FIERCE & GOODWAY GROUP CASE STUDY
After Goodway’s workforce began working remotely in 2010, the company started experiencing an unexpected challenge: employees, working in project teams of five to 15 people to develop digital ad campaigns for clients, became more reluctant to give direct feedback to each other.
Whenever an employee had a concern, they’d raise the issue with their manager rather than speaking directly to the team member. This created a “horseshoe process” in which team issues were first elevated to managers, then brought back down to their direct reports to be addressed.
This process quickly became complicated by the fact that Goodway’s project teams are cross-functional, with employees from a range of departments such as sales, media, and client operations. As a result, they often had different managers, which meant that managers from various departments were spending a lot of time fielding these complaints and trying to sort out what had happened to solve the problem.
