Organizational Learning and Learning Organizations
david1962
online_resources.docx|
Reframing Organizations |
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Author: |
Lee G. Bolman; Terrence E. Deal |
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Edition / Copyright: |
4 |
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Publisher: |
John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated |
· Introduction: The Power of Reframing
· Simple Ideas, Complex Organizations
· From the online library resources, read:
Charan, R., & Useem, J. (2002). Why companies fail. Fortune, 145(11), 50–62. https://login.libproxy.edmc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.edmc.edu /docview/213277482?accountid=34899 Section:
FORTUNE
CEOs offer every excuse but the right one: their own errors. Here are ten mistakes to avoid.
HOW MANY MORE MUST FALL? EACH MONTH SEEMS TO BRING THE SOUND of another giant crashing to earth. Enron. WorldCom. Global Crossing. Kmart. Polaroid. Arthur Andersen. Xerox. Qwest. They fall singly. They fall in groups. They fall with the heavy thud of employees laid off, families hurt, shareholders furious. How many? Too many; 257 public companies with $258 billion in assets declared bankruptcy last year, shattering the previous year's record of 176 companies and $95 billion. This year is on pace, with 67 companies going bust during the first quarter. And not just any companies. Big, important, Fortune 500 companies that aren't supposed to collapse. If things keep going like this, we may have trouble filling next year's list.
Why do companies fail? Their CEOs offer every excuse in the book: a bad economy, market turbulence, a weak yen, hundred-year floods, perfect storms, competitive subterfuge--forces, that is, very much outside their control. In a few cases, such as the airlines' post-Sept. 11 problems, the excuses even ring true. But a close study of corporate failure suggests that, acts of God aside, most companies founder for one simple reason: managerial error.
We'll get to the errors in a moment. But first let's acknowledge that, yes, failures usually involve factors unique to a company's own industry or culture. As Tolstoy said of families, all happy companies are alike; every unhappy company is unhappy in its own way. Companies even collapse in their own way. Some go out in blinding supernovas (Enron). Others linger like white dwarfs (AT&T). Still others fizzle out over decades (Polaroid). Failure is part of the natural cycle of business. Companies are born, companies die, capitalism moves forward. Creative destruction, they call it.
It was roughly this sentiment that Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was trying to convey when he said that Enron's failure was "part of the genius of capitalism." But aside from sounding insensitive, O'Neill got one thing wrong. Capitalism's true genius is to weed out companies that no longer serve a useful purpose. The dot-coms, for instance, were experiments in whether certain businesses were even viable. We found out: They weren't. Yet many recent debacles were of companies that could have lived long, productive lives with more enlightened management--in other words, good companies struck down for bad reasons. By these lights, Arthur Andersen's fall is no more part of the "genius of capitalism" than the terrorism on Sept. 11 was part of the "genius of evolution."
By "failure," we don't necessarily mean bankruptcy. A dramatic fall from grace qualifies too. In the most recent bear market, for instance, 26 of America's 100 largest companies lost at least two-thirds of their market value, including such blue chips as Hewlett-Packard, Charles Schwab, Cisco, AT&T, AOL Time Warner, and Gap. In the 1990 bear market, by contrast, none did, according to money management firm Aronson & Partners.
The sheer speed of these falls has been unnerving. Companies that were healthy just moments ago, it seems, are suddenly at death's door. But this impression may be misleading. Consider, for instance, a certain Houston institution we've heard so much about. There was no one moment when its managers sat down and conspired to commit wrongdoing. Rather, the disaster occurred because of what one analyst calls "an incremental descent into poor judgment." A "success-oriented" culture, mind-numbing complexity, and unrealistic performance goals all mixed until the violation of standards became the standard. Nothing looked amiss from the outside until, boom, it was all over.
It sounds a lot like Enron, but the description actually refers to NASA in 1986, the year of the space shuttle Challenger explosion. We pull this switch not to conflate the two episodes--one, after all, involved the death of seven astronauts--but to make a point about failures: Even the most dramatic tend to be years in the making. At NASA, engineers noticed damage to the crucial O-rings on previous shuttle flights yet repeatedly convinced themselves the damage was acceptable. Companies fail the way Ernest Hemingway wrote about going broke in The Sun Also Rises: gradually, and then suddenly. (For some solutions, see "Three Quick Fixes.")
What undoes them is the familiar stuff of human folly: denial, hubris, ego, wishful thinking, poor communication, lax oversight, greed, deceit, and other Behind the Music plot conventions. It all adds up to a failure to execute. This is not an exhaustive list of corporate sins. But chances are your company is committing one of them right now.
