Leadership/Management Caselette SMA Sales Engineering Division When SMA International Corporation, a manufacturer of refinery equipment and other gadgets, hired Herbert Ravi Dacanay to manage its Sales Engineering Division, company executives informed him of the urgent situation. Sales Engineering Division, with 20 sale engineers, was the highest-paid, best educated and trained, and least-productive Division in the company. The instruction to Dacanay: Turn the Division around! Herbert Ravi Dacanay mulled things over and one of the first things that he did was to call for a meeting of all the engineers. He showed great and sincere concern for their personal welfare but asked point blank: \"What's the problem? Why can't the Division produce? Why does the Division have low output and high turnover of engineers?\" Without hesitation, the employees launched a hail of complaints. \"I was hired as a sales engineer, not a pencilpusher.\" Another grumblingly voiced, \"We spend over half of our time writing daily asinine reports in triplicate for top management, and no one reads the reports, anyway.\" Another said, \"We have to account for every peso which doesn't give us time to work with customers or keep abreast with new developments.\" After a two-hour discussion, Dacanay began to envision a future in which engineers were free to work with customers and join self-directed teams for product improvement. Dacanay concluded he had to get top management off the sales engineers' back. He then promised the engineers, \"My job is to stay out of your way so you can do your work, and I'll try to keep top management off your backs, too!\" He called for the day's reports and issued an order effective immediately that all copies (triplicates) of reports be turned in daily to his office rather than submitted and/or mailed to head office. For the next three weeks, technical and other needed reports piled up on his desk. By month's end, the stack of papers in his office was nearly six (6) feet high. All this time, nobody called for the reports. When other managers entered his office and saw the stack of papers, they usually asked, \"What's all this?\" Dacanay answered, \"Daily Reports.\" No one asked to read them, though. Finally, at the end of the month, a secretary-clerk from Finance Division called and asked for the Monthly Travel and Expense report. Dacanay responded, \"Please inform your Boss to meet me at the President's Office at Head Office tomorrow at 9:30 in the morning.\" He then instructed his secretary to call the President's Office and inform the secretary there that he is requesting for a meeting with the President and all other Vice Presidents and other members of top management team. The next morning the engineers cheered as Dacanay walked through the Division pushing a large cart loaded with the enormous stack of reports. They knew the showdown had come! Dacanay entered the President's Office and placed the stack of paper reports on the president's table. The table was not enough. He has to place some of the reports at the floor besides the table. The President and the other senior executives looked bewildered and surprised, to say the least! This,\" Dacanay said, \"is the main reason for the lack of productivity in the Sales Engineering Division. These are the reports you and your senior executives require every day from the sales engineers. The fact that these reports sat on my desk for one whole month indicates no one reads and needs these reports. I suggest that the sales engineers' time could be used in a more productive manner, and that one brief summary monthly report from my office will satisfy the needs of all of the senior executives and other divisions.\" Question: Would you have done the same thing? Is Herbert Ravi Dacanay an effective Leader or a smart Manager? Why or Why Not