Surgery With Blunt Tools Restructuring and Ambiguity at Umbra Health Partners Case Solution

First of all, as apparent from the case that several employees within the firm occupying key positions in the middle management have unclear, vague, or overlapping roles and responsibilities. Due to this issue, often the wrong person is held accountable for the outcome of a project, or initiative and the person at fault roams around free without answering any questions. During the stay of Tuan at Umbra Health Partners, he experienced the same issues at not only the branch where he served as Branch Manager but also at the corporate office where his role was to assist in business development and new project planning. Considering the role of Tuan at the corporate office, it is evident that there is no clear line of authority or reporting. His line manager is Jamieson, but he is usually given orders by Mike, directly who is serving as the Interim Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Jamieson has limited knowledge of activities in which Tuan is currently involved as they are coordinated with Mike and other colleagues within the company yet, she is responsible for the performance evaluation of Tuan, which is not only unfair to Tuan but also inappropriate for Jamieson as she is not in the loop in all matters.

Rooting out of this poor accountability system is the problem of frequent conflicts among employees. Often, employees from different departments and management levels are informally made a part of the team. Due to the informal nature of the team, if a conflict or disagreement occurs among team members, it is rarely managed in a positive manner. In fact, some employees take the course of terminating all communication channels, which often deteriorates not only the relationship but also affects the outcome of the project. The primary example of this situation is of Tuan and Kurtz, who was responsible for acquiring / developing an application for a new project, but informal communication channels and no formal reporting to the top management resulted in the stalling of the responsibility and apparently, Tuan, only one of the two members was enquired about the delay rather than the main person responsible. Thirdly, much was said and planned about moving forward with the right group of people during the early days of restructuring; however, positions, which were of most importance were overlooked for replacing with better personnel. This issue became evident from the poor follow-up strategy of several key middles and top managers because of whom multiple projects were getting delayed by not weeks but months.

Due to these three major issues, it seems that Umbra Health Partners is already done with all the progress it was supposed to make with the restructuring plan unless the interim CEO along with other top management people are ready to take few bold steps. As per the current situation, it seems that Tuan is considering his future with the firm in a serious manner, and unless Mike is able to answer all of his four queries in a satisfactory manner, Tuan will consider options of moving on to some other firm where he has a clear vision and less resistance from his colleagues and senior management employees. The frustration of Tuan is readily visible as time and again his plans are strongly resisted or delayed due to incompetency of other employees yet, he is held accountable for their failure or poor implementation. His future growth within the firms is also unclear and it would not be long before Tuan decides to call time on his service with Umbra Health Partners.

2. Determine the professional fate of Jim Tuan and Mike Kettle and explain which of all the conceptual principles had the most impact on your determination of their status.

To begin with, Mike Kettle who is serving as the interim Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Umbra Health Partners perhaps holds the most influential position within the firm as per its current state. Mike has been considerably successful in restructuring the firm from top to bottom. During his stay with the firm, he held the courage of making some bold decisions, which include restructuring the role of branch and corporate offices, shuffling the role of middle managers, hiring and firing people at all levels, undertaking new projects, etc. Most of his decisions have turned out to be positive for the firm as the company has made some serious progress during the last couple of years in terms of improving its financial performance and reducing the operational challenges resulting in low productivity. However, as per the present situation, it seems that his energy level and enthusiasm have gone down significantly as few of his recent plans and initiatives have been stalled for a while yet, he is not considerably bothered about them, or at least the case projects it in this fashion.