"Those whom the gods would destroy," Euripides wrote nearly 2,500 years ago, "they first make mad." In the modern update, the gods send their victims 40 years of success. Actually, it's a proven fact: A number of studies show that people are less likely to make optimal decisions after prolonged periods of success. NASA, Enron, Lucent, WorldCom--all had reached the mountaintop before they ran into trouble. Someone should have told them that most mountaineering accidents happen on the way down.
Consider the case of Cisco Systems. While by no means a failure, Cisco suffered a remarkable comedown in the spring of 2001--remarkable not only for its swiftness (its shares lost 88% of their value in one year) but also because Cisco, more than any other company, was supposed to be able to see into the future. The basis of this belief was a much vaunted IT system that enabled Cisco managers to track supply and demand in "real time," allowing them to make pinpoint forecasts. The technology, by all accounts, worked great. The forecasts, however, did not. Cisco's managers, it turned out, never bothered to model what would happen if a key assumption--growth--disappeared from the equation. After all, the company had recorded more than 40 straight quarters of growth; why wouldn't the future bring more of the same?
The rosy assumptions, moreover, persisted even when evidence to the contrary started piling up. Customers began going bankrupt. Suppliers warned of a coming dropoff in demand. Competitors stumbled. Even Wall Street wondered if the Internet equipment market was falling apart. "I have never been more optimistic about the future of our industry as a whole or of Cisco," CEO John Chambers declared in December 2000, still projecting 50% annual growth.
What was Chambers thinking? In The Challenger Launch Decision, her definitive book on the disaster, Boston College sociologist Diane Vaughan notes that people don't surrender their mental models easily. "They may puzzle over contradictory evidence," she writes, "but usually succeed in pushing it aside--until they come across a piece of evidence too fascinating to ignore, too clear to misperceive, too painful to deny, which makes vivid still other signals they do not want to see, forcing them to alter and surrender the world-view they have so meticulously constructed."
For the perpetually sunny Chambers, that "piece of evidence" did not come until April 2001, when cratering sales forced Cisco to write down $2.5 billion in excess inventory and lay off 8,500 employees. Chambers may have been operating in real time, but he wasn't operating in the real world.
With $6.5 billion in cash and a strong competitive position, Cisco will live to fight another day. Polaroid may not be so lucky. Like its fellow old-economy stalwart Xerox, Polaroid was a once-highflying member of the Nifty Fifty group of growth stocks that lost their luster over the years. Eventually the question "What does Polaroid make?" became a latter-day version of "Who's buried in Grant's tomb?" Polaroid, that is, made Polaroid cameras--period.
Time had passed the company by, you might say. Not exactly. Think about another company that once seemed doomed to fail: Intel. Back in 1985, competition from Japan was turning Intel's memory chips into cheap commodities, and observers were all but writing the company's obituary. Instead of going the way of Polaroid, though, Intel decided to exit the memory business entirely and become a maker of microprocessors. The key insight occurred when Intel founders Andy Grove and Gordon Moore sat down and asked themselves some tough questions. "If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO," Grove asked Moore, "what do you think he would do?" Get out of memory chips was the answer. From there, they said later, it was just a matter of doing what needed to be done.
Polaroid and Xerox, by contrast, were slow to confront the changing world around them. Executives at both companies repeatedly blamed poor results on short-term factors--currency fluctuations, trouble in Latin America--rather than the real cause: a bad business model. By the time Xerox President (and now CEO) Anne Mulcahy came out and spoke the truth--the company had "an unsustainable business model," she told analysts in 2000--Xerox was flirting with bankruptcy.
Jim Collins, author of the influential management books Built to Last and Good to Great, has spent years studying what separates great companies from mediocre ones. "The key sign--the litmus test--is whether you begin to explain away the brutal facts rather than to confront the brutal facts head-on," he says. "That's sort of the pivot point." By forcing themselves to think like outsiders, Grove and Moore recognized the brutal facts before it was too late. Polaroid and Xerox didn't.
Fearing the boss more than the competition
Sometimes CEOs don't get the information they need to make informed decisions. The main reason, says Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and author of the book Primal Leadership, is that subordinates are afraid to tell them the truth. Even when a boss doesn't intend to quash dissent, subtle signals--a sour expression, a curt response--can broadcast the message that bad news isn't welcome. That's why, according to a study by Goleman and two associates, higher-ranking executives are less likely to have an accurate assessment of their own performance.
Fear can have its uses, of course; Andy Grove has long espoused the value of competitive paranoia. But in unhealthy situations, employees come to worry more about internal factors--what the boss might say, what management might do--than about threats from the outside world. Certainly this was the case at Enron, where even alarm-ringer Sherron Watkins chose to express her concerns anonymously rather than hazard one of CEO Jeff Skilling's famous tongue-lashings. And she was one of the brave ones.
