<div>Successful people motivate, inspire and push their team to succeed. They thrive on building positive relationships. Unsuccessful people just fret, blame and complain. </div><div> </div><div>This is a case of three human dysfunctionalities prevalent in different measure across the globe in all spheres of life:</div><div>1. ‘I’ versus ‘You’, and never ‘we together’</div><div>2. ‘I want control, but don’t question me on results’</div><div>3. I want change, but I don’t want to change</div><div> </div><div>The above three lead people to waste their energies in analysing why things cannot be done rather than how to get the best possible result from the given circumstances with the given resources.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Problem</strong></div><div>Andre appears to have carried forward his insecurities of his previous job into his new role. These insecurities were making him see the devil in everything – Kloop’s planning, their decision to outsource distribution, Belani’s lala style of work culture and even his English. Andre found it difficult to adjust to the fact that in the new setup, the distributor was not under him as was the case in his previous organisation. His apparent sulking exposed his vulnerability to his bosses and refrained him from communicating with his ‘partner’ Belani. </div><div> </div><div>Belani is a successful entrepreneur, in his own right. Having enough experience of dealing with different companies, he would have sensed the hostility of Andre towards him. His team would have given him the feeler that Andre is critical about Belani’s way of working and is bypassing him by dealing directly with his team. To this, Belani reacted by ignoring Andre. But by doing so, he ignored Kloop and therefore his own business. </div><div> </div><div><strong>Genesis:</strong></div><div>1. Was Andre the best choice for heading the India operations? To be fair to Andre, his core strength was sales and distribution. He had been groomed in his career in MNCs to create the best distribution network. It was natural for him to find gaps in Belani’s system. If Kloop was clear that Belani will be handling sales and distribution, they should have recruited somebody with more diverse strengths to complement that of Belani’s.</div><div> </div><div>2. Had Kloop and Bawa created the right expectations for both Belani and Andre? It is very important to properly induct a new country manager especially for a start-up business. Expectations, responsibilities, defined boundaries and availability and capability of resources, should be revisited at regular intervals.</div><div> </div><div>3. India is a vast, diverse and complex market. First year’s performance should never lead to a ‘Continue or Exit’ decision which Haney was pushing for. Such pressure can lead to detrimental decision in the long run. </div><div> </div><div>4. Normally the team which initially gets involved in the formulation of strategic tie ups (JV, acquisition, merger or even appointment of an all India distributor) moves out once the tie up is done. And a new operational team takes over. In such cases, people like Belani feel unsettled because the bonhomie he had created with the first team doesn’t automatically get extended to the new team, and he has to restart afresh in building new relationships. With Bawa sitting abroad, it didn’t help Belani’s cause. It is therefore desirable to have one senior resource (mentor?) from the original team to be around for the first few months to a year. This resource would have tackled the conflict which arose between Belani who was heading an established organisation and Andre who was setting up a new organisation for the first time. He could have played the right balancing role. </div><div> </div><div><strong>Stimuli</strong></div><div>Raghuveer realised that more than six months had passed but there was no progress made. He realised that the solution providers were themselves the issue. And unless Belani and Andre communicate directly and work together, the problem will never be resolved. He had to wag the dogs by their tails. And that’s what he did, he used their insecurities (shutting the business) as a tool to initiate direct communication. Luckily it worked and hopefully Kloop will do well in India. </div><div>Whatever happens, happens for the good. It is for us to keep the good alive. </div><div> </div><div>The writer, Rohit Das, is Director, Intrim Business Associates. He has 27 years of work experience of which he has been working as a corporate consultant for the last 7 years. He is also a start up and turnaround specialist and actively participates as a life coach and mentor.</div><div> </div><div>(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 15-06-2015)</div>
