. Zone managers lack other work experience, let alone management experience.
. Zone managers lack clear guidance as to the exact criteria used to judge their performance.
. Competitive work environment prevents successful strategies from one zone manager being applied by other zone managers.
. "Calling in sales numbers" is perceived as "grunt" work without understanding the broader context, and numbers are re-worked until the central office "receives" numbers that meet its goals.
While competition can be good for motivating individual performance, it can be detrimental to the company's long-term strategies. The company can encourage team building and sharing of information so that as the company achieves its milestones, the zone managers profit, as well.
Currently, the central office "pushes" numbers down the line to the region and then to the local offices. Calling in numbers hardly makes sense in this environment since the zone managers must call again and again until they are able to generate numbers that are in keeping with the central office's goals. Either the central office should "push" its numbers officially or, if it wants numbers from the local offices for forecasts, accept those numbers as legitimate when they are first received. If there are regular discrepancies, those should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The IT group might be used to determine if these forecasts can be done automatically using pre-defined criteria that would automatically pull data from the computer system.
A formal appraisal would help zone managers understand the criteria by which they will be measured, and regular feedback should be provided so that there are no "surprises" during the formal process. Not only will this encourage better morale among zone managers, but it will also help prevent lawsuits against the company arising from charges of fav
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