The same problem hampered Samsung Chairman Lee Kun Hee in 1997 when he decided to take Samsung into the auto business. Knowing the car industry was a crowded field plagued by overcapacity, many of Samsung's top managers silently opposed the $13 billion investment. But Lee was a forceful chairman and a car buff to boot. So when Samsung Motors folded just a year into production, forcing Lee to spend $2 billion of his own money to placate creditors, he expressed surprise: How come nobody had spoken up about their reservations?
During World War II, Winston Churchill worried that his own larger-than-life personality would deter subordinates from bringing him bad news. So he set up a unit outside his generals' chain of command, the Statistical Office, whose primary job was to feed him the starkest, most unvarnished facts. In a similar vein, Richard Schroth and Larry Elliott, authors of the forthcoming book How Companies Lie, suggest designated "counterpointers," whose function is to ask the rudest questions possible. Such mechanisms take information and turn it into information that can't be ignored.
Some companies simply live too close to the edge. Global Crossing, Qwest, 360networks--these telecom flameouts chose paths that were not just risky but wildly imprudent. Their key mistake: loading up on two kinds of risk at once.
The first might be called "execution risk." In their race to band the earth in optical fiber, the telco upstarts ignored some key questions: Namely, would anyone need all of this fiber?
Weren't there too many companies doing the same thing? Wouldn't, uh, most of them fail? "People seemed to say, 'Maybe--but it's not going to be us,'" says Darrell Rigby, a Bain & Co. consultant who studies managing during times of turbulence. "Everyone thought they were immune."
On top of execution risk was another kind, which we'll call liquidity risk. Global Crossing--run by Gary Winnick, formerly of the junk-bond house Drexel Burnham Lambert--loaded up on $12 billion of high-yield debt. This essentially limited Winnick to a cannonball strategy: one shot, and if you miss, it's bankruptcy.
Bankruptcy it was. Given the utter violence of the telecom shakeout, you might say it was inevitable. But other telcos did manage to escape the carnage. BellSouth, dismissed as hopelessly conservative during the Wild West years, emerged with a pristine balance sheet and a strong competitive position. Its gentlemanly CEO, Duane Ackerman, was guided by a radical idea: "being good stewards of our shareholders' money." What a concept.
WorldCom founder Bernard Ebbers liked to eat. He ate MCI. He ate MFS and its UUNet subsidiary. He tried to eat Sprint. Wall Street helped him wash it all down with cheap capital and a buoyant stock price. Pretty soon WorldCom was tipping the scales at $39 billion in revenues. But there was a problem: Ebbers didn't know how to digest the things he ate. A born dealmaker, he seemed to care more about snaring new acquisitions than about making the existing ones--all 75 of them--work together. At least Ebbers was up front about it: "Our goal is not to capture market share or be global," he told a reporter in 1997. "Our goal is to be the No. 1 stock on Wall Street."
The results were frequently chaotic. For a time, sales reps from UUNet competed head-to-head with WorldCom sales teams for corporate telecom contracts. Smaller customers complained they had to call three different customer-service reps for their Internet, long-distance, and local-phone inquiries. If there is such a thing as negative synergy, WorldCom may have discovered it.
Not that acquisitions are always so bad. General Electric combines its acquisitive nature with an impressive ability to break down acquisitions and integrate them into existing operations. But too often CEOs succumb to an undisciplined lust for growth, accumulating assets for the sake of accumulating assets. Why? It's fun. There are lots of press conferences. It's what powerful CEOs do. And like Ebbers, whose WorldCom stock has lost 98% of its value, few wonder if their eyes might be bigger than their stomachs.
Listening to Wall Street more than to employees
No one likes a good growth story better than Wall Street. And in the late 1990s, no one was telling a better one than Lucent CEO Rich McGinn. He knew how to give Wall Street what it wanted--explosive top-line growth--and in return, Wall Street turned McGinn and his team into rock stars. For a bunch of former Bellheads, it was intoxicating stuff.
But while McGinn was busy performing for the Street, there were at least two groups he wasn't listening to. The first was Lucent's scientists, who feared the company was missing out on a new optical technology, OC-192, that could transmit voice and data faster. They pleaded in vain for its development, then watched as rival Nortel rolled out OC-192 gear to thunderous success. At the same time McGinn was neglecting Lucent's salespeople, who might have told him that his growth targets were becoming increasingly unrealistic. To meet them, employees were pulling forward sales from future quarters by offering steep discounts and wildly generous financing arrangements, largely to dot-coms. "As we got further and further behind," Chairman Henry Schacht later explained, "we did more and more discounting."
