Essay HBR Case Study – Welcome Aboard – Arts & Humanities Assignment Help

Assignment Task

The folks at Lakeland Wonders were thrilled when they got a new CEO with fresh, bold ideas- until she started to act on them.

CHERYL HAILSTROM checked her wristwatch as she made her way toward the office of Mark Dawson, her senior vice president of operations, it was only 6:30 PM, but the building seemed deserted. “That’s another thing that’s going to have to change if we’re going to make it in the twenty-first century” she muttered to herself.

The thick report she carried-the one on manufacturing strategy that Mark had prepared-weighed heavily on her mind. It was clear that Mark had no intention of moving quickly to make her vision of the company a reality. He didn’t even seem to understand that vision, much less buy in to it. But she had waited long enough. The time had come to set him straight – if, that is, he hadn’t already bolted for home like everyone else.

Cheryl was just approaching her six-month anniversary as the CEO of Lake-land Wonders. A manufacturer of high-quality wooden toys, it had three plants in Minnesota and almost 5,000 employees. Brought in when Walter Swensen IV was ready to retire and it was clear that none of his children wanted to take an active role in the business, she was the first person from outside the family to hold the top job. But she wasn’t entirely a newcomer. Her relationship with the company had started years earlier when she was the general merchandise manager, and later the COO, of one of Lake-land’s largest customers, Kids&Company, an upscale retail chain based in Chicago. Cheryl had worked with Lake-land to develop new products for which Kids&Company had six-month exciusives; many of those became best-sellers.