The Man of the Hour - Employment Case Study

The Man of the Hour

This case revolves around Tariq Khan, a young up and coming star within the ranks of

Tek. Khan started his career in Pakistan as an electrical engineer at SPK, where he

worked for four years on industrial projects of various natures, before moving onto Tek.

Along with the various assignments assigned to Khan during his first four years at Tek,

he was also made country manager for Pakistan and given the responsibility to serve on a

Global Competence Development Committee. Serving on this Committee provided him

with a unique opportunity to visit and observe the different methodologies adopted by

sales teams all over the world. Khan got his first taste of working with a culturally and

linguistically diverse group of people when he moved to Dubai to work on a new

business development assignment, where he played a lead role in penetrating the markets

of Bangladesh and Iraq.

Khan’s dilemma arose when he was eventually offered the position of General Manager

for Sales and Marketing as a replacement for the outgoing General Manager, who felt his

reputation was ruined at Tek due to his inability to effectively handle the role of General

Manager. Success for Khan would mean a step towards another promotion while failure

could send him down the same path as his predecessor.

Diversity: An Asset or a liability?

The biggest issue at hand for Khan was to decide weather to accept the role of the

General Manager or not. Accepting the job would mean putting the company back on its

feet but that would be an uphill task, even for someone as talented as Khan. Company’s

operating margin, net profit, market share all showed a downwards trend, employ

satisfaction levels were also considerably lower compared to previous years. These

prevailing problems were present for a variety of reasons, mainly caused by the vast

cultural and linguistic diversity present in the team.

Having a diverse group of people in team has various benefits, they help target global

audiences, promote creative and innovative thinking and achieve better financial results,

but if a group gets too diverse managing it can pose a significant amount of challenges

and it was Khan’s responsibility to overcome these problems if he were to accept the role

of General Manager.

Language and cultural differences: With team members hailing from 27 different

countries the language barrier posed a significant challenge in building a cohesive team.

Even though each team member was capable of speaking English, various sub-groups

arose because not all members felt entirely comfortable speaking English. Effective

communication is paramount for the success of such a diverse group of people but not all

of them had the same level of command on the English language, as a result they were

reluctant to speak their minds during the team meetings.2

Time Zones: Being a multinational company meant Trek operated in various regions

around the globe, and the difference in time zones of these regions meant different work

weeks and holidays which made coordination difficult. Lack of communication between

these regions further aggravated the problem of coordination, resulting in frustrated

employees and increased lag times.

The Big Three

The inability of the senior leadership to identify and agree on the root cause of the

problem was proving to be a major hindrance in devising future strategies. Each of the 3

senior executives had his own theory as to why the company was performing poorly.

Sunil thought that increased prices of their products and changes in the compensation of

employee’s salary structure resulted in the failure of the team.

Lars believed changes in their brand resulted in a confused customer base which resulted

in reduced revenues.

Ramazan assumed the complexity of target setting methods and the reluctance of country

managers to set higher sales targets for themselves resulted in the team’s failure. The

country managers didn’t want to set higher sales targets out of the fear of missing out on

these targets.

There was also an element of distrust among the executive, as was demonstrated by the

altercation between Lars and Ramzan during the meeting. Both blamed each other for the

missed deliveries of last year. The leadership group however did develop a consensus and

started to reach out team members to try and understand them and their expectation for

and from the firm. This was a positive step in trying to figure out the underlying causes of

the organization’s problems.

Tone at the Top

During his travels with the senior leadership Khan observed the cultural insensitiveness

was prevalent even in the highest