Question

You are one of five partners and a vice-president in Performance Evaluation, Ltd. (PEL), a mid-size consulting firm that specializes in evaluation, assessment and engineering analysis. Your firm’s chief clients are the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. EPA, and various state government energy and environmental agencies. Most of your work involves technical and policy analysis, prospective and retrospective. Illustrative recent projects include: (1) a major three-year study estimating the cost and available technologies for cleaning up hazardous waste at Idaho National Energy Engineering Lab (a DOE facility); (2) assistance in the EPA Superfund in developing its Congressionally-mandated performance plan as part of its GPRA documents; (3) an evaluation of the effectiveness of energy technology transfer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Your firm is only 15 years old. It started as a two-person consulting firm, a partnership between a brother and sister, one (Randall Brown) a doctoral level economist, the other (Lucinda Brown) a master’s level environmental engineer. The firm began with one small contract performed by the two partners, but has grown to more than 300 professional employees and $23 million of contracts in place at present. PEL has reinvested in the business, having built a new building four years ago in Arlington, Virginia (cost $17 million) and having developed significant infrastructure, chiefly information technology.

The forty-three year old company President and C.E.O, Randall Brown, has just retired, taking along a $12 million golden parachute. His sister Lucinda will be the new president, but everyone agrees that she is not cut out to be the C.E.O. Her strength is technical work, not strategic management or finance and she certainly does not have the personality, as Randall does, to be the organizational “rain-maker.” Nearly all the contracts attracted to date have been the work of Randall.

PEL is hiring a new C.E.O. and is committed to going outside the firm. Most of the people in the firm have skills similar to Lucinda’s, not Randall’s. The need is for an entrepreneurial manager, but, of course, the C.E.O. must have many other skills to help the organization succeed and grow.

You are one of four people on the committee to recruit a new CEO.   Your committee just met and identified a number of concerns. These include: (1) a cutback in the federal budget for DOE and EPA, (2) a new competitor organization that is a spin-off from the RAND corporation, (3) others are thinking about taking Randall’s path – cashing out their stocks and equity, (4) PEL may have over-extended itself with the new building and capital purchases, (5) there is talk about moving from Beltway work to foreign contracts, but no one has international work experience, (6) a key employee (one of the partners) has just filed a sexual harassment suit against the firm, and (7) the contract with Idaho lab was underbid and costs are spinning out of control.

QUESTION ( LEADERSHIP CLASS)

With this situation in mind, your committee has decided that a next step is to identify a list of the leadership attributes desired for the C.E.O. and to set priorities among them. List the leadership characteristics you wish for a C.E.O. and rank them in order of importance as a committee member. Please specify why certain attributes are important given the context of PEL and provide reasons for your rankings.

Answer 1

Key skill sets-Leadership attributes	To address the issues as follows	Priority assigned considering PEL requirements.
A global approach and exposure- A geocentric leader	Gain a global advantage, aid in getting global contracts	1-As will give a global reach and will increase and generate revenues. Global business is the future need of the organization.
A transformational leader who will challenge targets and encourage the team to perform and generate more revenues	Handle competition and reestablish your competitive edge	2-Again will assign challenging targets and will increase the revenue generation and maximize profits
Good financial overview and fund management	Improve the company bottom line, increase profitably and cover costs of assets like the new building, and capital purchases	3-The financial perspective of the organization and reworking the cost benefits and cost-cutting methods have to be done immediately. The overall budgeting and pricing strategy needs to be reviewed and revamped.
Democratic decision making including team building skills set.	Take the team along for making business decisions, which is largely technical and strategically support them but after taking their perspective.	4. The leader has to be a good team player and include all members who have been long in the organization in the key decisions. He has to adapt to the team requirements and company culture.
High level of integrity and a good overview of industry related legal matters	He should have knowledge of industry legal issues, tax policies and have high integrity	5. The changes perceived in the tax structures and the federal cuts should be understood, further high integrity will ensure adherence and implementation of the code of ethics.
Knowledge of sustainable policies and environmental issues	He should be aware of energy saving and sustainable policies which are the backdrop of the organizations business	6. This is listed six as though he needs to have a basic knowledge and interest in the sustainable and environment policies, he is required to be more a management and strategic individual than a technical person as the technical skills are already ample in the organization.
A visionary and charismatic leader	He should have a long-term perspective to push business and sales and have the vision to revamp the management techniques at the same time be charismatic so people will look up to him and follow his ideas.	7. This is an important business need but last in priority list as the critical matters are revenue generation and gaining a global advantage.

To sum it up a CEO should a mix of all above qualities and basically should be a team player with the zeal to transform the organization.