From the Brink: Navigating a Performance Warning to Top Performer

Shubhashree S. Iyer, Ritu Gupta, James Newswanger, Kamal K Jain

Product #:W45955

Supplier:Ivey

Discipline:General Management, Human Resource Management

Setting:United States, 2024

Details:Case (PDF) • 15 pages • 2025-10-30

Subjects:

Geography:

United States North America

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Scott McLaden was a senior product manager at Trustark, a business-to-business software-as-a-service company based in San Francisco. He was promoted directly from a level-three to a level-five role, where he initially thrived, but after a managerial change in the first half of financial year 2024–25, his performance declined sharply, leading his new manager to threaten him in October with either a formal performance improvement plan or a demotion. McLaden responded by proposing a three-month turnaround period, and by the end of the financial year, he had rebounded strongly, ranking first on his team in both the third and fourth quarters. As annual reviews approached in March 2025, McLaden faced a dilemma: Should he advocate for a promotion to level six, or should he wait for it to be offered?

Learning Objectives

This case is best positioned in the middle or latter half of an undergraduate or MBA course on people management, organizational behaviour, leadership development, or product management in technology. It is particularly effective once students are familiar with foundational topics such as performance reviews, feedback dynamics, and talent calibration processes. It bridges individual performance with organizational systems, making it suitable for sessions focused on performance-management systems, promotion and talent-review processes, leadership under pressure, career development and self-advocacy, and turnaround scenarios and reputation recovery. The case challenges students to assess promotion readiness, narrative framing, and leadership under pressure. It invites analysis from multiple perspectives without revealing the outcome, making it ideal for discussions of self-advocacy, performance management, and growth trajectories, and it helps students critically evaluate how organizations assess performance, growth, and promotion readiness—especially in the context of rebound stories. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:

Evaluate an employee’s promotion readiness by looking beyond metrics to weigh trajectory, consistency, leadership behaviour, and organizational criteria.
Analyze the risks and rewards of self-advocacy, considering questions such as when to advocate for a level change and when to wait.
Explain how narrative framing shapes performance perceptions and calibration outcomes.
Assess leadership during a turnaround, focusing on ownership, stakeholder alignment, and behaviour change.
Describe the role of managers in communicating promotion decisions and balancing team morale and fairness.
Describe the ambiguity of real-world promotion decisions, considering issues such as peer comparison, reputational risk, and manager judgment.