Heidi Roizen
Case Analysis- Heidi Roizen
PROBLEM- When an individual of Heidi’s broad network needed a personal favor in reviewing their business plan for gaining venture capital from SOFTBANK, Heidi acted equally amongst her network and was forced to say ‘No’. Does saying ‘No’ damage Heidi’s intimate network that had been the pillar of her career success?
ANALYSIS- Heidi’s career success was built on her networking skills with individuals whom she “goes deep” in forming personal networks with individuals. At SOFTBANK Venture Capital, Heidi is forced to damage some of her networks as she could not favor an individual over another. The problem arouse as throughout Heidi’s career she has used personal networks from gaining a position at Tandem to mending bitter relationship between Apple and Microsoft. As being the central network in SOFTBANK she has created a bottleneck in efficiently and effectively reviewing business plan put forward by an individual who thought to have a close and personal relationship with Heidi. The dilemma has ignited due to Heidi’s networking style by going deep and making friends along the way. It is in her nature to get to know people well and be friends with them. Her career also depended on her friendliness and her ability to network individuals to their personal need. She carefully and thoughtfully organizes her infamous network house parties where individuals feels familiar yet were able to network with individuals outside their circle. Her job being a venture capitalist has forced her to be less approachable and damaging personal network in turning down business plans or bottlenecked herself with too many business plans evaluation at one time. As proven by the burn out at Apple, Heidi although a very intuitive and a star in her environment, she was not able to delegate her work to her 2 full time assistants. Heidi relied on personal networking in order to pull in favors from her network in order to accomplish ice breaking jobs. To put it simply,
PROBLEM- When an individual of Heidi’s broad network needed a personal favor in reviewing their business plan for gaining venture capital from SOFTBANK, Heidi acted equally amongst her network and was forced to say ‘No’. Does saying ‘No’ damage Heidi’s intimate network that had been the pillar of her career success?
ANALYSIS- Heidi’s career success was built on her networking skills with individuals whom she “goes deep” in forming personal networks with individuals. At SOFTBANK Venture Capital, Heidi is forced to damage some of her networks as she could not favor an individual over another. The problem arouse as throughout Heidi’s career she has used personal networks from gaining a position at Tandem to mending bitter relationship between Apple and Microsoft. As being the central network in SOFTBANK she has created a bottleneck in efficiently and effectively reviewing business plan put forward by an individual who thought to have a close and personal relationship with Heidi. The dilemma has ignited due to Heidi’s networking style by going deep and making friends along the way. It is in her nature to get to know people well and be friends with them. Her career also depended on her friendliness and her ability to network individuals to their personal need. She carefully and thoughtfully organizes her infamous network house parties where individuals feels familiar yet were able to network with individuals outside their circle. Her job being a venture capitalist has forced her to be less approachable and damaging personal network in turning down business plans or bottlenecked herself with too many business plans evaluation at one time. As proven by the burn out at Apple, Heidi although a very intuitive and a star in her environment, she was not able to delegate her work to her 2 full time assistants. Heidi relied on personal networking in order to pull in favors from her network in order to accomplish ice breaking jobs. To put it simply,