(Re)Building * Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek
Tariq Khan arrived home after * 16-hour meeting. He was grappling with whether to accept the global sales and marketing team manager position. Khan spent the entire day with the senior leadership of the team trying to understand the group’s challenges. However, the meeting had raised more questions than answers.
Already * rising star within his company, Khan was only 33 when he was offered this high-profile position to lead * diverse 68-person team whose members hailed from 27 countries and spoke 18 different languages. The team’s recent performance had seen * precipitous decline, resulting in the previously well-regarded manager departing the company in * state of disrepute. Employee satisfaction also plunged by more than half its peak nearly two years prior. Should Khan accept the position, he would be expected to reverse the performance lag in less than two years, achieving substantial sales growth and increasing market share. However, should he fail to resurrect the team in the allotted timeframe, his status as * high-potential would be jeopardized. Khan hoped that meetings with both the senior executives and the outgoing manager would help him decide whether or not to take the position.
The meetings thus far had been exhausting, but revealing. Khan had * greater understanding of the group, but still had one more week to make up his mind. The following day, he would begin his tour of the Middle East and Central and South Asia to meet the rest of the team. He wondered if * week was enough time to assess the situation, but he pushed this question to the back of his mind and started packing.
Tariq Khan
Khan began his career as an electrical engineer with SPK in Pakistan, where he worked on industrial projects in sales, business development, and project management. Eventually, he became the project manager for * $20-million contract. Four years later, he moved to Tek and joined an exclusive list of “high potentials” whose progress was reevaluated every two years. He had the potential to be promoted every 18 to 24 months and learn * variety of roles within the company. This visibility within the firm would provide him with * fast-track route to an executive role. Even though he was constantly being evaluated by senior executives, being on the list meant plenty of opportunities.
Professor Tsedal Neeley prepared this case with the support of Research Associates Colin Donovan and Nathan Overmeyer. It was reviewed and approved before publication by the case protagonist. Funding for the development of this case was provided by Harvard Business School, and not by the company. The company and characters have been disguised. HBS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management.
Copyright © 2013, 2014 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545- 7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to www.hbsp.harvard.edu/educators. This publication may not be digitized, photocopied, or otherwise reproduced, posted, or transmitted, without the permission of Harvard Business School.
9-414 -059
REV: NOVEMBER 24, 2014
414-059 (Re)Building * Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek
The first four years of Khan’s Tek career in Pakistan included assignments in procurement, planning, and frontline sales, plus time as * sales team leader. He was also promoted to country manager for Pakistan and served on * Global Competence Development Committee in addition to his regular responsibilities. This role allowed him to visit sales teams around the world and observe their methods, motivations and challenges. When he moved to Dubai for * new assignment in business development, Khan kept his existing position on the Global Competence Development Committee. Again, he cycled through various roles, rotating between staff and line functions. In his business development role, he led Tek’s penetrations into Iraq and Bangladesh, where he worked with * linguistically and culturally diverse team for the first time.
* Tip and Advice from Singapore
After almost four years in various business development roles in Dubai, Khan knew that his window of opportunity for * promotion was about to open again. * friend in Singapore, who was senior within Tek, notified Khan that the position of General Manager for Sales and Marketing would soon be available. The team, Khan was told, had been failing. The previous manager, known for his wealth of experience and also * “high potential” at Tek, was leaving the company.
Khan was encouraged by his friend to apply for this new and challenging role. After he was selected, he began to consider his options. He had * proven track record of success, but he wondered if taking this role was too much of * risk; could he chance losing his position on the list of high potentials? Perhaps even more nerve-wracking, the executives who selected him for the role wanted quick results. Khan wondered how he could turn things around in less than two years, growing sales substantially and increasing Tek’s market share. Khan questioned how the group’s problems had flummoxed even an experienced manager.
