CASE STUDY 1 - MEP

Martha (Head of events) has a team of 10 people.

Her team mostly organizes events for customer and vendor engagement and
longevity.

She has a new project to plan a major customer appreciation event.

They have been working together for over 2 years now and they just haven’t really
come together as a team.

But her vendors and customer just love and adore her. She holds them together and
keeps they super happy.

She was sure she started off well.

She took over from Shrinath 2 years ago.

Shri Nath details

Shri nath was a very strict, authoritarian boss. He told everyone what to do and how
to do.

Martha has a different style and felt that people work better with some flexibility and
hence preferred to allocate responsibilities and allow them to find the best way to
work.

She is a people’s person and hates to bull doze people.

She contacted each individual on the team, understood what they have been doing
over the last 2 years and let them know their responsibilities for the coming year.

Of course they had to do a lot more than what they had done last year.

Difficulities of Maratha

However, things are not very smooth in her team. She may have had a great people
flexibility related thought, but failed at implementing it in her own team. Neither are
things smooth in her own team under her boss Sushmita.

Martha has 2 peers at same level:

1. Mohit and

2. Sumer and they also report to Sushmita.

Lets know a little more:

Martha, went and spoke with her new team while allocating responsibilities and was
taken a back when she allocated responsibilities to people. She spent nearly 2 hours
with each person.

Anu, (her 5 yr experienced team member) told her that she was confused about her
work now. No doubt Anu liked her as she spoke very well, but she made Anu feel
jittery.

Anu was given a goal to improve the quality of feedback received from vendor
events. The goal was to ensure that all vendors raved about the event being held
everytime time. “How will I do all this? Also they might rave about the event but
vendors still get upset over operational issues and many times become inflexible. If
such a phase of inflexibility is on, which vendor will talk about an event? When work
is not ok, an event quality will not matter, so this goal is pretty weird. What am I
working on, just event quality or better vendor relationships?”, she thought. Martha,
thought about what she said, felt that she might have a point, but that was too much
detail, so she brushed her apprehensions aside saying “Don’t worry, you will do it!”
She then walked out. Anu is scared because when next day she went back to talk:
“How will you check how I have performed? Will you call each of the 212 vendors we
have individually? How will I ensure each person’s happiness?? ” so Martha got a
little miffed and snapped at her. She just events or old her to stop being childish
saying, ”First, I will decide how to check and second, I won’t tell you how to pick your
spoon and how to put it in your mouth. Grow up for god’s sake! You know your job.
Figure it out! But take care of one thing, if you have to contact any vendor, it has to
be through me. Please check with me if you need to connect with anyone!”

Anu found that rude and a weird way to work, but well that’s what she will do now.
However, at this reply of Martha, when she looked hurt, Martha immediately cracked
a friendly joke and tried to lighten the atmosphere. She thought she did, but Anu was
even more upset. Little did she know that this behavior was there to stay for long.
Martha has this habit of flaring up again and again. Once Anu pointed out some
issue with the mail Martha sent to the vendors and that day and Martha lost it. She
didn’t like the idea of a junior bluntly telling her about mistakes. She also did not want
to openly admit to her mistake, as that would solidify the idea that she was wrong.
Will the team take that well. She didn’t think so.

Lets understand about what is happening to others: Each of the members gets their
tasks completed, but don’t seem concerned with the others on the team. Infact, they
all do their tasks and if they get stuck, they happily go back and dump the issue on
Martha. Anu was heard saying that my goal is to look at vendor feedback for the
event and not how the procurement will be done by Shahid for the event. Well that’s
how she wanted them to operate as all had their individual (in their language weird
unthought through goals), If someone needs help, no one pitches in to assist. If a
team member has a problem, no one helps him to solve that problem. Just yesterday
one of the team members had an emergency and asked if someone on the team
could have a call with the sales team so she could leave early. No one offered to
help so Martha jumped in to assist. Martha had to do something. This was a bad
experience for everyone frankly and some folks already were talking about getting off
the new customer appreciation project. Additionally, they were almost at war with
each other. Especially coz they were over worked because of the new projects that
Martha was crazy about picking up. The instructions were not clear but, but projects
were aggressive. On top of that, the teams were dysfunctional. Not that Martha
made an effort to bring them together. She made every effort to give feedback to
Anu that she as not strategic enough. Even Balwinder (senior media artist) was told
in a team meeting that he was horribly slow. But when they asked for examples and
situations, Martha didn’t feel upto it to provide those nitty-gritties to each person.
“You thnk I remember each one of those events? Boss you know!! Please use your
own judgement.” She ranted each time. The team lost trust in her in the first 2
months.

Martha also went and talked ill about her team members with her own peers Mohit
and Sumer and her boss too. She thought she would get sympathy on this subject
and her goal achievement could be looked at with leniency. Mohit and Sumer did not
respect her for this. She seemed angry and little in control of her 10 member team.
One day she even blamed HR for giving her this team who was under confident and
was not groomed well by the earlier boss. On a couple of occasions, she looked so
hassled that she declined to assist Mohit on a joint presentation. Sumer also got the
hint and has decided not to help her ever. Team meetings are also tense as Martha
seems high handed and she is not ready to listen to others. She feels that this
culture has been built by Sushmita where too much hand holding, zero flexibility and
treating all like children was being done! Even the Company values of being
independent, collaborative, taking care was not being followed. These values were
up on the walls in every room!”

Martha had already gone to her boss Sushmita 2 to 3 times complaining about this
and her peers, both. Little did she know that that was not the case with Mohit’s and
Sumer’s teams. They were operating well.

Time : 15 to 20 minutes

Where was Martha going wrong? If you were Sushmita, how would you help
Martha assess the situation? You need to create a strategy to help Martha and
create an Individual Development Plan for her for the same.

The Presentation should contain:

 Your Goal as Martha,

 Current Situation Analysis and the theoretical concepts visible or not
visible in the situation. Please support your answers with rationales
learnt during your sessions.
 Your one page strategy and the rationale, with the prioritized yearly IDP
for 2 years for Martha (Rationale for what you pick now and what you
leave with reasons) and what changes do you anticipate with this on a
periodic basis and why.
 Your own implemented experiences, if any - In case you have
implemented any of the strategies in your own teams at DS group, it
would be great to support those slides with your stories and learnings.

Please ensure that you follow all slide making and ppt structuring and
speaking rules as discussed in the sessions. Do make your presentations
effective and interesting with a great start and a great end.