Tariq Khan Employed by Tek - Case Study

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Introduction

The case revolves around Tariq Khan employed at Tek who is confused whether to accept Global sales and marketing team manager position or not. He must make his decision but seeing the previous manager’s failure to lead the team he is confused whether to take this opportunity or not.

• On one hand if he succeeds this will be the right road to executive position
• On the other hand, it’s a big risk, if he fails to deliver, his reputation at Tek will suffer and all his hard work and efforts for the company will go down the drain. He fears he might lose his position on the “High potential” list at Tek.

Challenges Faced by Tariq khan

A lot of questions were revolving in his head after he had a prolonged meeting with senior leadership members of the team. He was banking on this meeting to decide upon his acceptance of the offer, but the meeting could not create clarity of the actual problem why the team’s Market share was declining. On Sunil’s suggestion he decided to visit the entire team so that he can take first hand information and do his part of analysis on what was the actual problem of declining performance of the team.

Khan was under immense pressure because if he takes the position he will have to reverse all the previous damage and pull the team back from their current position to an increasing market share and sales growth in only two years. Also, the executives were all eyes for quick results seeing his previous performance. Similarly applying for this position was pushed by a friend so Khan was analyzing whether its better to take a risk and accept the role and put his reputation at stake.

He was thinking about his past experiences and was confident at one hand but was also concerned that the previous manager warned him not to take this position and put his reputation at stake. Also, the team was very diverse in both language and culture. He was confused whether it will turn in his favor or not? Working with a 68 people team spread across 27 countries could be really challenging. Throughout his analysis of the entire situation he was unable to find out the role of the market in the declining performance of the team. This was mentioned by Sunil one of the senior executives of the team but he wasn’t backed by anyone on the team. The senior executive each had a separate reason for the decline in groups performance and they could not reach consensus on one reason. This was also a matter for concern for Khan.

 One of the senior executive Lars who was from Sweden was rumored to be indifferent towards his team. He used to mock his team mates and was insensitive towards the teams social and cultural practices. Khan was really concerned if he takes the position how would dealing with Lars would be challenge for him as he was senior and one of the best performers of the group. His product knowledge was a plus at one end but his nature was not. Khan will have to deal with hm or fire him or transfer him.

Similarly, Khan had worked with a multilingual group before and he had sorted their issues by forcing them one language of communication but eventually the people did not receive it well. He was concerned what he should do for such a diverse group of multilingual people.

Tariq Khan’s Background and Position at Tek:

Tariq Khan is an Electrical Engineer who started his career with SPK where he had experience with sales, business development and project management. He held the project manager position before he left and joined Tek. Due to his performance and promising potential he was among the list of “High Potentials” at Tek. Being a part of this list meant high visibility among senior executives and fast track promotion to executive role. He was only 33 when he was offered his role of Global manager. Khan’s start with Tek was as Sales team leader (procurement, planning and front-line sales) Later he was promoted to Country Manager. In addition to this he was on the Global Competence Development Committee in which he visited sales teams in different countries and observed their methods, motivation and challenges. He retained this role even when he was transferred to Dubai for a new assignment in Business Development. This role gave him an edge as he worked with multilingual and different cultural teams. He was successful in leading the business development in Iraq and Bangladesh.

Tariq khan has very prominent qualities and advantages that could add to the new position offered:

• Optimistic and confident in Tek’s brand
• He was experienced in converting individuals into a collaborative team
• He has really good communication skills and was always trying to find answers so that the actual problem can be identified, and solutions can be found.
• Experienced and trained for employee motivation
• Knew how to probe to find what mattered for employees the most
• He liked challenges
• He could gel in with other nationalities easily. It is very difficult to please Indians but still Khan was able to manage that
• He had experience working with a culturally diverse and multilingual team before.

Analysis of the team

The team consisted of 68 people from 27 different countries and speaking 18 different languages. The team members were aged between 22 to 61 years.  In the last two years there had been a decline in its performance when it was headed by Ali Amlak who was leaving this position. The employee satisfaction had also reduced to half from its peak.

Problems with the team

 The team was very diverse, and it was facing issues as is. Due to the culture and language difference there were divisions in the team. This was observed by Khan at the meeting in Dubai. Moreover, people in the team were bonding based on religious and cultural similarities. On a larger basis there were two major segregations in the team

• Native and highly fluent English Speakers
• Less fluent English speakers who had confidence issues because of this

The major set back of this language diversity was in Central Asia where the employees had to converse in three different languages. Most of the employees were not even natives so they had to learn three different languages to work there.

Another major difference between the teams working in different countries was their time difference and difference in working days. That posed a major problem among their coordinations. There were four different time zones in which the teams operated worldwide. Similarly, team members were not gelled in properly some of them did not even know the nationalities of their team members.