“Everyone thought the previous manager was * great leader,” Khan told his friend in Singapore. “He tried team-building activities and cultural awareness exercises, as well as * lot of new ideas, and he still failed. I’m * lot younger than he is. How can I expect to do any better?” His friend played up the opportunities that this job might afford Khan: “True, you are younger, and you will need to delicately manage older workers from the Middle East and Asia. But this group needs fresh ideas, and you have the potential to be successful.” As Khan started to mull his options, his friend added, “This can be * very important global role for someone on track to become an executive here.”
With this encouragement, Khan thought about his previous roles. He had worked well with * culturally diverse team on the penetrations into Iraq and Bangladesh. He recalled how he became closer with the Indian nationals on his team than with his fellow Pakistanis by making * concerted effort to reach out to them. It required him to reject long-standing stereotypes that many Pakistanis and Indians held toward one another as * result of longstanding border disputes and religious tension. Yet Khan was able to find common ground by sharing that his father was born in India. As part of the Global Competence Development cohort, Khan visited sales teams often, getting out and mixing around. In country after country, he had gained insight into the region-specific challenges faced by his colleagues in different markets. As he thought about his experiences, Khan became more confident in his abilities. Still, the job remained * huge risk. If he took the job, it would be do or die: succeed, and his star would continue to rise even faster, but fail, and years of hard work and careful planning would be negated.
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(Re)Building * Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek 414-059
* Caveat from the Departing Manager
The day that Khan received the job offer, he decided to solicit the advice of his potential predecessor, Ali Amlak, who agreed to meet with him. After quick introductions, Khan shared his concerns with him:
“While I am thrilled to have this opportunity, I am worried about where things stand,” Khan said.
With an air of exasperation, Amlak responded:
“Listen, I am going to be completely honest with you—the situation is simply out of control. I was spread too thin, putting out fires left and right. On top of running this business, all sorts of issues consumed my time. * manager was accused of sexual harassment, which embroiled us in * difficult legal situation. Ultimately, it was * cross-cultural misunderstanding. Then there were customer issues—missed and unfulfilled deliveries. The list just goes on and on.”
Khan wanted to understand the specifics of Amlak’s efforts, and what was leading him to walk away from Tek. “I heard that you tried many approaches, incorporating both team building and cultural awareness programs. Did these yield any results?” he pressed further.
Amlak answered:
“It was always * struggle to get buy-in for new initiatives, and I frequently met fierce resistance if I tried to make changes. An annual retreat was one step in the right direction. We brought the entire team together in one location for the first time, and this seemed to help. * session during the retreat was geared toward cultural sensitivity. Clearly, this wasn’t enough—the same issues and old ways of working resurfaced shortly after.”
Khan considered Amlak’s advice to be forthright and honest. “Thank you for sharing your experiences with me,” he said as they were wrapping up their meeting.
“Listen, Tariq,” Amlak continued. “I think this job has ruined my reputation here, and I have no choice but to leave. If I were you, I would think twice before taking this on.”
Working across Boundaries
Language
The entire team was about to meet in Dubai. It was the perfect chance for Khan to sit in on the session, and then meet with human resources and the team’s senior leadership the following day. When he arrived, he was shocked by how many languages were being spoken before the meeting started. As he walked around the room, he heard English in one corner, Russian in another, and Arabic in yet another. It quickly became apparent to Khan that the team, given free rein to sit wherever they wanted, had divided itself based on their native language, even though everyone in the group spoke English. As the day’s sessions progressed, Khan noticed that the language-based cliques also had religions and cultural traditions in common. As they bonded, these clusters drifted further apart from the larger group.
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414-059 (Re)Building * Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek
Khan began to see why people segregated into language groups. He noticed that team members did not all have the same level of fluency or comfort in English, which further exacerbated the language barriers among them. Native and highly-fluent English speakers spoke too quickly which caused less-fluent colleagues to hesitate with their questions. During one break, Khan overheard one of the quieter team members ask his colleagues, “What did he contribute today? What does he bring to the table?” Khan began to ask himself whether the shyer members of the team were legitimately concerned with their more fluent teammates. Perhaps, they were simply disguising their weaker skills by questioning the usefulness of speakers they didn’t understand.
