Chapter 6Case 3: Making Decisions About Company Growth
Claudio Feser, David Redaschi, and Karolin Frankenberger
The GET needed to decide how to address ATG's current challenges. The board of directors was expecting a proposal from them. But the GET weren't ready to go to the board. They decided to invest more effort and time to debate the options, and to apply the model for decision-making that Isabelle had shared with them.
As a first step, Isabelle asked the most vocal ones (the “champions”) to argue for the option that they were most in favor of, that is, Hugo for Option 1, Alessandro for Option 2, Frank and Conny for Option 3 and Kosta for Option 4.
She started with Hugo.
“Hugo, why are you in favor of Option 1?” she asked, “what is your objective?”
“I want to reduce the costs quickly.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Well, because I assume that if we don't reduce costs, ATG risks going bankrupt, having funding issues, and possibly becoming a take-over-target,” he responded.
Isabelle noted the assumption on the sheet she had developed with Eve. “OK, I understand. What about opportunities? Why do you believe that we can cut costs rapidly?” she continued.
“My assumption is that we can close a significant number of underperforming agencies rapidly. Also, I don't believe that we can turn around the B2B business rapidly and that we should shut it down. And I assume that we have enough overcapacity in many functions and that we can take a 25% linear cut without major disruptions,” Hugo answered. ...
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