Case

Conflict at ToyKing 1 Karen Washington was fuming as she marched back to her workspace. “How could that arrogant, so-and-so do that to me!” she thought. She had just come from the presentation of her new toy concept to the executives of new Product Development and marketing at ToyKing’s Design Studio. It wasn’t that the presentation went poorly – quite the opposite had happened, in fact. Both Max Carroll (the head of New Product Development) and Sherry Greenberg (the head of Marketing) loved Karen’s idea and prototype for a new interactive toy city where children were able to assign names and personalities to programmable character pieces. Sherry called it a “brame-breaking” concept that would revolutionize the Toy City line of products. Even more exciting, Max had said that the toy concept was a front-runner to be featured in ToyKing’s exhibit at next year’s American International Toy Fair, the largest and most prestigious trade show in the toy business. What was bothering Karen was that senior designer, Jeff Chang, had taken over the presentation, without Karen’s permission, and had basically claimed credit for the toy concept. As the senior on the project team, Jeff was, technically, in charge of all design projects. Yet, the culture at ToyKing allowed junior designers to take the lead on projects they had conceived. Further, these designers were often allowed to take control of formal presentation on their ideas, and to guide revisions to the designs following meetings with new Product Development and Marketing. Karen had assumed that she would be allowed to present the idea to Max and Sherry, and had developed a PowerPoint presentation for the meeting at Jeff’s request. After Jeff saw it, he said it was great, and that he would like to “introduce” the new design to Max and Sherry at the meeting using the PowerPoint. Karen thought that Jeff meant that he would merely start the presentation, and then hand it over to her following a brief introduction. But Jeff didn’t do that. He made the entire presentation, using Karen’s PowerPoint, and only referred to her briefly in his remarks and during the Q&A. In Karen’s mind, Jeff had stolen credit for her idea, and used how own PowerPoint to do it!

Background on ToyKing

What Was it Like to Work at ToyKing? ToyKing was a large, U.S. based toy design and manufacturing company that specialized in educational toys and games. The company headquarters were located in Torrance, CA, and included a large Design Studio department that housed over 60 toy designers, along with another 20 technicians and fabricators. The Design Studio had a very flat organizational hierarchy with just two ranks; junior designers and senior designers. Senior Designers made up about 15 of the total designers (the remaining 45 were junior designers), and were typically long-time employees (10 years or longer at ToyKing). Senior designers had supervisory

1 ​Adapted from the work of Kimberley D. Elsbach.

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responsibilities for all the projects that were underway in the Design Studio, but junior designers could (and often would) be seen as the “creative lead” on design projects that they spearheaded. ToyKing produced about 200 new toy concepts per year. These toy concepts ranged from minor modifications to the design of a toy car, or to a completely new toy system (such as a new toy system involving interlocking toy bricks). Of these 200 new concepts, about 50 of these would be put into pilot programs, and about 20 would ultimately be produced for retail sale. For each of the 50 pilot programs, a senior designer would construct a team of 3-5 members, including junior designers, technicians and fabricators.

What were ToyKing’s Best Sellers? ToyKing’s most successful product line was ToyCity. The Toy City line included packaged sets of interlocking and customizable toy houses, stores, streets, parks, and other structures that kids could construct to make an entire working city. Kids could also add people, pets, cars, trucks, and construction machinery to the city. Although the packages came with suggested construction ideas, kids could modify these designs and construct completely original designs for the structures in their one-of-a-kind cities. This feature was what made ToyCity so popular that they won several awards at the American International Toy Fair. ToyCity was considered the crown jewel of the ToyKing product line, and there was fierce competition among designers to design components for this line. Working on the ToyCity line was seen as one of the best ways to win design awards and move up from junior to senior design.

Background on Karen’s Toy Concept The events occurring over the previous three months during the development of Karen’s toy concept are important in understanding what happened in the presentation. The concept was born during a lunchtime conversation between Karen and two other junior designers on her team.

Three Months Ago: Lunch at Mo’s Karen, and two other junior designers, Sam Gupta and Cassie Wu, were having their weekly lunch out at Mo’s, a hip diner in Santa Monica that attracted more unknown artists and musicians than celebrity television and movie actors. While waiting for their triple espressos to arrive, Karen decided to tell Sam and Cassie about a “wild-brained” idea she had for an interactive spin on ToyKing’s popular ToyCity line of toys. As Karen explained, “The ToyCity line is a huge hit with kids ages 4-9 because it allows them to make their own “city” and continue to add on to it as they acquire more pieces. The customizability of the line is what kids love.” Karen went on,

