(RE)BUILDING A GLOBAL TEAM:

TARIQ KHAN AT TEK

Written Analysis on Case

February 12, 2017

Instructor – Dr. Nasir Afghan

MASOOD ATHAR
ERP ID - 13415
 INTRODUCTION

The case revolves around a dilemma faced by a young business development manager, Tariq
Khan, 33, who was offered a high-profile position at his company. Beginning his career as an
electrical engineer at “SPK” in Pakistan, where he worked on industrial projects of multiple scopes
for four years, Khan joined “Tek”, a multinational group.

Working on different assignments alongside his role as sales team leader in the first four years
at Tek, he was promoted to country manager for Pakistan and additionally served on a Global
Competence Development Committee, which allowed him to visit and observe the workings of
sales team around the globe. A new business development assignment took him to Dubai, where
he led Tek’s penetrations into Iraq and Bangladesh, allowing him a new experience to work with
a linguistically and culturally diverse team. Eventually, he was selected for the position of General
Manager for Sales and Marketing as a replacement of the same to turn around a failing team and
increase Tek’s market share within two years.

COMPANY PROFILE

Tek was in the business of manufacturing and selling of lubricating oils for consumer and
commercial uses, having a network of core operations spread globally. The company had a top-
down tier structure. Global sales target was set by executive directors that were broken down into
regions, then the regional managers further divided their regional target among their constituent
countries. The company’s compensation structure had undergone a recent change, dividing the
employee salary income into fixed and variable components, the latter based on revenue generated
from sales volume.

The group’s performance evaluation system contained an exclusive list of “high potentials”
whose progress was reevaluated every two years based on visible track record of success in a
variety of roles within the company. Over the past two years, group morale had dropped
significantly, with employee satisfaction declining by nearly half, as shown in Exhibit 4 of the
case study, mainly due to lack of communication and ethnic diversity amongst regional team
members.

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 ANALYSIS

To understand the situation Khan is facing in accepting his new position and to identify an action
for him, we need to analyze by answering the following questions.

Why did Khan apply for the position of “General Manager for Sales and Marketing”?

After almost four years in various business development roles in Dubai and being in the company’s
exclusive list of “high potentials”, Khan was confident of getting an opportunity by his seniors to
be on an executive role. Khan was encouraged by his friend in Singapore to apply for this new and
challenging position. As per his friend, this job might give Khan an opportunity to be on a global
role, paving the way to an executive position as he had the potential to be successful by providing
fresh ideas to the group.

Also, Khan became confident in his abilities after pondering over his proven track record of
working well with a culturally diverse team. He successfully led Tek’s penetrations into Iraq and
Bangladesh. He established close relationships with the Indian nationals on his team by rejecting
long-standing stereotypes and sharing common grounds. As a member of the Global Competence
Development team, he visited sales teams in many countries, gaining insight into the region-
specific challenges faced in different markets.

What were the challenges faced by Khan in accepting the new position?

Firstly, Khan was anxious to know why an experienced and “high potential” manager failed to
manage the global team’s problems and ended up in leaving the company. Khan was told that the
departing manager, Ali Amlak, tried to incorporate many new ideas and approaches including
team building and cultural awareness exercise, though he failed to turn around the team. Khan got
to know from his meeting with Amlak about the fierce resistance faced by same from the team,
which include older workers for the Middle East and Asia, in bringing new initiatives. Also, Amlak
mentioned all sorts of issues faced by him including a manager’s asexual harassment case due to
a cross-cultural misunderstanding, and missed and unfulfilled deliveries to customers.

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 Secondly, Khan was shocked by the mixed dynamics of the team during their meeting in
Dubai. Profiles of the team given by the regional human resource officer showed that his 68 team
members represented 27 different countries, ranged in age from 22 to 61 years, and spoke 18
different languages and many other dialects. It was apparent to Khan from the team’s sitting style
that it had divided itself into small clusters based on common native language, religions and
cultural traditions.

Lastly, the group was also diverse in terms of time zones, work week, and holidays. Its core
operations spanned four different time zones, thus effective communication was a challenge
which was crucial for on-time delivery of orders within the group’s operational network, and
meeting of regional targets.

