Managing Teams Final Exam: Flipkart Global Expansion Strategy Project in Kenya

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Managing Teams Final Exam: Flipkart Global Expansion Strategy Project in Kenya

By Sumit Agarwal (PG ID: 89180559)

This report has been divided into five different sections, each catering to a set of requirements of the case. The assimilation of all five parts as a whole can be viewed as a response to the whole case.

1. My Reflective Best Self

Based on my self-analysis and the analysis from my peers, my competence can be classified in four broad categories. Here is how I would be using them to perform the role that I have been selected for:

1. Collaborative Leadership: This competence would enable me to build people. I would be able to act as an enabler to provide a sense of achievement to the team and knit them into a close unit by making them complement each other while building close relationships and alliances within the team. This will help them to use each other as a motivating factor to come out of the low performing cycles and transform into a high-performance team.
2. Contextual Resilience: This competence is all about finding solutions. I will be acting as a go to guy for advice on problems and would not only anticipate them but also create an environment where-in the team members would be encouraged to develop their own solutions. This will start by helping them outline the framework of their problem, understand the needs and the constraints, and then create a pathway which could meet all the needs while staying away from the constraints in order to create a successful expansion strategy.
3. Market Savvy: The competence in this area would make me aware about the requirements of the project as a whole including the geographical requirements in Kenya, thus enabling me to understand the gather the resources for the completion of the project including the right set of people which I would be required to include in my team for making the team perform in the right direction. Furthermore, this competence will help in the market analysis of Kenya that is required to be done as a part of the project.
4. Integrity: As a person with this competence, I would be acting as a pillar so as to ensure that the team does not stray from the objective nor the most optimum path that has been collaboratively chosen to achieve the goal. The expansion strategy thus developed will focus on the right means to create value among customers, building the brand image and this gain an important market share in Kenya as per the requirement.

Apart from this, I would be using my feedback from my peers i.e. “Focused, Hardworking, Laconic Speaker, Analytical, Multitasker and Problem Solver” in addition to the above competencies to further develop and achieve objective. All in all, I would be using my competencies along with a lot of passion to adapt to the needs of the project while doing the same for my team members so as to assign tasks and roles within a team that will create a management sweet spot required for a successful endeavour.

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1. Finding the Right Person

Now that I know my competencies, my next step is to ensure that the rest of my team not only bring all those competencies to the table which I cannot while building upon those which I already have so that I am able to relate to them in that particular competency. My thought would be that I should be able to relate to at least two competencies of each individual in my team while the other two competencies would be the one I lack. This way we would be able to have a healthy mix of people who be able to work together a single unit. In-regards to the person I would need to hire, I would like him to have the below competencies:

1. Functional Excellence: Since my team already has a string of low performers, this individual will need to have a lot of functional excellence which will not only be leveraged to do the task at hand but also in-terms of training and mentoring the rest of the team on the technical aspects of the project.
2. Corporate Vision: The next thing which I will need from that person is the ability to relate to the need of Flipkart and the needs of Deloitte as a whole. This ability will enable that individual to act as a pivo around which the team would be able to swing themselves into the right direction creating right focus and objectivity.
3. Global Mindset: In addition to my competency as Market Savvy, having a person with a Global Mindset will enable an integration of global strategies to solve local problem and challenges this creating integrated solutions and an environment of problem solving within the team. Further to this, having a global mindset will also help this person understand the cultural differences in Kenya and thus help develop solutions catering to specific regional needs.

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1. Integrity: This competency of the person would help me relate to him/her. As a result, the focus would remain on preserving the ethical nature of all the approaches that will be followed keeping the team on the right track.

The below questions would help me understand the determine if a person would be right fit for the team. The idea will be to use the previous performance as an indicator of the future accomplishments through behavioural interviewing:

1. Tell me about an instance where you had to devise a strategy for a multi-lingual, multi-cultural territory. How did you overcome this challenge?
2. Have you ever worked in African markets? If yes, describe the efforts that you took to understand the nature here and how did it help? Was there anything that you tried and did not work? Describe it.
3. Tell me about an instance where you had an opportunity to gain insider information of a competitor. Did you use it? If yes, how were you able to get an advantage from it?
4. Tell me about an instance where you refused to work on a project due to malpractices.
5. Tell me of a project where you were not able to replicate any previously developed strategies and had to develop a new one from scratch. How did you go about it?
6. Tell me about a project where you were able to successfully implement a strategy of a totally different demographic. What features helped you choose this strategy and how you able to relate the strategy to the current project.
7. Tell me of an instance where all your ideas were rejected by the management. How did you deal with it?
8. Tell me of an instance where the solution provided by your team did not work for the client. What did you do? Were you able to overcome that? If yes, how?
9. Tell me of an instance where you had to mentor a team of old and more experienced individual. How did you go about it?
10. Tell me of an instance where you received a lot of hostility from the team. How did you deal with it?

1. RAP, Performance Review, Feedback, Goal Identification & Alignment, Group Goals vs. Individual Goals, Active Listening

RAP sessions serve as an excellent tool for performance review, feedback and aligning goals and providing purpose while acting as a platform for coaching the individual by acting as an enabler, focusing on the future and helping the individual discover their own path in order to foster individual performance in a business context. The session can be broken down into 3 parts: