Assignment: The Progressive Case Study
The Green Organization serves all socioeconomic groups across the globe. The Real Estate Holdings group leases and sells luxury apartments in Manhattan. They also own and manage a portfolio of homes they lease to the disadvantaged, or severely infirm. The teams employed in this group range from high end real estate sales to the socially conscious leasing agent, a broad spectrum.
The Mergers and Acquisitions group buys and sells companies across the globe. The group not only does this for the Green Organization, they also broker business sales, mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships for clients. Brokers work with current and prospective clients to determine what the right business is, how to structure the deal, fix and flip, and business development. Personnel are diverse in professional sales and business skills. The average employee in this group has a minimum BA and 10 years in this industry. Turnover is very low. All personnel are well compensated.
The Finance Group provides funding and investing sources for the other groups as well as external clients. Clients can include automobile dealerships, lines of credit at retail stores, personal loans, and micro loans. The group manages a portfolio of around $10 Billion. The company owns 50% of the portfolio. The remaining 50% is client funds. The personnel range from Aggressive hard driving sales people working with large organization to fund development or sell loan portfolios to the small business lender and individual lender to make micro-loans (amounts under 10K) to start a business.
Consider this:
1. Based on your reading of the case information above as well as in Hale and Pershing this week, describe your target audience. Who would you work best with and why? Please explain your answer.
2. Describe what demographic audience would you not work well with and why. Please explain your answer.
3. View the clip on about Caterpillar- Running Learning Like a Business (2:37) and comment on Dave Vance's (former President of Caterpillar University) view of performance consulting. What parts of his discussion point out the strategic influence a performance consultant needs to possess within an organization?