It could only last so long. After Lucent stock had lost more than 80% of its value and he had replaced McGinn as CEO, Schacht sat down with FORTUNE to ponder some hard-earned lessons. "Stock price is a byproduct; stock price isn't a driver," he said. "And every time I've seen any of us lose sight of that, it has always been a painful experience." Top management needs to understand what the folks on Wall Street want--but not necessarily give it to them.
When companies run into trouble, the desire for a quick fix can become overwhelming. The frequent result is a dynamic that Collins describes in Good to Great: "A&P vacillated, shifting from one strategy to another, always looking for a single stroke to quickly solve its problems. [It] held pep rallies, launched programs, grabbed fads, fired CEOs, hired CEOs and fired them yet again." Lurching from one silver bullet solution to another, the company never gained any traction.
Collins calls it the "doom loop," and it's a killer. Kmart is another victim. In the 1980s and early '90s, Kmart was all about diversification, shifting away from discounting to acquire stakes in chains like Sports Authority, OfficeMax, and Borders bookstores. But in the 1990s a new management team divested those stores and decided to revamp Kmart's supply chain by investing heavily in IT. That lasted for a while, until a new CEO, Chuck Conaway, decided that, actually, Kmart would try to beat Wal-Mart at its own game. This unleashed a disastrous price war that in the end proved to be one mistake too many. "When you look at companies that get themselves into trouble," says Collins, "they're often taking steps of great, lurching bravado rather than quiet, deliberate understanding." Did somebody say AT&T?
Arthur Andersen, Enron, and Salomon Brothers were all brought down, or nearly so, by the rogue actions of a tiny few. But the bad apples in these companies grew and flourished in the same kind of environment: a rotten corporate culture. It's impossible to monitor the actions of every employee, no matter how many accounting and compliance controls you put in place. But either implicitly or explicitly, a company's cultural code is supposed to equip front-line employees to make the right decisions without supervision. At Salomon Brothers the culture did just the opposite. The transgressor there was Paul Mozer, a trader who in February of 1991 improperly overbid in auctions of U.S.
Treasury bonds. While it was another improper bid on May 22 that finally did him in, the critical event occurred in April, when Salomon Chairman John Gutfreund learned of the February overbid by Mozer and failed to discipline him. Mozer evidently took Gutfreund's lack of action as a green light.
Salomon's culture of swashbuckling bravado encouraged risk taking without accountability. Enron's culture encouraged profit taking without disclosure. Andersen's culture engendered conflicts of interest without safeguards. Rotten cultures produce rotten deeds.
Alan Greenspan has his own theory on failure. Testifying about Enron in February, he noted, "A firm is inherently fragile if its value-added emanates more from conceptual as distinct from physical assets.... Trust and reputation can vanish overnight. A factory cannot." The speed of some recent crackups would seem to confirm his thesis. The first domino falls when questions are raised, sometimes anonymously. Wrongdoing is suspected. Customers delay new orders. Rating agencies lower their debt ratings. Employees head for the exits. More customers defect. And voilà, you have what former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling has called "a classic run on the bank."
Is it possible to halt one? Yes, but only if you stop the spiral from building up speed. Salomon broke the cycle by hiring Warren Buffett as interim CEO--essentially a giant credibility infusion. By waiting several months to step down, on the other hand, Arthur Andersen CEO Joseph Berardino lost whatever chance he had to avoid disaster. Once started, the spiral can bring a company whose main assets are people and ideas to its knees with breathtaking finality.
What was Enron's board thinking? Of all the infamous moments in the company's demise, perhaps the least explicable was the board's decision to waive Enron's code of ethics to accommodate CFO Andrew Fastow's partnerships. "A red flag the size of Alaska," says Nell Minow, founder of the board watchdog group Corporate Library. Even Enron directors belatedly agreed with this assessment. "After having authorized a conflict of interest creating as much risk as this one," the board's special investigation committee wrote in a February report, "the board had an obligation to give careful attention to the transactions that followed. It failed to do this.... In short, no one was minding the store."
Despite a decade's worth of shareholder activism, Enron's board was not an anomaly. The sorry fact is that most corporate boards remain hopelessly beholden to management. "I was never allowed to present to the board unless things were perfect," says a former senior executive at Xerox, whose board includes Vernon Jordan and former Senator George Mitchell. "You could only go in with good news. Everything was prettied up." At many boards, the CEO oversees meetings, hand-picks directors, and spoon-feeds them information. "Directors know relatively little apart from what management tells them," says John Smale, a former CEO of Procter & Gamble and onetime chairman of General Motors.
Unless, that is, the board demands more. "The CEO is always going to want to turn the board meeting into a pep rally," says Minow. "You've got to say to him, 'Look, I'm a busy person. I don't have time for the good news. What I need for you to tell me is the bad news.' It's like what Robert Duvall says in The Godfather: 'I have to go to the airport. The Godfather is a man who likes to hear bad news immediately.' That should be emblazoned on every corporate governance policy sheet."