Khan learned that team members working in Central Asia had it especially tough. They were already operating in two languages, since Russian was widely used by business contacts, but Kazakh or Uzbek was used when communicating with government officials and customers. Oftentimes, employees working in the formerly-Soviet states were not actually from the countries in which they were based. This meant they had to operate in at least three non-native languages.
Khan thought back to his work in business development, where he first led * linguistically and culturally diverse team. In order to increase levels of communication across his business teams, Khan felt that they should operate in * common language. He implemented the use of English as * lingua franca to bring team members onto an even footing. Though it showed early successes, not everyone embraced the idea. He wondered if he would fare any better with an even larger and more diverse team.
Time Zones
The group was also diverse in terms of time zones, work week, and holidays. Workers in the United States, Singapore and Kazakhstan had their weekends on Saturday and Sunday, while Saudi Arabia and much of the Arab world did not work on Thursday or Friday. This meant that the group’s common workweek consisted only of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On top of this, the group’s core operations spanned four different time zones. Plus, different countries had different holidays, and didn’t always communicate these holidays to the others. When one team member in Dubai tried to contact another employee in the Philippines, he became frustrated when no one answered his calls, not realizing the office was closed for * national observance.
National Culture and Age
In addition to the confusion surrounding holidays and schedules, team members also did not fully understand how diverse they were. When asked how many nationalities were represented in their group, team members regularly guessed between 10 and 15. Some people did not even know from which country their teammates came, incorporating them into broad categories like “European.” * Saudi Arabian team member was assumed to be German, since he had been there for many years, but he still traveled on his Saudi passport.
Later that day, the human resources officer responsible for the region gave Khan profiles of the team. His 68 team members represented 27 different countries and ranged in age from 22 to 61 years. Among them, they spoke 18 different languages and many other dialects (see Exhibit 1).
Shocked by the makeup of his unit, Khan again wondered if he was in over his head. He thought it would be intriguing to be * part of such * diverse team with so many talents and interesting stories. But he wondered if the group was just too diverse to function. Its recent failures were still foremost in his mind.
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(Re)Building * Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek 414-059
Conflicting Accounts
Over the past two years, operating margin and net profit margin for the global sales and marketing team had declined precipitously along with market share (see Exhibits 2 and 3). During the same period, group morale also dropped, with employee satisfaction declining by nearly half (see Exhibit 4). In order to better understand the group’s weaknesses and the challenges they faced, Khan’s next step was to meet with the three senior executives. He was by far the youngest person at the meeting and had no experience on the team.
Market, Compensation, and Brand Changes
He tried to determine whether the group’s problems were internal or external. He asked the three leaders, “Can the team do better? What’s stopping them from doing better?” Sunil, an Indian national working in Lebanon, began by blaming the group’s recent failures on the market. “The recent increase in the price of base oil has been pressuring our margins.1 When we raised our prices to compensate, our volumes decreased,” he argued.
Lars, an expat from Sweden, vehemently disagreed, “It has nothing to do with our prices or the price of oil. It’s our brand! The recent changes to our brand have done nothing but confuse customers. That’s why we have seen * decline in revenue.” Lars continued with an accusatory tone, “And once this past year, planned volumes from Nepal and Bangladesh failed to come in, causing performance to suffer again, not to mention the relationships with our partners in Iran and Yemen.”
Sunil shook his head and ignored Lars. Changing the subject, he said, “We also have the issue of compensation—the structure recently changed. Eighty percent of our salaries are fixed and the remaining twenty percent is variable.” Sunil explained that the variable portion was based on volume and revenue and was not linked to earnings or margins. Thus, when prices went up, salespeople were able to make their revenue targets selling less volume. Yet the cost of goods sold was increasing, which further squeezed the margins. Everyone shifted in their seats. Clearly, changing compensation yet again was not * conversation they wanted to broach.
