Jerry Dial is 35 years old and is the vice president of the International Accounting Department, reporting to

Betty Farragher, group vice president of accounting. Betty reports to the CFO, and both Betty and the CFO are frustrated with Jerry’s productivity over the past few years. They feel that they should not toss him out yet. Jerry is the son of the CFO’s best friend and fraternity brother, and Jerry practically grew up in the CFO’s house.

Jerry started working for XYZ 14 years ago directly after graduating from Penn State with a degree in accounting. He earned his CPA soon thereafter. He moved up the ladder of management quite quickly, becoming the director of international accounting at age 28. When all director positions were retitled vice president in 2008, Jerry became the company’s youngest VP. While working at XYZ, Jerry also got a master’s degree in business administration (MBA), for which the company paid.

In 2009, Jerry was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and took FMLA leave for 6 weeks. When Jerry returned, his production level markedly decreased, and his personality had changed from being a driven but easy-to-get-along-with kind of guy to cynical, snappish, and often overwhelmed. His role requires long hours and frequent travel. His illness has impacted his ability to travel, so in line with his authority as VP, he has delegated a good portion of the travel to a member of his team, Francesca Corlione. Jerry manages a department of 25 accountants, three of whom are direct reports to him; those three manage the others. Francesca manages 10 accountants, and her frequent travel means that her team sees her very little. Her team members have a lot more free time and flexibility than the other two teams do. When she is out of the office, she has one of her folks “oversee her flock,” as she puts it, and most of them goof off.

Francesca enjoys travel, perhaps a bit too much, because she spends a great deal of her work trips shopping and seeing the sights, and a few of XYZ’s global partners and foreign department heads are complaining that she is very hard to pin down when she is in their locations. Francesca was selected for this role because her ability to speak multiple languages makes it possible to send her overseas without an interpreter, which saves the company considerably; thus, Jerry has overlooked her penchant for play. Further, Jerry is concerned that if he comes down too hard on Francesca, the travel role will fall back to him, and his wife has forbidden him to travel more than once a year as his doctor has recommended. Even that trip seems to set him back in his treatments and condition’s stability each year.

Francesca is 38 years old and has an associate’s degree in accounting and bachelor’s degrees in Chinese, French, and German. She also has her CPA license, although the license lapsed last year due to her not completing her continuing education requirements. (One of the company requirements for all senior level accounting employees is that they have valid, current CPA licenses from at least one state in the United States or an equivalent license from a foreign country.) The company pays for all continuing education requirements for required licensing.

The HR director is mainly concerned because the project Francesca and Jerry are working on with their global partners and foreign departments is behind schedule—seriously behind schedule. The entire company is trying to switch from the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) methods. The goal was to have the entire accounting system shifted by 6 months ago, and the board of directors is concerned. It appears the entire project may need to be restarted. Due to Jerry’s illness and Francesca’s knack for finding other things to focus on besides work and school, neither of them is up to speed on the changes, and it is time to get things redirected. Further, as a result of the HR department’s downsizing, no performance appraisals have been done for the last 3 years, and Jerry’s other two direct reports are starting to threaten to quit. Each has filed confidential complaints with the HR department because Francesca is not managing her team (because she is doing Jerry’s work) and her team is not doing its share of work.

Your consulting group has been asked to come up with some solutions and ideas on getting this project and department back on track through training and/or development of Jerry and Francesca.

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