Paul O'Neill may have been wrong about his assessment of Enron, but he was right about something else. "The great companies don't make excuses," he said recently, "including excuses about how they didn't do well because the economy was against them or prices were not good. They do well anyway." It's true. And it's something to think about the next time you hear a CEO railing at the gods.
·
Chaturvedi, N. (2008). Management case: An interaction in original. Vision, 12(4), 71–77. http://www.thecampuscommon.com/library/ezproxy/ticketdemocs.asp?sch=auo&turl= http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=36659227&site= ehost-live MANAGEMENT CASE
AN INTERACTION IN ORIGINAL
Niraj Kr. Chaturvedi
The joint venture concern of a collaboration of two companies hires a new HR Manager. The former company is an Indian concern dealing in the transportation sector and the later on deals on international logistics. This joint venture provides logistics services to an automobile concern from Japan. An email from Officer EXIM to the HR Manager of the company leads to the initiative of an interaction that involves all staffs from top to bottom hence a general meeting is called. The issues are of haphazard work conditions in the venture and the souring relationship of a senior staff with his junior counterpart. More importantly, besides looking into the arenas to initiate cordial work atmosphere, behaviour traits too are discussed. It is focused that seniors should maintain the decorum and the juniors should accept their responsibilities and work accordingly. The emphasis is 'seniors must not talk loosely' whatever the circumstances are in the organisation. An organisation sustains upon respecting the sentiments and potentials of every worker from top to the bottom. The interaction ends, and the yearly appraisals, a year later, yields the results - an outcome of cordial behaviour and self-respect.
Key Words : Industrial Relations in Logistical Services Firms, Discipline and Employee Behaviour, Cultural Diversity and Industrial Relations, Stake of Human Resources Department in Resolving IR Conflicts
I
N the start of summer in 2007, Mr. Gaurav joined a joint venture concern as HR Manager. The venture was formed in collaboration of two companies from different boundaries. The former one was an Indian concern having presence in the transportation sector of the country and the later one was an international logistics concern. This joint venture was primarily responsible for providing logistics services to an automobile concern hailing from Japan. The supervisory and middle level managerial staffs of the venture including its HR Manager and G.M Administration were on deputation from the Indian partner, whereas the senior management team mostly consisted of its foreign counterpart. The worker level with one officer and a manager were on the payroll of this joint venture.
The new HR Manager was appointed after a gap of nearly six months as the former HR Officer of this venture had left it at a very short notice. The new HR Manager was earlier associated with a leading Indian business school. He also had two years hands on experience in the corporate sector. He was given an
opportunity to serve the venture because of his expertise and educational qualification that was specialized in both logistics and human resource management. The most challenging area that he needed to deal in was to formulate the HR policies and regulations of this joint venture in his current role.
The new HR Manager received a forwarded email from the Manager of the Export and Import (EXIM) Department, Mr. Singh on July 25, 2007. This email was sent in original by an Officer of EXIM Department, Mr. Sanjeev Kumar that read like this:
From: EXIM Department To: Mr. Singh
Cc: GM-EXIM; Mr. Das, Assistant Manager- EXIM; Mr. Panchaal, Trainee-EXIM; Miss Chatterjee, Trainee-EXIM; Miss Rai, Trainee-EXIM
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 10:53 AM
Subject: Please suggest and imply a permanent solution of water logging in the R&D warehouse.
72 Chaturvedi
Mr. Singh, Manager-EXIM. We have found water logged in the R&D warehouse this morning. This has happened due to overflow of water from the mess tank. We are facing lots of problems in packing due to this. Please arrange some permanent solution and sort out the issue.
Regards,
Sanjeev Kumar
Officer Import & Export
The HR Manager responds-
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From: HR Department To: Mr. Singh-EXIM Department Cc: - Mr. Das, Assistant Manager-EXIM; Mr. Panchaal, Trainee-EXIM; Miss Chatterjee, Trainee-EXIM; Miss Rai, Trainee-EXIM Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 12:00 PM Subject: Re: Please suggest and imply a permanent solution of water logging in the R&D warehouse. Dear Friend, This is to inform you that we had already closed the leaking wolves as early as possible by the times you had informed us about this issue. It was, in fact, done in front of you that too before you communicated this mail to us. Thanks and Regards, Team HR 'For You - For Us' |
The reply of the mail was-
TEAM HR,
Thank you very much for your prompt response and co-operation. But it was too late when you have parted with. The problem still exists. Is it a permanent solution or what? We do not know?
We are strongly concerned about the consequences that arise due to this petty issue. We would not like to face any further damage to R&D packing materials. Two material packed cartoons have wetted due to this overflow today itself. The grieving issue is water wetted items take rust sooner hence get damaged.