Target Setting
Ramazan, * Kazakh member of the leadership, interjected, “Let’s not bring up compensation again. We all know that target-setting is at the root of all this. Setting regional targets from the top- down hasn’t worked for years.” He explained that global directors broke worldwide sales targets down into regions, then regional managers further divided the regional target among constituent countries. Ramazan recalled * target setting meeting in which the business manager for Saudi Arabia refused the responsibility that came with managing the largest country in the region. He told the group the general market was doing poorly and that his country team had recently lost two major accounts, so he could not take the largest portion of the regional sales target, as was expected. Other country managers also frequently made conservative estimates when setting their own goals, downplaying their true ability. As * result, unclaimed parts of the regional goal got passed on to new markets that were not yet online or to countries that were not represented at the meeting. “It seems like no one is willing to take responsibility for their targets. Everyone is playing it safe, because they don’t want to miss their targets. How can we accurately set goals if we don’t truly know what each country is capable of?” Ramazan asked the others.
1 Base oil refers to lubrication-grade oils produced from refining crude oil or through chemical synthesis. Base oils are used to manufacture lubricants (e.g., motor oils) for consumer and commercial uses.
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414-059 (Re)Building * Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek
Khan worried about their staunch disagreements and lack of optimism. In Pakistan, however, Khan had been on teams that thrived despite the changing market, the new variable pay scale, and the challenges of the target-setting process. He had transformed his team from * collection of individuals into * cohesive and successful group, and he was tempted to prove to the Tek executives that he could do it again with * bigger and more diverse team. Khan believed in the Tek brand and had confidence in its ability to sell. But Amlak’s advice still made Khan question his ability to succeed in the role. How could he make sure that he would not end up in Amlak’s shoes?
Digging for Answers
As the meeting dragged into its sixth hour, Khan kept pondering the explanations for the group’s poor performance. He continued to push his advisers to go beyond the external factors influencing the group and give him an honest assessment of the team’s inner dynamics. He looked at the clock— it was 5:00 p.m., and they had been in this meeting since 9:00 that morning. It seemed everyone was repeating the same points they had made earlier. But for two more hours, he continued to steer the conversation toward * deeper understanding of why the team had been missing its targets.
“I have seen all of these things work well in Pakistan and know we can be successful. What’s holding you back here? How come the entire team can’t be successful? What is your instinct? What do you think is happening” he asked.
Finally, after 10 hours in the meeting and with patience running out, Ramazan snapped and yelled, “Okay, fine, let me tell you why I wasn’t able to make the target last year,” he began. “It’s because of him!” he said, pointing at Lars.
Lars stood up to defend himself. “I could have done that order. Remember those 100 kiloliters we missed because you were not able to deliver it? We were not able to deliver it because your guys didn’t send it on time.”
Ramazan pressed on, insisting Lars was to blame: “Yes, my guys didn’t send it on time because by the time they were online in Nepal, you said to just cancel it because it was too late.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me this?” Lars interjected before Ramazan could answer. “We could have fixed this!”
It was now approaching 11:00 p.m. Everyone was exhausted. Khan was glad to finally hear * deeper level of communication. Sunil, Lars, and Ramazan did not all agree on what their focus should be as * leadership team. But they knew that they had to start by understanding their team better. Sunil suggested reaching out to every team member for thoughts on why the group was failing: “Look, guys. Let’s not decide for everyone else. Let’s give them * fair chance, as well. Let’s hear them out.” Khan and the rest of the team concurred and decided the next step was to meet with all 68 team members as soon as possible.
In the Field
Over the next week, Khan, Sunil, Lars, and Ramazan embarked on * whirlwind tour of the group’s other offices to better assess the situation on the ground. These site visits introduced Khan to the markets and some of the key customers, but the primary focus was on the other 65 team members spread over the region.
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(Re)Building * Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek 414-059
As they met the team members in small groups, Khan and the leadership team asked everyone for their opinions on the group’s performance. Their meeting with Farah, * Lebanese customer service associate, was emblematic of the visits they had elsewhere.
“Why do you think market share has declined by 5% over the past two years?” Khan asked. The look on Farah’s face told Khan all he needed to know—that this was news to him.
