Case 2 Building an Exercise Facility
Setting: Insurance Company; Your Position: President
Many firms build exercise facilities for use by employees. At its last meeting, your board of directors authorized the expenditure of funds for this purpose if a suitable location could be found. They argued that insurance companies, which are in the business of selling life and medical insurance, should be among the leaders in this movement toward better health.
Your group of vice presidents were in support of the board's initiative and have been a source of many ideas, none of which, unfortunately, have come to fruition. The key difficulty is that your firm is currently fully occupying two floors of a high-rise office complex, and it is not clear where the exercise facility could be housed.
Yesterday you learned that a small firm with offices immediately below yours was closing its doors and moving to a different city. It is a little bit larger than you would need, but the costs would be consistent with the amount approved by the board. You sense that you just stumbled onto a great opportunity which, given the current market for office space, won't be around for very long. Your next scheduled meeting is in two days, at which time a final decision is to be made on a reorganization plan on which they have been working for several months.
In the past you have tried to involve your vice presidents in decisions such as this one, and it has paid off in terms of better decisions and enhancing their identity as a team. Should you act on your own so as to avoid losing this great opportunity or seek to involve the team in some way before making this decision?