You are requested to take some concrete action before further overflow happens.
Regards,
Sanjeev Kumar
Officer Import & Export
The HR Manager recieves another email next day-
From: EXIM
To: HR Department
Cc: GM-EXIM; GM-Administration; Manager-EXIM
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 9:50 AM
Subject: Bad response of my boss, Mr. Singh
To,
The Manager-HR.
Sir,
Since I have joined the company on March 1, 2006,I am performing my duties as per the guidelines and instructions of the management. But I do not have the idea what goof up is going on. Why it has happened for many a times that my boss, Mr. Singh always responded my queries in a rude manner.
For example:-
On the 1st day of my joining when I met the Manager-EXIM, Mr. Singh and requested him to brief me about my job profile he responded me rudely. Mr. Singh responded that 'why I had not asked about my job profile in the interview itself? I was told that I should have come to him after knowing my responsibilities from the interview board.'
As this reply had embarrassed me too much, I informed the matter to the HR department and approached them to assign me work. The HR department assigned me work in the warehouse. I started working in the R&D section later on after having received a call from the G.M-EXIM, who instructed me to do so.
I have been involved in the following assignments since I joined the organisation:
1. Meetings with the clients in the R&D section to make their flowchart for export job,
2. Warehousing the client's material and keeping their records,
3. Packing of client's R&D materials and dispatching them as per their instructions,
4. Acknowledging each and every mail associated with the clients in R&D section to our seniors, as well as juniors,
5. Shared knowledge and information at each and every stage in this period for the smooth functioning of this job,
6. Communicated with the vendors every time for sorting out the related problems coming in our way particularly in billing and quotations,
7. Checking of invoices of the company that were prepared by Mr. Singh besides correcting and checking the bills of vendors for payments,
VISION—The Journal of Business Perspective Vol. 12 No. 4 October–December 2008
Packing of client’s R&D materials and
An Interaction in Original 73
8. Making quotations as per the vendor's query and requirement and finalising them with the help of G.M-EXIM.
9. Preparing quotations as per the queries and requirements regarding the freight jobs. I did them in consultation with the G.M,
10. Preparing Jobs File (under G.M's guidance) and the ledger entries,
11. Looking EXIM accounts, except TALLY punching, and
12. Giving the Profit and Loss statement information to the accounts department of the company.
I can firmly say that I have performed all kinds of jobs in the EXIM department as and when I am to top do. I am confident enough that our venture will now perform better in the freight business now than we have done in the earlier occasions and trials. But I was literally shocked yesterday evening when my boss Mr. Singh rebuked me and advised to leave my job.
The bone of contention is based upon the wrong information and associated misconceptions. He (Mr. Singh) informed me that one of our clients had objected that the delivery place had been mentioned wrongly. The bill was filed by me and signed by the G.M Sir. I am unable to understand this. Even a three class child can understand the name of the place being mentioned by me.
We had requested Mr. Singh previously as well to provide us with the details in written in case I could not grasp the inform. Ironically he did not bother and replied our queries rudely. He used to say that he would not write. Instead he intimidated me by saying that 'either you understand by your own or leave this job instantly.'
My point here is that our subordinates and I, i.e., all EXIM staff except the G.M of this company depend upon the information sought by Mr. Singh other than the emails that we receive. We always respect him and seek his suggestions. But if the guardian of the EXIM department would treat us with this way by such wordings 'Leave the job' then how could we learn to be a good manager and work efficiently? How would we improve our job Proficiency in this catch22situation?
Please help me and guide for further plan of action.
Sanjeev Kumar
Officer Import & Export
The HR Manager forwarded this email of Mr. Singh after putting an additional note with a C.C to- G.M-EXIM, G.M-Administration and M.D on Thursday, July 26, 2007 at 10:06 AM -
|
Dear Singh San, We are in receipt of the following under mentioned grievance from your subordinate Mr. Sanjeev Kumar. You are required to state your facts in response to the same, by the earliest; to make us understand the issue and arrive at a rational decision. |
On Thursday, July 26, 2007 10:37 AM, there was a reply to the HR Manager, General Manager-EXIM and GM-Administration-
|
Dear Sirs, In regard to this issue raised by Mr. Sanjeev Kumar, I can only reply in everybody's presence to which this issue has been mentioned. Singh Co-Ordination Manager |
Later the HR Manager wrote an email to the General Manager-EXIM and GM-Administration, with C.C to Managing Director at 10:45 AM--
|
Dear Sir, You might have received the grievance mail of Mr. Sanjeev Kumar from Export-Import Department (EXIM). I suggest that we must call a meeting at the earliest to deal with the matter and sort out the issue for smooth functioning of the activities of our organisation. Please guide with your response. Thanks and regards, Kumar Gaurav Manager -Team HR 'For You - For Us' |
The G.M-Administration sent an email to all at 10:50 AM the same day-
Mr. Singh,
We have decided to call a meeting at 11.00 A. M.
