Professional Documents
Culture Documents
To his surprise – a new appointment at global board level resulted in John now
reporting to the first non-German at that level, a Frenchman, Peter Degard.
The two men did not know each other well at all – and John was a little
irritated to be asked to visit Paris overnight for dinner with Peter, right in the
middle of budget season, when a ‘phone call or VC would have been enough to
get the ball rolling in John’s view.
After the usual niceties and a few of his hilarious jokes to ease the atmosphere,
John tried to move the conversation on to urgent business matters - despite
the constant interruptions by waiters and Peter’s clear need to discuss every
detail of the menu with them. Eventually, John got Peter on to the budget
issues that he thought would at least make the trip worthwhile. It didn’t take
long however for Peter to broaden the focus on to how he saw John’s role and
what he expected of John. One remark really took John’s breath away – ‘In the
end…’ Peter said, ‘… your job is to take the blame’. John’s response was
delivered in nice clear British English - ‘I don’t think so Pal’ - and the rest of the
dinner was not very enjoyable. John was out of there on the first EuroStar,
despite an invitation to breakfast delivered to his room later that night.
Very soon – John heard that his reputation at the board table was being
questioned, that his Asia re-organisation was being characterised as flawed,
and noticed that other businesses in the region were being allowed budget
expansion in critical IT areas while his new division was being squeezed.
Mr. Takashima had been hired by an Australian company in Japan and was now
working for the company in Sydney. Today he was reporting to Mr. Cannon, his
manager, on the difficulties he had with a negotiation meeting he recently held
with another Australian company in Sydney over a potential contract.
Mr. Takashima noted that Mr. Roberts, who represented the Australian
company, seemed tired and frustrated at the end of the meeting. Takashima
stated that he didn't understand why, since he had found the meeting very
informative. Takashima admitted, however, that he was annoyed at Roberts'
insistence for an immediate decision and answers to questions regarding the
contract. These were matters Takashima felt would have to be discussed with
Mr. Cannon and his department.
‘It was uncomfortable for me to say that I had no answer now to his questions’
Takashima said to Cannon ‘But it was even more difficult for me when Roberts
finally said “O.K., I am willing to lower my price by 15%, but only if you would
make a decision on this contract right here and now at the table. No more
stalling please.” ‘
‘What did you do?’ Cannon asked. ‘I said I would get back to him’ Takashima
answered. ‘I couldn't answer all his questions without first clearing the matter
back here.’
“I agree that Roberts does seem a bit impatient but we need to close the deal
quickly. But I’m surprised you let a 15% price reduction go begging though.
Let’s get the team together quickly and see if we can recover the situation”
replied Cannon.
Mr. Thompson introduced himself and after a few days of meeting and
greeting other managers, they had a meeting alone. ‘Mr. Park, everyone at
CompuCan is impressed with the quality and timeliness of production here. In
this respect, we believe that the joint venture is producing excellent results.’
He stopped for a moment. ‘But in one area, we need to be more aggressive.’
‘Our financial results are alright, but our shareholders are expecting a much
higher return on investment from this joint venture. And they want results
now. We need to cut costs and improve margins so that the next quarterlies
are more impressive.’
Mr. Park sat quietly for a moment. ‘Ah, but you understand, we are building
our relationship with your company and with our employees for the long term.
We need everyone’s support to make this a successful effort. In addition, it is
not customary to change quickly in this environment.’
‘Frankly, Mr. Park, if we can’t show results quickly, there may not be a long
term’ Mr. Park responded ‘Ah but Mr. Thompson, if we show results too
quickly by cutting staff to increase margins, there will also not be a long term.
Perhaps we could look at alternative ways to reduce costs gradually as we
improve our efficiency in the production line over time.’
Joe Colman, the European Marketing Director for a major high-street clothing
retailer, was proud of his team’s new product merchandising strategy and
wanted to get it out into the stores asap; he was convinced it would impact
revenues quickly and positively in a highly competitive market – and better
numbers would do no harm to his bonus prospects as the annual board
reviews were coming up.
While Joe knew there was a bit of detail that could be more explicit, his view
was that they were intelligent people and could work that out in the stores –
the general thrust was clear, it was radical, and it was time to make it happen.