What were the reasons behind the group’s poor performance and failure to meet their target?

Over the past two years, both operating margin and net profit margin for the global sales and
marketing team had by declined considerably by approximately 10%, as shown in Exhibit 2, along
with fall in market share by 5%, as per Exhibit 3.

Khan’s next step was to meet with the three senior executives to determine whether the group’s
problems were internal or external. During the meeting, Khan received conflicting explanations
from the executives for the group’s poor performance.

Sunil, an Indian national working in Lebanon, blamed the market for the group’s recent
failures. He argued that the recent increase in price of base oil, a core input used to manufacture
TEK’s lubricating oil products, had decreased their profit margins. To compensate for the
incremental production cost, they raised their product prices which resulted in decline in the sales
volume.
On the contrary, Lars, an expat from Sweden, attributed decline in revenue to the recent
changes in their brand which led to customer dissatisfaction. He continued criticizing failed
deliveries of planned volumes from Nepal and Bangladesh for poor performance past year, causing
the relationships with their partners in Iran and Yemen to suffer badly.

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 As per Ramazan, a Kazakh member of the leadership, target-setting is the root cause of failed
performance. Global directors at the top level set the regional sales targets, which were further
broken down by regional managers among their constituent country managers without full
knowledge of their local markets. Ramazan recalled a target setting meeting in which the business
manager for Saudi Arabia declined ownership for meeting his country’s target, the largest in the
region, blaming poor local market and recent loss of two major accounts. Thus, unallocated part
of the regional target got passed on to new start-up markets or to country managers not represented
at the meeting.

What culturally sensitive issue existed in the overall team?

At the end of the above meeting with the team executives, Khan and the rest came to a consensus
and decided the next step was to meet with all 68 team members at group’s other offices to assess
the situation on the ground.

Over the next week, as Khan travelled with Lars and the rest of the senior executives, he
observed that cultural problems existed all the way to the top level of the group. Khan was
especially taken aback by the prejudicial behavior of Lars when he mocked Saudi member of the
team for declining to drink vodka due to religious reasons during dinner with some Kazakh clients
in Uzbekistan to finalize a new deal. Lar’s unethical display corroborated the rumors Khan had
heard previously about him being insensitive towards his immediate team’s social and cultural
practices, mocking local traditions publicly while on business travel, and ridiculing his colleague’s
poor English skills. Khan knew dealing with Lars would be one of first major challenges, if he
went for the job.

What are the possible alternatives for future course of action which Khan could pursue?

Moving forward, in my opinion, Khan has the following two options to work with:

1) Khan still has the option of not accepting the job.

Analysis:
Given his position on the “high potentials” list of the company, years of hard work and
successful trajectory within the firm, Khan is at a very high risk of jeopardizing his

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 reputation and career in the company if he fails to turn the team around and increase
group’s profitability and market share within two years, if he accepted the position.
He could decide to reject the job offer after giving much thought to the risky challenges
that comes with it, though his reputation within his senior executives of being an “All-
Rounder” and “Potential Leader” would go down.

2) Khan can boldly move forward by accepting this global position.

Analysis:
Khan can show confidence in his potential to be successful by evaluating his previous
roles of working well with a culturally and linguistically diverse team by rejecting long-
held stereotypes and finding common grounds, and accept the job.

Action Plan (Recommendations):

In my opinion, Tariq Khan should accept the new position. Rejecting the offer would place a bad
image among his senior executives of his potential to lead a diverse team. He can leverage this
opportunity to prove himself an excellent leader, making his way to a future executive role.

He can begin by designing and implementing online information system over the regional
network of offices which holds data, comprising of available working hours, work week and
national holidays, of different time zones where group’s core operations are conducted. The
system can be programmed to keep track of movement of consignment between time zones
within the region and notify group members early on of any discrepancy in order schedule so that
they can plan actions accordingly.

Khan can hold a private meeting with Lars to discuss the group’s concerns about his
insensible behavior towards other team members. He can possibly warn him against the dire
consequences of his actions on group performance and his own career within the company.

Khan can arrange English language classes of team members from non-English background
to improve their fluency and understanding of the language, preferably by team members holding
strength in this area.