Thanks and Regards,
G.M-Administration
The G.M Administration was in his office along with the G.M-EXIM and HR Manager at 11:00 AM. They had the discussion-
G.M Administration: How was your trip to home?
G.M EXIM: OK! Japan is a lovely place
especially when it is your home.
G.M Administration: Let us begin the proceedings.
G.M EXIM: Do you know Sanjeev, Miss
Chatterjee and Miss Rai are at low
VISION—The Journal of Business Perspective Vol. 12 No. 4 October–December 2008
74 Chaturvedi
levels in the company. Mr. Singh scolded him for some valid reasons; however, he should stop abusive talks.
G.M Administration: Seniors must not talk loosely. Every person has some specific quality and self respect. They have their own grudges. But respect must always be given to everybody. I have called meetings twice or thrice to improve the condition so that an understandable result comes up to certain. Mr. Singh has been told many a times to give in writing about the non-performers but he hardly took any action in this regard.
G.M EXIM: Let us call them to discuss the
matter.
G.M Administration: I think we must confront with
the third party first then the aggrieved and the culprit.
G.M EXIM: Ok! Call Mr. Das.
Interaction with Mr. Das- Assistant Manager-EXIM
G.M EXIM: How is Sanjeev's job?
Mr. Das: He has improved and is currently
responsible for the invoicing.
G.M EXIM: What was the condition before
the implementation of computerised system?
Mr. Das: The job was haphazard then. At
that time, one invoice used to take too much of time to complete.
G.M EXIM: Now!
Mr. Das: Things have improved a lot.
G.M Administration: Which are the key areas that he
needs to improve?
Mr. Das: Calculations.
G.M Administration: He knows calculations or not?
Mr. Das: He asks whenever he is in
trouble. He has an urge for learning.
G.M EXIM: Even though Mr. Das and Mr.
Singh have taught him, still he makes mistakes.
G.M Administration: One person knows better and the other is an amateur. The person who knows about the mistakes, improves them better. We must review the performance of Sanjeev on weekly basis and or fortnightly.
The matter here is not related to efficiency in the work. Rather it is concerned with the behaviour. Seniors are responsible for making the junior's level better.
G.M EXIM: We have waited for so long. I
don't want to continue with him.
HR Manager: Ok! Mr. Das, Thanks for your valuable inputs. Please send Mr. Sanjeev to us by the time you reach your place of working.
In Confrontation with Mr. Sanjeev Kumar G.M Administration: What is the actual problem?
Sanjeev: I followed the exact instructions of Mr. Singh and now he is complaining about the same in a rude manner.
G.M Administration: So you are annoyed with the
response of your seniors in case you do mistakes.
Sanjeev: I expect clear information at the first hand. He replies rudely, and in that case how would we perform better. We must be confirmed about the correct information.
G.M Administration: Why did not you come to us
earlier in writing?
Sanjeev: He doesn't write. Instead he always says me to quit the job. He tells something else, thinks something else and does something else.
G.M Administration: Suppose you have done a mistake
then what Mr. Singh might have done to you?
VISION—The Journal of Business Perspective Vol. 12 No. 4 October–December 2008
An Interaction in Original 75
Sanjeev: He should warn appropriately.
And if it is his mistake then onus is on whom to prove?
HR Manager: What are the counter measures
you want?
Sanjeev: He must behave politely. My
efficiency is going down day by day due to this type of treatment.
G.M Administration: Please get confirmed by Mr.
Singh in writing whenever you complete a task.
Sanjeev: I want written instructions all the time.
G.M EXIM: Written instructions will be given
in important cases only.
Sanjeev: Mr. Das and Mr. Singh are not putting their signatures on all the documents. Sometimes only Mr. Das signs on them.
HR Manager: Mr. Sanjeev! We are working with your complaint and will come out with a satisfying solution. In the meanwhile, please wait for some moments outside the chamber and send Mr. Singh to meet us.
In the Chamber of G.M-Administration with Mr. Singh-
Singh: Konnichiwa (Hello in Japanese)
G.M EXIM: Douitashmimashte (You are
welcome)
G.M Administration: Mr. Singh, we are here to discuss some grievances raised against you by one of your colleagues. We hope to get a clear picture from you.
Singh: Sanjeev prepared two bills. Our clients told that the bills are not ok! I asked him for explanation, and he had the reply that I told him to do so. He should not have done this and I told him to quit the job if he is unable to perform. You can ask others too.
