2021

Individual Assignment:
Professional Challenge
Professional Challenge at CV Associates during my role as consultant
In January 2021, I got promoted to a new consultant role at CV Associates in one of the
largest client teams. My primary responsibility is to lead the offshore support through a team of
3-5 associates on consulting projects for US or EU-based client firms. The project opportunities
for our offshore team are primarily dependent on the Onshore teams, who directly interact
with the clients.
The offshore team is a part of the Capability Managament (KM) team in CV India, which
provides research support for the onshore teams on client projects. The nature of engagement
is highly collaborative, with each team having clear ownership of dedicated tasks on all projects
(an efficient Clique network). As a result, the offshore team has strongly supported delivering
high-quality projects to the clients over the past 15 months.
Between February to April 2021, things have become unclear and unpredictable when a couple
of crucial leadership members from the Onshore have decided to move into another client
team or leave CV. The Associate Partner responsible for our client account management has
delegated her responsibilities to a senior manager. When the Manager realized a promotion
delay, he quickly decided to exit CV. It has become even more uncertain when our client PoC, a
key stakeholder who approves and pays for all our project work, has opted for early retirement.
Our offshore KM manager couldn’t play a key role. The previous Consultant (who also exited
CV) never wanted her to be involved due to her low value-add contributions to projects.
Suddenly, there is a huge power vacuum and uncertainty with the multiple exits within the
team and outside.
The critical Challenge for me is to diagnose the actual power base of my upper leadership –
Who would be leading the client interactions? Would there be any new projects from the client
or any visibility on the pipeline? This unexpected turn of events at the upper leadership could
impact negatively on my performance significantly and can cause possible delays in my next
promotion (to Manager). At the overall team level (offshore), all the expertise and capabilities
we have built might go underutilized or even unleveraged. At the same time, the challenges
were becoming evident with no visibility of projects for the entire year after March 2021.
To overcome this new situation, I had to thoroughly understand my new role (role conception)
and my stakeholders' expectations. With the power vacuum at the upper leadership (role
confusion), I had to gain clear directions through proactive discussions within the team. Below
are a few of the key strategies that I had deployed:
1. Facilitation of a leadership meeting to gain clarity on the future directions (Formal
Authority): I realized the KM Manager in our team has a formal authority to have more
leveled discussions with the onshore Manager and had facilitated a pro-active
discussion. The meeting helped us align on some of our team's most feasible action
 plans, like setting up monthly meetings with a new Partner for future projects and
identifying possible alternative projects.

2. Leveraging Reputation: At our monthly connects, we showcased our strong reputation

to the new Partner by summarizing and presenting the good work which our offshore
team has done over the past year. The reputation helped us to persuade him to get
similar projects for us from the new client PoC. We were able to secure relevant projects
for at least a couple of months

3. Filling in the structural holes within our client team: We clearly had to move beyond
our cliques and explore opportunities within our client teams' wider network. With
some discussions in other functional spaces, we were able to tap two key projects as the
teams worked on the same products with strong expertise. This initiative allowed us to
collaborate with a new team (Europe-based) and also build a new capability within the
team.

Currently, our team has a clear client project visibility for the next 6-9 months. This was made
possible by diagnosing the true power base in the upper leadership, building relations with our
new Partner through strong reputation from our prior project delivery, and identifying new
capabilities in collaboration with other teams in the network. Reflection on the navigation of
the above situation was indeed great experiential learning for me this year!
Thanks a lot, Professor for allowing me to reflect on my professional Challenge :)

For Reference and Additional context

Network Model in January 2021 Network Model in July 2021