Bill Lawrence has been an employee at Huntington Manufacturing for nearly fifteen years. During this time, he's steadily worked his way up from a frontline worker to management. Plaques and awards hang on the walls of his office, and he's received excellent remarks on past annual reviews.

In short, Bill was an exemplary employee. Six months ago. the normally prompt Bill began arriving at least fifteen minutes late, and now he is always the first to leave whether the day's work was done or not. He stopped arriving to meetings with ideas fully formulated and slowly stopped offering ideas or comments. Bill had always been committed to working weekends during the times when labor was particularly busy, to make sure the products got out one way or another. Now, Bill is content to sign a piece of paper and rest the project completion on hope and the efforts of the foremen beneath him.

Jim Donavan is Bill's direct supervisor, and is completely befuddled by the drastic changes in Bill. Jim's never had to worry about motivating Bill because Bill was the first to energize everyone else on the team. Bill is no longer meeting his previous excellent standard of achievement, and he's now falling below the minimum performance standards. Jim has always valued Bill as an employee, and more than that, he personally likes Bill.

First, Jim simply tried talking with Bill about current goals and objectives, but Bill's performance did not change. Next, Jim reminded Bill frequently about the large number of people depending upon his leadership; still, Bill did not change his work pattern. Jim wondered if, after fifteen years, Bill was finding himself bored in his current position, so Jim proposed a lateral move within Huntington or the opportunity for professional development. Neither idea seemed to change Bill's behavior. Jim knew that Bill's youngest child just left for college about six months ago, but Bill hadn't expressed any concern about that prior to the event. Jim wonders if there was something else going on at home that was deeply affecting his once model employee's motivation to achieve. Jim begins to wonder how much longer he can afford to retain Bill in given his current poor performance.

What should Jim do? Why?