Personalized Fitness Company policies recently changed since Mega Fitness had acquired it. The Headquarters in Seattle decide to remodel Personalized fitness in Arizona, such as increasing membership price and phased out Group Fitness class Nick Batum.
HRB is concerned about these policies changes. He feels that his clubs are being set up to fail because the Headquarters in Seattle doesn’t know about the market in Arizona. In his 5-½ years experience, he knows their members won’t buy these changes. The price increase is too high and most of their instructors are teaching Nick Batum class in other fitness companies, all of which will make a negative impact to their member retention numbers and he might be facing demotion.

Before he used to have a good relationship with the Area Manager, they both knew what was best for the company. But since the acquisition, Area Manager has been facing pressure and hence changed his attitude, to only focus on his own career, so that messages HRB wanted to convey couldn’t transfer to the top executives.
Because of the Area Manager’s change, HRB has two options – follow the new policies and fail or alternatively, talk to top executives about his idea.

Josh in Gen Y in the Workforce case is a good example for HRB. Both of them have great ideas and passion but face lack of communication with higher executives since their bosses have other concerns. In Josh’s case, Sarah’s team need make a presentation to CEO about promoting Triple-F series for Fire Force Five firm. Josh has a great idea but Sarah doesn’t really want to listen to him. Instead of keeping silent, Josh decides to run into CEO and share his idea.

Sometime skipping positions to higher level people would be a good way since HRB’s manager only focused on his own business and is too scared of getting fired and hence he didn’t allow HRB to speak about his ideas to the top executive.

Trying to talk to the top executive about what he feels and explain the reasons why the polices won’t work in Arizona, get a patient, top executive might listen to HRB and reconsider about the changes they made. But learning from Sarah and Josh example, don’t try to contact with top executive without informing the Area Manager, as it’s really not respectful and will cause the Area Manager to get into big trouble. Moreover, if the top manager doesn’t really like his idea, HRB might get fired by Area manager.

HRB’s another option is leave the job and go work for Junior. The advantages of that include a pay hike, manager experience and freedom to run the organization he wants which is a very important personality trait for him. He visited one of Junior’s fitness clubs and saw employees are not motivated and figured that the biggest problem in Junior Company is lack of leadership skill and being well managed, which could give him a chance to showcase himself and make a big change in Junior’s Company.

Link to online simulations class, the Director of Product of Spectrum Sunglass Company want to make an innovation of their sunglass product, which needs to convince a lot of people and get their support to make the change. So what he did first is get some private interviews with higher hierarchy level, using awareness of the people and then use their ability to use their power to influence more people. Then walk the talk to other unaware people until everyone knows the issue. With CEO and consultant support, and providing internal and external skill; finally let most of the people in the company become an adopter.

Just like a member in Personalized fitness, employee in Junior Company won’t like changes. Especially from a manager, just new in the office, who lacks support and absence of power. So what HRB should do if he wants to make some changes in Junior’s Company is similar to the Director of Product, start off with small amount of people, by private interviews, building and providing internal/ external training and letting higher-level manager get involved and use their experience and contact to influence others to adopt the change. And also HRB could learn form the error that Director of Product made. Don’t try to convince everyone at the first beginning. People tend to reject changes, but they like to listen to friends or opinion of powerful people, so the most important thing for HRB if he decides to make some change in Junior’s Company is by recognizing the relationship between everyone.

However he is not sure of the personality and work ethic of Junior, which could end up being not only undoing the reasons he joined Junior's company but also in fact compounding them further. As Eddie’s advice, before he decides to work with Junior, he should first figure out what kinds of personality Junior has and who is reporting to him and calculate the risk between staying in old job facing demotion or bet his career in Junior’s company. It will be easier to make a change if everything turn out fine, but if it’s not he still can take the lesson form case Pierre Frankel in Moscow.

Headquarter sent Frankel to Russia to turn around a top priority subsidiary because the subsidiary in Russia was not making profit. When Frankel arrived he realized that the employees there were not motivated and he needed to make some changes. But the challenge for him is that people viewed him as an outsider and that it would be difficult to operate since everyone was afraid of Lebedev, Manager Director in Russia.

Frankel’s strategy using the Snowball effect that included setting some small goals for employees, leading them to achieve that then moving onto a bigger goal, and splitting workers into small teams which would motivated everyone thus ensuring no one was left behind. While at the same time he became close to Nadia, who shares a good relationship with Lebedev, in order to get resumes and influence Lebedev. Which could give HRB a good example if Junior turns out not supporting his idea to help the company grow. If HRB can’t get Junior’s cooperation, he could use a similar strategy as Frankel did in Moscow that does not directly offend Lebedev but start by changing small processes, motivating worker by achieving their goals or grouping them into team. But what Frankel did is overhead Lebedev’s power and made all the worker report to him, which doesn’t fit in HRB’s case. HRB should more focus on building relationship with Junior and try to make him onboard, like try to influence Junior by become close to Junior’s friend or workers who has good connection with Junior.

Either HRB decide to stay at is old job or leave to Junior’s company, both of his decision need to deal with changing, one is change company policies and another is change the way their manage worker. Changing is difficult, especially there isn’t much people support you and the change you made might impede the interest of others. In my opinion, I will suggest him do some research about Junior’s Company before he make up his mind. If the contract, which Junior offers him, turn out good, he should take the risk and go for it. It would be a good change for him to success in his career, as a person with ambitious and tend like taking risk; I believe he could use his previous work experience and change Junior’s Company, make it competitive with other fitness club.