A few countries ran with it straight away – notably the UK network and the
Skandi’s weren’t far behind – but the ‘Conti’s’ as he called them – the French,
Germans, Belgians… seemed slow on the uptake. The new displays were very
different from the previous look – but the concept was clear and frankly there
wasn’t time to get every detail mocked-up and illustrated in the merchandising
manual. One conversation with the Marketing Manager in Frankfurt was
typical – ‘How do you expect us to feel confident that we can take down the
existing displays when we don’t know what we should put in its place?’ was
Hans-Christian’s leading question. ‘Where is the research that says this is a
good strategy? We don’t even have display mock-ups for all the key categories,
just the examples your local team have arranged in the London stores…’
Since the team had delivered projects together before, and the only new team
member was him, Rowan decided he would quickly get a team VC organised
and so sent them a skeleton project plan he had already created, for them to
review in advance of the meeting. That way, he could start to get to know
them as they worked on refining the plan, and would get off to a flying start on
this urgent project. His boss had not yet sent out the announcement of his
appointment to the team, so Rowan sent them all an invitation email,
announcing his appointment as project team leader and attached the skeleton
plan with directions that they should all be prepared to discuss it at the VC
meeting in a few days.
Rowan received a few responses in the days before the meeting – all just
formal thanks for the note and looking forward to the meeting, though one
troubled him a bit. It was from a London-based Swedish colleague whom
Rowan had met at his induction, Bjorn, who seemed to want to put the brakes
on the process. Bjorn said that he thought it premature to be sending out a
skeleton plan at this stage and that in his experience the team would
appreciate a chance to understand something of Rowan’s background and
general approach to team leadership, before driving into the work. Rowan did
a quick reply saying there was a lot of urgency and the team needed to be seen
to be moving quickly. There was no further response from Bjorn but Rowan
thought he may have trouble with him in the meeting.
The day of the VC meeting arrived and Rowan quickly introduced himself,
taking a bit more time on it than he had planned, finishing by saying that he
‘didn’t want to bore them with his life story.’ So after five minutes of
introductions, he moved on to the project objectives and skeleton plan.
Rowan ended the meeting before the allotted time and said he would get back
to them with next steps. Bjorn – who was in the room in London – just avoided
looking at him and quickly left the scene.
A day later – Rowan’s boss pulled him aside and said he had heard the meeting
hadn’t gone well. ‘It was a pity you couldn’t wait for me to properly announce
your assignment’ his boss said. Not a good start.
The planning of the move was exemplary; Bruce and his team worked
everything out in detail and delivered the transition plan exactly. The local
recruitment and training looked good – and was supported by a US-based
training needs assessment with local support. It was all going to plan.
The first stage involved initiating simple service support – the India-based
agents helping customers to understand how their credit cards worked and
resolving their payment, charging and other queries. They worked 24 hours, so
the time-zone issue was not a concern. At first, there were some issues with
the new Agents being over-reliant on the scripted answers to customer
questions – something about ‘need for certainty’ which the US-based
consultancy had highlighted early in the process. That was addressed in the
training and became less of an issue, once Agents grew their personal
confidence.
The second-stage of Agent training worried Bruce a bit more, since it was
technically more demanding and involved Agents being more perceptive,
articulate and persuasive, rather than just delivering information. They were
required to ‘cross-sell’ the products of the Bank – expanding the customer’s
use of credit products and services beyond their initial credit arrangement,
provided, of course, that the customer had the credit rating to qualify. This was
where the Bank made their money – and at 25% of the US operating costs, this
is how Bruce would really make his reputation in the Bank. The big bonus was
coming.
It was obvious to Bruce what was going wrong. The incentives were all screwed
up. In the focus on reducing costs, the rewards for up-selling were just not
strong enough – even in the India context. With the compensation experts in
HR, Bruce set about re-calculating incentives and rewards against margin per
product. Together, they came up with a new scheme that would deliver the
savings, the market share growth and the operating profits that the
outsourcing plan had promised - and would give the Agents the incentive to
sell that they needed. Bruce sat back and waited for the impact.
And he waited. His board were becoming concerned that while operating costs
were significantly lower, the metrics for product take-up per customer, for
revenue growth, and for lending growth were flat-lining. After two fully
operational quarters, the evidence was that this big strategic move was in
trouble. Bruce could see his bonus going south.