Managing Up (A): Grace Custom Case Solution & Analysis

Case Evidence Brief

1. Financial and Performance Metrics

Grace Performance History: Consistently rated in the top 10 percent of managers over her seven-year tenure.
Team Output: Grace oversees a 12-person marketing team responsible for three major product lines representing 40 percent of regional revenue.
Budget Authority: Grace manages an annual marketing spend of 14 million dollars.
Landon Tenure: External hire brought in four months ago to oversee the department.

2. Operational Facts

Communication Frequency: Landon has cancelled or rescheduled 75 percent of scheduled weekly one-on-one meetings with Grace.
Process Friction: Landon frequently requests significant revisions to campaign briefs less than 24 hours before external agency deadlines.
Reporting Structure: Grace reports to Landon. Landon reports to Bill, the Senior Vice President who originally hired Grace.
Meeting Dynamics: In three recent executive committee meetings, Landon presented Grace’s team data without acknowledging her presence or contribution.

3. Stakeholder Positions

Grace: Feels undermined and isolated. Believes Landon lacks technical product knowledge and is prioritizing internal politics over market results.
Landon: Operates with a high-level, hands-off approach. Views Grace as overly focused on tactical details and potentially resistant to his new leadership style.
Bill: Remains largely unaware of the interpersonal friction. Values Grace for her historical results but expects Landon to modernize the marketing function.
The Marketing Team: Reporting low morale due to conflicting directions and last-minute fire drills caused by the disconnect between Grace and Landon.

4. Information Gaps

Landon Performance Mandate: The specific instructions Bill gave Landon upon hiring are not documented in the case.
Landon Feedback: There is no record of Landon providing a formal or informal performance critique to Grace during his first 120 days.
Peer Experiences: It is unclear if other managers reporting to Landon are experiencing similar communication breakdowns.

Strategic Analysis

1. Core Strategic Question

Grace must determine how to realign her working relationship with Landon to protect her team’s operational integrity and her own career trajectory without escalating to a point of irreparable professional damage.

2. Structural Analysis

Applying the Gabarro and Kotter Managing Up Framework reveals a fundamental mismatch in work styles and expectations. Grace is a high-touch, detail-oriented manager who relies on structure. Landon is a low-touch, macro-oriented leader who values flexibility and perhaps political optics. This is not a competence issue but a compatibility failure.

Power Dynamics: While Grace has expert power and historical credibility, Landon holds legitimate power and the ear of the Senior VP. Grace is currently operating from a position of diminishing influence because she has allowed the relationship to become reactive rather than proactive.

3. Strategic Options

Option A: Radical Transparency and Style Adaptation. Grace shifts her communication to match Landon’s macro style. She stops waiting for meetings and moves to short, high-impact digital updates. She explicitly asks Landon for his preferred involvement level in campaign briefs to prevent last-minute changes.

Trade-offs: Requires Grace to suppress her need for detailed feedback; risks Landon continuing his hands-off behavior without improvement.
Resources: Significant emotional intelligence and time for brief, frequent status summaries.

Option B: Formal Alignment Session. Grace requests a specific meeting focused solely on the working relationship, not tactical projects. She uses neutral language to describe the impact of cancelled meetings and late-stage revisions on team productivity.

Trade-offs: Landon may perceive this as a challenge to his authority or a sign that Grace is high-maintenance.
Resources: Data on team delays and missed agency deadlines to support the business case for better alignment.

Option C: Strategic Escalation to Bill. Grace uses her historical relationship with Bill to seek advice on navigating Landon’s style.

Trade-offs: High risk of being seen as going over Landon’s head; could permanently poison the relationship with her direct boss.
Resources: Requires a very delicate approach to frame the conversation as seeking mentorship rather than lodging a complaint.

4. Preliminary Recommendation

Grace should pursue Option A immediately, followed by Option B if responsiveness does not improve within two weeks. Escalation (Option C) is a terminal move and should be avoided until internal efforts are exhausted. Grace must stop viewing Landon as an obstacle and start viewing him as her most critical stakeholder who requires a specific, tailored communication product.

Implementation Roadmap

1. Critical Path

Phase 1: Communication Pivot (Days 1–14). Grace will cease requesting hour-long meetings. Instead, she will send a Monday Morning 5x5 email: 5 key wins, 5 upcoming deadlines, and 5 areas where Landon’s input is required by Wednesday.
Phase 2: The Alignment Meeting (Day 15). If the 5x5 goes unacknowledged, Grace will schedule a 30-minute session titled: Optimizing our workflow for Q3. She will present the agency deadline schedule and ask Landon to pick his points of intervention.
Phase 3: Stakeholder Re-engagement (Days 30–60). Grace will invite Landon to lead a team meeting, giving him the stage to share his vision. This reduces his need to take credit in executive sessions by giving him a platform internally.

2. Key Constraints

Landon Ego: Any suggestion that Landon is failing will trigger defensiveness. The plan must be framed as increasing his efficiency.
Team Burnout: The marketing team is the collateral damage of this friction. Grace must shield them from the process changes until the new workflow is stabilized.

3. Risk-Adjusted Implementation Strategy

The primary risk is that Landon is intentionally marginalizing Grace to bring in his own team. To mitigate this, Grace must document all outreach and performance wins. If Landon continues to cancel meetings and ignores the 5x5 updates, the contingency is to move to a formal performance discussion with HR present, using the documented trail of missed communications as evidence of operational risk.

Executive Review and BLUF

1. BLUF

Grace is currently failing to manage her most critical professional dependency. Her history of high performance has created a false sense of security, leading her to treat Landon as a peer to be corrected rather than a superior to be managed. To preserve her 14 million dollar budget and 12-person team, Grace must immediately pivot from a reactive posture to a proactive, macro-level communication strategy. She must stop seeking a mentor in Landon and start providing him with the executive-level briefings he requires to look successful to his own superiors. Failure to adapt within the next 30 days will lead to her marginalization or exit.

2. Dangerous Assumption

The analysis assumes Landon’s behavior is a result of a different work style or lack of experience. There is a material possibility that Landon’s behavior is a deliberate strategy to force Grace out so he can install a leadership team of his own choosing. If the intent is malicious rather than stylistic, adaptation will fail.

3. Unaddressed Risks

Reputational Contagion: If Landon is perceived poorly by Bill, Grace’s close association with the department’s current friction may damage her standing regardless of her individual performance. (Probability: Medium; Consequence: High).
Agency Relationship Decay: Continued last-minute revisions will lead to increased costs and talent flight at the external marketing agencies. (Probability: High; Consequence: Medium).

4. Unconsidered Alternative

Grace should consider an internal lateral move. Given her seven-year tenure and top-tier ratings, she likely has significant social capital in other departments. If the initial 14-day communication pivot yields no change in Landon’s responsiveness, securing a transfer before a formal performance conflict occurs would preserve her career trajectory without the risk of a public fallout.