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“What could be even cooler, is if the kids could program some of the play pieces (e.g., the people and pets) so that they had their own personalities and would remember past interaction with other play pieces.” In Karen’s concept, kids would be able to provide the people and pet pieces with personalities, ages, voices, and genders through a simple program installed in each play piece. Then, these programmed play pieces could interact with other play pieces based on these personalities and their actual past play experiences. For example, a play piece resembling a dog could be named “Spot” and given a super-energetic personality. This play piece would then ask all other play pieces who greeted it to play ball or go for a run. If it interacted with another play piece (resembling a child, for example) that it had played with before, it would remember that instance and talk about it with the “child” play piece. Both Sam and Cassie though this was a very cool idea indeed. They hashed out the details with Karen over the next hour and a half, making notes on napkins and coasters. By the end of lunch, karen, Sam and Cassie felt they had an idea worthy of the American International Toy Fair. Sam and Cassie both encouraged Karen to pursue it with their Senior Designer, Jeff Chang, at that week’s staff meeting. Sam also mentioned that Karen should make the cars, trucks, and machines programmable, because a recent focus group with kids had revealed that they like to give these objects personalities. Karen was inspired by their enthusiasm and promised to include them in the design team.

Staff Meeting with Jeff Chang Later that week, Karen followed up on Sam and Cassie’s suggestion and presented a more polished version of her idea to the entire work group and their Senior Designer, Jeff Chang. Jeff though the idea had merit, but wondered about the cost and the difficulty that kids might have programming their play pieces. He gave Karen permission to pursue the idea and a small budget with which to develop some prototypes. At her suggestion, Jeff put Karen on a team with Sam and Cassie, along with a technician and fabricator. He said he’d look at the idea in prototype in six weeks.

Six Weeks Later: Prototype Presentation After six weeks of late nights and constant tinkering, Karen – with the help of a technician and fabricator – had build prototypes of several programmable play pieces for the ToyCity line. She hated to admit it, but working with technician Andy Sprague, and fabricator Mike Camacho, had been really productive. In fact, these two lowly staff members had helped Karen not only to produce the prototypes, but had come up with some cool new features for the play pieces. For instance, Mike, a former welder and electrician, had suggested that they use waterproof, underwater welding materials to encase the computer chips, so that even if kids threw them in the bathtub, they would still work. In fact, they would work with ToyCity’s new DiveCity – an underwater research vessel with scuba divers that could be used in the tub or a swimming pool. In addition, Andy, a computer designer and rendering specialist helped Karen to design a

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hand-held programming device that play pieces would be “seated” in and then easily programmed through a simple menu of commands. Working with Andy and Mike had been so easy and productive in fact, that Karen had avoided meeting with her junior designer teammates, Sam and Cassie, during the past six weeks. She really felt that she owned this project and should be given latitude to make all the decisions, because it was her original idea. As technicians and fabricators, Andy and Mike would not challenge her ideas and not be upset if she vetoed their suggestions. By contrast, Karen knew that the other junior designers on her team (Sam and Cassie) would want to change some of her ideas, and she did not want to give them the chance to do that. She knew that their ideas would not be as good as her own, and they would really slow down the design process. She thought if she waited until right before the prototype presentation to fill them in, it would be too late to make changes to the design. So that’s what she did, and now she was about to reveal her prototypes to the team. The presentation took place in the 3rd Floor Conference room, with view of the Pacific Ocean. In attendance were all of the design teams presenting ideas. This included senior designers, junior designers, and the technicians and fabricators that had been working on the projects to be presented. Karen opened the presentation by thanking Jeff Chang for the opportunity to pursue her idea for the ToyCity line. She then brought out the prototypes and hand-held programmer, and demonstrated how the pieces would work. Her teammates were surprised that she had moved so far in the design process without consulting them, and had many questions about the design. In particular, Sam asked why she had programmed just the people and pets in her prototypes, and why she hadn’t made the cards, machines, and other structures programmable. As he noted, “Karen, I thought we had talked about allowing the cars and trucks and machines to have personalities? You know that was something our kids’ focus group showed to be important. Why did you leave that feature out?” Karen brushed off this comment and said, “Well, we never agreed to that. And it’s too late to make that change anyway.” Karen quickly finished up the presentation to avoid any other suggestions from Sam and Cassie, and thanked everyone for coming. As everyone filed out of the conference room, Jeff Chang stopped Karen and said, “Karen, I really like the concept, and I’m ready to move the project forward to the next stage. I want to include it in my presentation to the Heads of New Product Development and Marketing in six weeks. Do you think you can have a full line of play pieces, and some marketing ideas by then?” Karen was surprised but delighted, “Of course I can!” she said. Then Jeff went on to say, “Just make sure you keep me up to date on your progress. I want to meet with you once a week between now and then so that I can make sure this thing is ready. I know what these honchos

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want, and I want to make sure I’m ready for them.” Karen said, “Sure, no problem. I’ll schedule the meetings right away.” As Karen walked away she could help but smile. This was better than she had expected. She was on her way to an award at the American International Toy Fair for sure.

