of new leaders will
take time.
b. Cultural change
c. Implementation of this strategy
will take time as it is a long
term strategy
d. Increased costs in the short
term.

Techno Greats – Case Study 6
3. Option 3: Clarity of role
Pros Cons
a. Priority of work
b. Increased efficiency
c. Saves time – no wastage of
time on unimportant work
d. Strategic tasks would gain
priority
e. Ed’s performance would be
judged based on executive
tasks
a. Small tasks will remain
undone
b. Will create confusion
c. Ed has a personal connect with
employees
d. Who will do the tasks if not
Ed.
e. Reduced team work
Decision
After in detail scrutinizing the three options presented above, it has been noted that increasing
points of contact in the office will help the most and is the best way forward. This will begin by
creating more leadership roles in the organization, training them and ensuring that they are the
best decision makers of their particular field (Bryman, 2013). This will have three major
advantages:
1. Ed will be relieved of clerical work and can hence focus on more strategic work.
2. Other individuals will be given an opportunity of growth by giving them more
responsibilities (Day, 2014).

Techno Greats – Case Study 7
3. Since employees would be selected from within the organization, there will be no
additional cost (Hargreaves, 2014).
Implementation
1. The very first things to do will be to decide how many leadership positions should be
introduced. This would depend on the department, the strength of each department and
how much work goes into managing each department.
Time taken: 3-4 business days.
2. The second step would be to review performance of employees of all departments. This
would provide with an idea about who would be the best suited candidates for these
leadership roles. This step would end with making a shortlist of employees with three
candidates from each department who are not only the best performer of their department
but also possess accurate managerial and leadership qualities (Khanna, 2014).
Time Taken: one month or 24-26 business days
3. Next step would be to conduct interviews of these candidates, know them better, and test
their knowledge and ability to work in difficult situations by giving them real life tasks.
This would help in selecting the best of the three from each department.
Time Taken: One month
4. Lastly final selection of employees would be done who would be offered these leadership
positions and will now become the points of contact for their department.
Time taken: one week or 5 business days
5. Once the candidates have been selected as leaders, they will be given on the job training
which will give them a real picture of what has to be done in the days to come (Rajiani,
2013).
Time taken: Two months
6. Lastly when the candidates have been selected and appointed as leaders and given
training for the same, their contact details would be spread across the organization and
everyone would be made aware of this new organizational change. This would ensure
that now anyone who wishes to resolve any query from a particular department, he or she
will directly contact the leader of that department.

Techno Greats – Case Study 8
Measuring success
Once the decision has been implemented, it is imperative that the success of this decision is
accurately measured. The following steps will be taken to identify the success or failure of this
decision:
1. Time devoted to strategic tasks: The very purpose of going through this procedure was to
ensure that Ed has more time to accomplish strategic tasks. Hence the success of this plan
would be measured by how much time is Ed able to devote to these executive level tasks
as compared to before this was implemented.
2. Ease of communication: As long as Ed was the center point of communication for
everyone, he was managing the communication really well. The biggest worry associated
with this decision was if the new leaders will be able to manage as well as Ed. This can
be seen in the ease with which communication is taking place in the organization. If there
are no barriers to communication and work is going on smoothly then it can be assumed
that the new plan was a success.
3. Besides this, Ed will be receiving continuous reports from the leaders appointed by him
about the functioning of their respective departments. If no problems are there then it is
ensured that the plan implemented is a success.

Techno Greats – Case Study 9
References
Azanza, G., Moraine, J. A., & Moller, F. (2013). Authentic leadership and organizational culture
as drivers of employees’ job satisfaction. Revista de Psicología Del Trabajo y de las
Organizaciones, 29(2), 45-50.
Barak, N., & Lehmann, D. (2013). U.S. Patent No. 8,554,776. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office.
Bryman, A. (Ed.). (2013). Leadership and organizations. Routledge.
Day, D. V. (Ed.). (2014). The Oxford handbook of leadership and organizations. Oxford Library
of Psychology.
Goodwin, G. C., & Graebe, S. F. (2017). Work-Life Balance. In A Doctorate and Beyond (pp.
179-185). Springer International Publishing.
Hargreaves, A., Boyle, A., & Harris, A. (2014). Uplifting leadership: How organizations, teams,
and communities raise performance. John Wiley & Sons.
Isaacs, D. (2016). Work‐life balance. Journal of pediatrics and child health, 52(1), 5-6.
McClelland, D. C. (2013). That urge to achieve. Readings and Exercises in Organizational
Behavior, 70.
McClelland, D. C. (2015). Achievement motivation theory. Organizational behavior, 1, 46-60.
Millán, J. M., Hessels, J., Thurik, R., & Aguado, R. (2013). Determinants of job satisfaction: a
European comparison of self-employed and paid employees. Small business
economics, 40(3), 651-670.
Nagano, M. S., Stefanovitz, J. P., & Vick, T. E. (2014). Innovation management processes, their
internal organizational elements and contextual factors: An investigation in
Brazil. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 33, 63-92.

Techno Greats – Case Study 10
Nancarrow, S. A., Booth, A., Ariss, S., Smith, T., Enderby, P., & Roots, A. (2013). Ten
principles of good interdisciplinary team work. Human resources for Health, 11(1), 19.
Nooraie, M. (2012). Factors influencing strategic decision-making processes. International
Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 2(7), 405.
Rajiani, I. (2013). Promoting organizational citizenship behavior among employees-the role of
leadership practices. International Journal of Business and Management; 8(6), 47-54.
Tones, K., Robinson, Y. K., & Tilford, S. (2013). Health education: effectiveness and efficiency.
Springer.
Wiese, B. S. (2015). Work-life-balance. In Wirtschaftspsychologie (pp. 227-244). Springer
Berlin Heidelberg.