Warren Oats was a high-performing employee for American Auto Suppliers, a Chicago-based company that manufactures OEM specialty parts for Ford, GM and Chrysler. Due to his excellent performance as a maintenance engineer, Oats was promoted to a senior management position, overseeing a division of more than fifty employees spread across different locations. Oats was confused. He has enormous experience as an engineer but not as a manager. Sitting in his office thinking about his new leadership responsibilities, he came to the conclusion that the key question is how to push employees to work harder, to increase their contribution. and record new successes for him and for the company. Oats believed that what helped him become a successful employee and get promoted was the way he did things. So he decided to get the staff to take this path. He began by introducing new rules and regulations that would change the culture of the division so that employees would follow his steps in carrying out their tasks. He announced new monetary incentives to increase productivity. He redesigned the workflow, reformulated the work groups and modified a number of operational procedures. He also canceled the current ideas program because he felt it was unnecessary as he owned all the successful ideas that led to his promotion. With a desire to succeed, Oats asked his front-line supervisors to monitor their employees and eliminate any idle time; he further asked them to identify those who would not obey the new way of working. He also decided to cancel the planned monthly meeting with all groups. All in all, Oats thought, things should be much better. Production should have increased and his approach should result in much higher levels of productivity and profits and, therefore, further success for him as an employee. But that didn't happen. Oats felt people weren't doing their best. Appraisal reports indicate that performance was only slightly better than before his appointment. But the company's human resources department began to notice that absenteeism and sick leave rates had increased, turnover had increased significantly, and the costs of recruiting, selecting new personnel and training had increased accordingly. Management decided to deal with the situation. and conducted an investigation.