John Smithers Case Study

Change can be difficult in many situations because it is easy to get complacent and stuck in our ways. In a corporate setting change can be even more difficult. On a corporate level change will involve many people, many departments, and even a whole corporate culture. In the case of John Smithers he was asked to implement a new quality control system for the company he worked for. In the end the program never gained any traction and John felt his days were numbered because some staff changes were already being made. There were a few things that John could have done differently to prevent putting himself into this situation. These include not listening to his initial instincts or gut feeling, not getting enough involvement from ownership,

Smithers even said when he took on the position, ”I am skeptical about the ability to effect change.” There were already many factors that gave him concern including that a program of this sort might raise worker’s expecting too high. Also Smithers knew that the separation between engineering and operations already existed to an extreme between the two departments at Sigtek. He had already had many run-ins with his counterpart, Sam Murphy, who would be leading the quality change program in the operations side. Smithers said it was a joke saying, “It was like putting oil and water together.” With all of these known concerns Smithers should have listened to his intuition and passed on the position or strongly brought up these concerns for before accepting it. Even with all these doubts he felt obligated and wanted to show loyalty to the company. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio of the University of Southern California tells us that it is important to pay attention to "somatic markers." They send messages that something just feels right—or it doesn’t. The more you pay attention to the outcome of trusting your intuition in combination with facts, the better your future decision-making can become. cite: @. (2015). Scientific Proof That Your Gut Is Best At Making Decisions. Retrieved September 18, 2016,