Case-1

AZI-Tech is a well-known company that specialized in the business areas of IT and BPO. Right
from its inception, the company has pursued business opportunities across the globe, and, in the
process, it had grown to become one of the world’s leading IT outsourcing companies. In spite of
having a large talent pool, the company is always in search of new talent—the talent that could
make a difference. Consequently, the level of competition among peers to outperform each other
at work is very high when it came to delivering the codes and software to the client. Invariably,
work was done not only to achieve the satisfaction of their clients but also to surpass the client’s
expectation—a good sign for a fast growing company. The company mainly dealt with
development projects in IT for the banking and financial services sector.
A team of six people worked from the Delhi office of AZI-Tech. Although Pratyush and Saleem
had joined the company as fresh graduates a few years ago, Pratyush had joined the company a
number of years prior to Saleem’s joining. Pratyush was the project manager and Saleem was the
project Lead. Ankit and Diva joined this project under Pratyush. Rao, an MBA from one of the
most prestigious institutes in India, joined AZI-Tech, after a 5-year stint as a successful manager
in a leading banking and financial services company handling operations similar to the one
assigned to him now and handled Business Development. The only difference was that his pay
package with additional benefits in his new job was bigger. The story of Dubey, the business
analyst, too was similar; he was a computer science graduate with an MBA specialization in
systems—a perfect combination for the position held by him.
Pratyush had a total of 10 years’ experience in the development-related sector at AZI-Tech, and
Saleem had just three years of experience. Saleem was an ambitious man who, during his initial
days as a trainee, worked very hard to prove himself different from the others, actively
participating and resolving not only the issues assigned to him but also the issues that others in his
team faced. Thus, in a short span of time with all his hard work and enthusiasm, Saleem came to
be fondly recognized as the problem fixer and a person who could fix any issue. He soon became
the team-lead and expected the same kind of enthusiasm and hard work from all his subordinates.
Every year during the recruitment season, talented fresh graduates were selected after going
through a rigorous selection process which tested them on all essential capabilities which the
company was looking for in a new recruit. They were assessed on the knowledge related to their
area of specialization, analytical skills, independent thinking and the like. It was, therefore, not
wrong to say that the people selected thus rightly deserved their place in the company.
Two new recruits, Ankit and Diva, were the fresh talents recruited this year. They were assigned
to Pratyush’s team. Ankit was a dynamic person, with excellent communication skills. He was
known for his out-of-the-box thinking, and was highly ambitious, with dreams of doing an MBA
from a world-class university. Thus, he looked upon his stint in AZI-Tech as a temporary one.
While he was there to gain experience, he wasn’t a person who would shy away from work. He
almost always had a faster and a more creative way of finding solutions to the issues assigned to
him.
Diva, on the other hand, was a sincere and hardworking woman, who had her mind set to follow
the path led by her superiors such as Saleem and Pratyush, that is, work her way through the
established process. She felt a greater pressure to prove herself; more importantly, prove herself
better than Ankit.
 The initial few weeks were usual KT sessions and briefing related to the various development
projects being handled by the team. Both Ankit and Diva were quick to understand the project as
a whole and went about strategizing how they would handle the work assigned to them. Within a
month, after their entry into the project, they started applying their strategies and plans on the
project. Both of them understood the specifications and the requirements of their respective
projects very well for which they were required to write the software programmes.
Each of them was assigned an enhancement development project. Thus, both of them were on a
level playing field to showcase their worth. A golden opportunity for both of them! It was
sometime in January and the project delivery was scheduled for launch sometime in the middle of
August.
Diva had no issues with the time set for the delivery of her enhancement, as she would pay
undivided attention to her work. Ankit, on the other hand, planned to write the CAT as well as
GMAT and was confident of completing much of his project work in three to four months’ time,
being the more intelligent person that he perceived himself to be.
Both put in their best efforts and came out with flying colours. While Diva went about designing
the enhancement the classical way, that is, the most common way of designing such an application,
Ankit, using his creativity, devised a new and a more efficient design that not only saved costs but
also reduced the time taken to achieve project objectives. People in the company, especially
Saleem, were really happy to have these gems working for them.
It was August, and Ankit had planned and worked on his schedule diligently. With no new
project initiatives in the offing in the near future, Ankit thought nothing could go wrong now. He
went about his daily chores at the office and then would return home in the evening and study all
the way to midnight, wake up early in the morning and study again, roughly for about two hours
every day. In short, he was totally dedicated to his academic goal.
Quite unexpectedly, in a short time, a new development took place. As dynamic as the IT world
is known to be, within a week the business analyst, Dubey, came up with an idea to automate an
old large design of the client’s software, which was operated manually by the programmers until
then. This was seen as an additional benefit that the team could deliver to its clients to impress
them and also a move to decrease the overall time people spent on this application daily, thus,
saving on time.
Saleem, recognizing the talented subordinates he had, assigned the task to both Ankit and Diva.
This was no small task, and Ankit knew that if he were to handle this, his dreams of climbing the
ladder towards a better career by acquiring an MBA qualification would have to be kept on hold
until the next year. He felt that he could not afford this delay.
Diva, as sincere as she was, had no issues, and worked late nights at the office to achieve results
she set for herself. Ankit, on the other hand, would use his creativity in accessing and deploying
software tools available in the company, to complete his work daily by evening and then leave.
Diva was facing difficulties while trying to reengineer some of the earlier designs, which was
causing a delay in the process. Saleem noticed this, and he called for a meeting with both Diva and
Ankit. He saw the whole situation as something similar to the one he had been subjected to during
his initial days at AZI-Tech when the newly inducted programmers like him, who were quite adept
at designing and writing codes for new programmes, encountered difficulties in reengineering old
software.
He first praised Diva for her efforts in staying back until the early morning hours daily in the
office trying to redesign and rework the existing software, to the best of her ability.
 He noticed Ankit leaving at exactly the right time each day, in spite of the bottleneck, he thought,
Ankit might be facing in the old programmes. Saleem thought, Ankit was not as enthusiastic as he
used to be in the early days. He had a few discussions with Pratyush on Ankit’s behaviour. Pratyush
asked him to speak to Ankit on an informal note for clarifications.
As days passed, Saleem felt the need to convey to Ankit that he expected professional behaviour
from Ankit and conveyed this to him. Ankit, being the outspoken person he was, did not remain
quiet in the face of such allegations. He refuted them right away with facts about his work outputs.
Even then, Saleem wasn’t satisfied and expressed his unhappiness with Ankit, in no uncertain
terms!
While Ankit started wondering what he should be doing now, Saleem began to ponder whether
he should talk to the HR manager to counsel Ankit on his defiant attitude and the effect it could
have on his performance appraisal.
Q UE ST I O NS FO R D I S C US S IO N
1. Examine the concept of ‘protean careers’, where employees plan for their own
career development rather than depend on the organization for it. Do you think Ankit is
wrong in doing this and preparing for his MBA entrance exams?
2. Distinguish between ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’ motivation. How do you describe
Ankit’s motivation? How is his extra-organizational career ambition affecting his
performance?
3. Examine the system of work assignment in AZI-Tech. It seems the work on the
new project was assigned to the two associates because they were efficient in completing
their first project before time. Does it lead to a system of penalizing the more efficient
employees?
4. Comment on the decision of Saleem to refer Ankit for counselling. What other
courses of action are available to him? Critically evaluate all the options available to the
manager in the current situation and help him to choose the best.