“I had no idea the group was doing poorly. I thought we were fine,” Farah responded.
“But didn’t you know Lebanon wasn’t meeting its targets?” Khan pressed.
“I suppose, but I thought we were doing better than that. Plus, targets only come up for us * few times * year. I think they’re more on the minds of salespeople. They’re more focused on making the sale. But what does more sales mean for me in customer service?” Farah reasoned.
Khan recalled * training that taught him how to discern the most important values for individuals and how to leverage those personal motivators to drive team performance. He started with * new line of questions. “What motivates you, then, Farah? Why do you come to work each day? What inspires you?”
After * pause, Farah responded, “I want my work to be valued and important.”
Khan nudged Farah for more, “Okay, but what really makes you get out of bed every morning?”
After another pause, Farah finally responded. “I suppose money motivates me. I need to be able to provide for my family. I like advancing within the company since it also shows I am doing * good job and management trusts me. ”
Still not satisfied, but sensing he was getting closer, Khan tried one more time. “Is there anything that pushes you to do well here? What would make you try above and beyond what is simply required?”
“Maybe I feel like I need to believe in something. I think I perform best when I am passionate about even just one aspect of the job.”
Khan was starting to get * better sense of where the team members stood and he began to think that he could actually turn this team around, something he desperately wanted to do. He was eager to see what other insights the group might have to offer. Maybe he would soon have enough information to know whether or not to head up this team.
Cultural Insensitivity at the Top
As Khan traveled with Lars and the rest of the senior leadership, he saw problems that stretched all the way to the highest levels. While in Uzbekistan, Lars, Khan, and two salespeople went out to dinner with some clients to finish plans for * new deal. After working out the details, the Kazakh clients wanted to celebrate with vodka. It was * strong local tradition, essentially necessary to closing the deal. When Mohamed, * Saudi member of the team, politely declined to drink for religious reasons, Lars told him to just do it and then loudly said that he “didn’t know when the Saudis would enter the 21st century.”
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414-059 (Re)Building * Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek
Khan had previously heard rumors about Lars being insensitive towards his immediate team’s social and cultural practices. He heard that Lars sometimes mocked local practices publicly while on business travel and derided colleagues’ poor English skills. Displays like the one in Kazakhstan corroborated these reports. Khan knew if he accepted the position, dealing with Lars would be one of the first major challenges.
Yet Lars was among the highest performers in the 68-person group. He had been with the company for many years and was undoubtedly the best in product knowledge and financial delivery. Firing or transferring him might cause the business to take * hit. Khan was not sure he could afford such * setback.
* Closing Window
* few days after his meeting in Lebanon, Khan had finally made it home, drained, his head spinning with questions. Surely, the team members were as talented as he had expected. And yet, their interpersonal dynamics loomed large. He had managed to create * cohesive, high-performing team before, but could he do it again with an even more diverse group in only two years? Furthermore, certain team members took * “blame anyone but me” approach to explaining the group’s problems; there was no ownership of targets or failures. Finally, the dysfunction stretched all the way to the top of the group, with Lars setting * terrible example of what it takes to work on * culturally diverse team.
Khan had to decide by tomorrow whether or not to take the job. He had the training and experience necessary to motivate people, and he relished challenges, but perhaps he was in over his head. Amlak’s unflinching advice to turn down the offer, especially in light of the roadblocks he would face in trying to turn around the team’s performance, weighed heavily on Khan’s mind. The diversity of the team was, on the one hand, exhilarating in its potential, but also the biggest obstacle to their success. Khan still couldn’t be certain how great * role the market played in the group’s poor performance, even though to some team members, the market was paramount. The senior leadership team simply could not agree on the root cause of their problems, and they seemed to prefer debating with one another rather than coming together to find solutions. One of the most troubling questions of all was how to handle Lars. As Khan drifted off to sleep, he wondered whether this job was * great opportunity or too much of * risk. His position on the “high potentials” list would be in jeopardy if he could not turn the team around, thereby sacrificing years of hard work and his trajectory within the firm.