Avon Products Case Study

1. Provide a brief description of the status of the company that led to its determination that a change was necessary.

In 2006, Avon Products success story turned ugly. After five straights years of ten percent plus growth and twenty-five percent operating profit growth under CEO Andrea Jung, the company suddenly began losing profits. One of the main reasons of this lost was the fast growth of Avon that couldn't be supported by its employees. As with many growing organizations the structure, people and processes that were right for a $5 billion company were not necessarily a good fit for a ten billion dollar company (Goldsmith & Carter, 2010, p.2). There were weaknesses that hurt the effectiveness of the employees at the talent management practices.

Decisions on talent movement, promotions, and other key talent activities were often influenced as much by individual knowledge and emotion as by objective facts. Neither managers nor Associates have any idea about how the talent practices work. Even the HR department wasn't sufficient to answer basic questions that might be asked by managers like "What will happen to me if I don't do this?" (Goldsmith & Carter, 2010). Thus, changing at the talent management practices was a necessity for the company in order to increase the operation profits.

2. Identify the model for change theory typified in the case study of your choice. Discuss what led you to identify the model that you did.

The change theory typified in Avon Products case study is the 360 degree assessment process along with performance management and succession planning this would deliver the expected results if they were consistently and flawlessly executed. They used this method to build talent practices that were easy to implement. The proposed talent management model was integrated business and human resources strategy, talent management processes, organizational culture, provides a systemic approach, and results in having talented leaders and individuals available to accomplish the mission of the organization. One of the most simple and powerful changes was to bring transparency to every talent practice.

Avon's 360 degree assessment process was hardly a model of transparency when the turnaround began. The new team leader requested copies of each VP's 360 degree assessment due to understand common behavioral strengths and weaknesses. A new, much simpler 360 was designed and implemented that explicitly stated that proper managerial and leadership behaviors were critical for a leader's success at Avon. (Goldsmith & Carter, 2010, p.5). Helping to make the transition to transparency easier, the new 360 assessments and report differed from typical tools that rate the participants on proficiency in various areas.

3. Illustrate the types of evaluation information that were collected and how they are used to benefit the company.

The type of evaluation information that was collected was from complex to simple, from egalitarian to differentiated, from episodic to disciplined, from meaningless to consequential, from opaque to transparent, from emotional to factual and from meaningless to consequential. Leaders know what is required to be successful, how to measure the situation, how HR and management can assist them, and the consequences of higher and lower performance. They know their performance rating, their potential ratings and how they can change each of those. They actively differentiated levels of Avon talent and provided each level with the appropriate experience. Their highest potential leaders understand how management feels about them, and they see a commensurate investment. Their lower performing leaders get the attention they need (Silzer & Dowell, 2010).

Managers do the right thing for their associates both because the barriers have been lower than what they previously built and because management helped