Conflict in the workplace

This past summer I had an internship in the beverages division of PepsiCo. It was an interesting time to intern at the company as there were a lot of changes happening both in the industry and in the organization. First, Cook county was about to pass a penny per ounce tax on any sugar beverages which was going to have a huge impact on Pepsi’s business, but the extent of the impact was uncertain which influenced employees’ attitudes and performance.

The second change happening on the organization was a structural change where now, my unit in Muster Indiana would be under the Chicagoland market. We used to have a Northwestern Indiana division with a market director that sat in the Munster office, but since he was transferred to Iowa, the Munster unit no longer had a market director to report to and therefore was “included” in the Chicago Area district.  

The “collusion” of the Munster unit into the Chicagoland market meant that now we had to follow their procedures and reach the same results as the other locations in the market. This caused tension with the employees because now Munster lost the freedom to deal with its own market restrictions and targets.

A little about the area covered by the Munster location; it bordered Cook County, which meant that the Chicago market director Brad, expected Munster to pick up all the lost demand due to the tax in what we called the “collar area”

Here is a map to illustrate the cook county and the collar area surrounding it, which is supplied by the Munster location.

Brad put Munster under a microscope. He would make surprise visits and literally drive up and down the streets of the collar area entering every single small format establishment (mainly gas station convenience stores) inspecting to see how much space we held in each store the expiration dates, pricing and displays. Making a reference to B&D’s management styles, Brad was an ISTJ (introverted, sensing, thinking and judging). Any single miss would be noted and taken into the attention of Jessica, the small format sales manager responsible for the area.

A little about Jessica, she was on her last year of the 3-year rotation program and on her mid-20’s. She started on this role at the beginning of the year and therefore was not used to all this pressure and change. Her team consisted of 20 sales reps with some of them working for the firm for over 20 years. This alone created some conflict, a young woman with less than 3 years in the industry trying to manage a group of mainly older man who now have to report to her.

To add to the pressure, one of the sales rep on her team, Jose, had been stalling and not visiting all the clients on his route. She was informed of this by a “relief” sales rep and had a one on one talk to him. I cannot tell you the details of his conversation, since I was not present, so I am not sure if she was explicit on the expectations and where Jose was falling short.

Jose’s performance also drew the attention of the market director Brad, who could check the time that Jose would scan in/out of the stores. He noticed that the scans were less than 5 minutes apart, which meant that Jose was not physically visiting the stores, but likely taking the order through phone calls.

The B&D book states on page 66 “Many improvement efforts fail not because manager’s intentions are incorrect or insincere but because they are unable to handle the social challenges of change.” I believe this applied to Jessica’s position, in this situation. She wanted to make the area outstanding, and knew about the lack of effort from some of the people on her team, but being kind of new to the role, the pressure put on her made it more difficult for her to adapt to the change and help her employees thrive.

Jessica was able to reach the “conscious and verbal level” which was reflected on the conversations she had with her team about what they had to do and how they were supposed to do it. But was not able to identify the “hot” cognition- the emotionally charged attitudes, that operated outside of the awareness. This was mainly the frustration of the employees because of the increased “surveillance” and demands.

Brad the market director also had a very assertive authoritative management style, where people under him would get the job/task done but out of fear not joy. This was made clear when he told Jessica she had to fire Jose. Just like the Harry vs. Anne case mentioned in the book, Brad did not give Jessica the freedom to deal with the situation as she saw fit, and instead dismissed Jose from her team. As market director he has the right to do so, and it might even have been the best choice.

The conflict came to an end with Jose having to leave the company. I did not know Jose very well but knew that he had been with the company for over 10 years so I can only assume that he got “comfortable” and might even have been acting opportunistically this whole time assuming that since Jessica was new to this position she wouldn’t fire him, therefore he could keep doing what he was doing without any consequences. But I believe that Jessica was the one who should have decided whether she wanted to keep him on the team or let him go.

This episode clearly sent a message to the other employees that Brad was not kidding and that there would be consequences for those who don’t fulfil the company’s expectations. My internship ended briefly after this happened so I don’t really know what was the “post-morten” of the situation, but I do know that the tax was appealed so I wonder if the sales reps fell like all that extra demand was worthless.