I have some points to put-
- I cannot give everything in writing,
- The person committing a mistake must accept the same.
G.M Administration: This is not the first instance in the EXIM department that such issues are being raised. I was trying to bring the level at an equal front. It is your family problem.
Singh: Our Indian parental company appointed him without my concern. The person should be competent and come to me at an appropriate level.
G.M Administration: It is to be reminded that he is appointed by the Japanese associates. He is the employee of the joint venture and not a deputed employee like the Manager-HR and me.
Singh: If he doesn't accept his mistakes,
then how I would tolerate him?
G.M Administration: Earlier you have been warned Panchaal of slapping him. He had informed it to our parental company's head office. Next day I received a call from the Chairman of the group. The whole issue is associated with behaviour.
You have always appraised Panchaal; now G.M EXIM is saying that he is a low performer. I have urged several times to ask explanation from the non-performers. Your department looks highly intact as you people sit together in a round table format.
Singh: All are freshers. I can't tolerate. I
never said they are good performers. I said they will pickup.
G.M Administration: You could have demanded the
written explanation. It is our responsibility to motivate them.
VISION—The Journal of Business Perspective Vol. 12 No. 4 October–December 2008
76 Chaturvedi
Every person...
Singh: I tried to speak with you last
evening.
G.M Administration: We must respect each-other. It
is a give-n-take relationship.
Singh: Sanjeev is not reading all the
emails.
G.M EXIM: Ok! Ok! You should not use loose words while talking with the juniors. I will advise Sanjeev to accept his mistakes. I will further instruct him that he must read each and every email.
G.M Administration: Mr. Singh, you should mail me
about the non-conduct of any of the jobs by Sanjeev.
Singh: I will not be responsible for other's mistakes. I am ready to leave the post of manager. I will work as per your instructions.
G.M Administration: I am not convinced with your statement. We are managers here. It is our primary responsibility to check and correct the mistakes of our juniors. I have been signing over your documents and never complained. You must not skip from your responsibilities.
Singh: Sanjeev often says to me that this company has selected him hence only it can kick him out if need arises and I must not interfere.
G.M Administration: He must not say like this and if
he persists then I will kick him out.
HR Manager: Sorry for interrupting! I think we have enough discussion individually. Let us call everybody in the room and resolve this issue amicably.
Sanjeev: He scolded with the words like-
'Go back to farming you villager.'
Singh: Whether I talked in such a way
with you?
Sanjeev: On the very first day we met.
G.M Administration: Please don't' fight like the road
warriors. We have come up with the conclusion that-
1. Mr. Sanjeev will have to be more serious about the documentation and other related jobs.
2. Mr. Sanjeev should accept his mistakes as and when it occurs, and should consult his seniors to resolve the same.
3. Mr. Singh will avoid using unofficial languages at the workplace.
G.M EXIM: Mr. Gaurav! You should report to M.D-Mr. Takashi San with the minutes of the meeting and the points we have come up with.
On Friday, 27 July, 2007, the staff members of EXIM department found their sitting arrangements changed at the start of their office. The sitting arrangement of Mr. Singh and Mr. Das were kept in their original positions, i.e., the tables were intact that faced them each-other.
Mr. Sanjeev and the trainees were arranged to sit at a separate place from their seniors.
Thereafter the HR Manager received a thanksgiving mail from all staffs at 10:00 AM on July 28, 2007.
One month later, on the request of M.D, the HR Manager was transferred to the Indian company's office but he left the company and the G.M Export-Import was given an additional responsibility to look both the departments after export-import and administration until alternate arrangements are not done.
The yearly appraisals had the results. Mr. Singh was awarded with 30% hike in the pay, the trainees got an extension of their training period and Mr. Sanjeev was not considered for the next appraisal. The post of HR manager does not exist in the venture at present.
VISION—The Journal of Business Perspective Vol. 12 No. 4 October–December 2008
An Interaction in Original 77
Managing Director
G.M Administration
Manager HR
Supervisor
G.M EXIM
A.G.M Trainee
Manager
Assistant Manager
Officer
Trainees
Figure 1: The Inter-Branch Chart
Niraj Kumar Chaturvedi ([email protected]) is a human resource professional, associated with the Bank of India as Scale II Officer in its HR Department. He has worked in various sectors including steel, logistics and in academic sector as well at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He has a commerce background with an M.B.A and pursues Doctorate in the area of employee motivation. He has bagged Gold Medal with A.I.R 1st in Diploma Course conducted by the Ministry of Railways in Logistics. He has contributed in the field of human resource in a useful manner by associating with number of educational and consultancy projects and publications in the Indian journals .
VISION—The Journal of Business Perspective Vol. 12 No. 4 October–December 2008
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