Today’s Presentation Six weeks later, and the big presentation was about to begin. Karen had gone over the presentation in detail with Jeff Chang the previous week. Jeff had added several of his own edits to the final slides, and had convinced Karen that he should take the lead on “introducing” the presentation because he “understood what these corporate honchos wanted to hear”. Jeff mentioned that he would call on Karen when he needed her, but that he had a good idea about how to position the concept so that it go the green light for further development. Karen really wanted to make the presentation, but she wanted more for the project to be approved. So she agreed to let Jeff make the presentation. Jeff began the presentation with some witty banter with Max Carroll and Sherry Greenberg, and then moved into the financial summaries of last year’s best sellers. After a half an hour of financial reviews, Karen was getting impatient. When was Jeff going to talk about her idea? Why was he spending so much time talking about the profit margins on ToyCity and DiveCity from last year? Finally, Jeff got to the new toy concepts. He said he would present three ideas. He began with two rather lackluster improvements on the ToyCity toddler line. These were not hit ideas, and Karen did not understand why he was even presenting them. He then presented Karen’s idea for the “Programmable ToyCity Line”. Jeff was really good, Karen had to admit. He showed Max and Sherry clips of kids’ focus groups, and highlighted the kids saying they wanted their toys to have personalities and be “their friends”. He also showed Max and Sherry how much kids loved the underwater DiveCity line. Then he brought out the prototypes for Karen’s toy concept. He showed Max and Sherry how the play pieces could be programmed to have personalities and become friends with each other and with the kids. He also showed them how the play pieces could even be sued with the DiveCity line due to their waterproof welding feature. Throughout the presentation Karen was tempted to speak up and offer more information, but Jeff never gave her the chance. In fact, other than pointing out that she was the junior designer who had come up with the concept during the Q&A, Jeff never said one work to or about Karen the entire time. Max and Sherry loved the idea and congratulated Jeff on another winning concept. They both said that they looked forward to seeing the full line at next year’s American International Toy Fair, and patted Jeff on the back as they left. Jeff hustled after them and asked if they could go to coffee to talk about a few other things. Smiling, the three left without saying another word to Karen.

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Later, back at her desk, Karen was still fuming about the meeting. Karen was practically screaming inside as she thought to herself, “That jerk Jeff took all the credit and stole my idea. I’d be surprised if my name goes on it at all at the Toy Fair!”

Scenario One: At lunch on Monday Karen appears at Mo’s where many of the junior designers escape for lunch. You, Sam, and Cassie are sitting on the patio enjoying a well deserved respite from the cubicle jungle that is ToyCity. Karen pulls up a chair and joins the group. She promptly begins complaining about Jeff and his “antics” from the presentation the week before. Sam and Cassie quickly finish up their lunch and excuse themselves – leaving you and Karen at the table. Also a junior designer at ToyKing, you know very well the details of Karen’s project. In fact, thanks to your working relationships with Sam, Cassie, Andy and Mike, you may have more information about how things transpired than even Karen does. Karen recounts her story, yet again, and then surprises you by asking, “What should I do now?” As a fellow junior designer, a colleague to all parties involved, and a direct report to Jeff, what would you suggest she do now? How will you convince her that your advice is sound? Prepare a response to Karen. Keep in mind that this a professional scenario. Work to reply as you would if you really were an employee at Toy King.

Organizational Chart for Scenario One:

Scenario Two: You are a senior executive at ToyKing overseeing Marketing and Product Development. Max and Sherry, your direct reports, have provided you with a brief on a promising new development that has arisen from the Design Studio called the “Programmable ToyCity Line”. The numbers look good, and the marketing research supports the idea. All in all, you are pleased that this area of the firm is working so effectively. You wrestle yourself away from the windows in your corner office and prepare to return your attention to areas that aren’t working as well when the peace of your corner office is abruptly interrupted by a ferocious knock on your door. You haven’t time to even look up from your desk when a young woman storms through the door and

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demands to be heard. She quickly reports that she is the junior designer that was solely responsible for the “Programmable ToyCity Line” proposal and that you need to hear what she has to say. You are taken aback, and whether due to shock, curiosity or some sense of concern for her mental well being, patiently invite the young woman to sit, and share what she has to say. Karen recounts the tale of injustice she’s experienced while you listen attentively. Once she is finished, you commend her on her fine work with the “Programmable ToyCity Line” and you sincerely thank her for confiding in you. You assure her that you will consider this new information very carefully and will get back to her by week’s end. Once Karen leaves your office and returns to work – what do you do? How do you know this is the best course of action? Outline your course of action and provide supporting rationale. Keep in mind that this a professional scenario. Work to reply as you would if you really were a senior executive at Toy King.

Organizational Chart for Scenario Two:

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