MONDAY MUSINGS SEASON 2 - Episode 67 - Grandma In The Board Room

MONDAY MUSINGS SEASON 2 – EPISODE 67

#GRANDMA_IN_THE_BOARD_ROOM

17th August 2020

Before starting a new story, I would like to share some excerpts from upcoming book ‘GRANDMA IN THE BOARD ROOM (GIBR)’ authored by me with inputs from Mr. Sampath Kumar. Good news is that GIBR is nearing completion.

GIBR is composed as ‘#StoriesInAStory’. Main storyline of ‘Grandma in Board Room’ runs in the backdrop of an upcoming, mid-sized IT company EmergePro. The story starts with the protagonist Krishna Prasad joining EmergePro as the new CEO with lots of dream. In his first assignment as the head of a company, he gets to tackle not only the technical challenges, but also the dynamics among different groups within the company. Krishna steers EmergePro to the path of growth using his positivity and amazing amount of grandma stories he uses in his interactions to exemplify his thoughts to his staff. ‘Coming up with stories’ is a derogatory term used in corporate axiom. But Krishna uses his story-telling skills to his advantage to drive his agenda. Stories create good connect with his staff so much so that the retiring founder Rengarajan also gets infected with the ‘story telling’ mannerism.

Giving below excerpts from Chapter 10 titled ‘#HAPPYNESS_IS_A_STATE_OF_MIND’. Apart from preaching the benefits of being happy always, this sample discussion covers many other interesting aspects of governance. Unabridged chapter will extend to 4 to 5 episodes of Monday Musings and hence reproducing here selective portions from Chapter 10 enough for the readers to get the ringside view of the storyline.

Introduction to the characters in this episode of GIBR

Krishna Prasad is the protagonist and is the new CEO of EmergePro

Ananth is the disgruntled Services Head of EmergePro. Ananth has more experience than Krishna and is also a good friend and relative of the founder Rengarajan. Why did he then choose Krishna in preference to Anath? Equation becomes more and more complex as the days goes.

Mathuram is the passionate and competent Sales Head, too aggressive and is almost a terror inside EmergePro but is a good confidant of the clients.

Ashok Kumar is one of the Technical Project Manager, technically proficient but struggling to deliver in a project.

Rengarajan is the Founder and Managing Director of EmergePro, ageing technocrat, well respected within EmergePro as well as by the clients. Wants to hand over the baton to Krishna Prasad and retire from management responsibilities.

PS : Characters and incidents in GIBR are not work of imagination but are based on valuable experience of the authors.  Characters are factual and story thread is full of real-life experiences, only the names have been changed!

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Mathuram briefed the group on the need for a WAR ROOM meeting. He received a high-level escalation from a client for whom EmergePro is doing ERP implementation.

Escalation was from the CIO himself. Customer should have gone LIVE with the new ERP solution 3 months back as per the commitment. Project had to be extended multiple times without clarity still on the completion. Cost was escalating because of the delays. Old ERP software license had to be extended after investing heavily in the new ERP solution. CEO was getting frustrated and gave dressing down to the CIO. CIO passed the same to Mathuram.

 “They are seriously considering invoking penalty to our payment” Mathuram paused to have the seriousness sink in to all the members.

Mathuram finished his talk with a stern warning “Guys. We must act fast. Otherwise the client will cancel our contract. We received paltry advance for this project and major payment is still outstanding. If the customer cancels our contract, there is no chance of recovering our payment. All our efforts will go down the drain. Customer can take advantage of the loopholes in the contract. I fail to understand why was this not escalated to me, so far. I am under the impression that everything is good until this morning when the customer called me and shouted at me. Our internal communication is very poor”

It sounded a very reasonable expectation. Mathuram always makes fair demands!!

I also chipped in “I agree with Mathuram. Ananth – Are you aware of the issues in this project? Don’t you have a process to read and action ‘#EarlyWarningSignals’ from troubled projects? We all know the importance of anticipating and preempting issues.  I normally maintain 2 lists for all my projects, 1 Issue Log list and one `Early Warning Signals’ which has the potential to turn into issues if not attended to. Project Management is my favorite topic”.

“You focus only on Sales. You review sales opportunities, but you don’t schedule project reviews” Ananth went into his cribbing mode. Probably he had no answer to my question about `Early Warning Signals’. This is a familiar mudslinging between Sales and Delivery teams. I shouldn’t take sides and balance the WAR ROOM.

Though it was a thoughtless answer, I must accept that it is factual. It sounded a wake-up call for me. I seemed to have neglected customer service. Project Management is my favorite topic, but I had not bothered to check on the health of the project implementation practice at EmergePro. This is a vital link for an IT company. You don’t get continuing business in IT just by selling aggressively. Should have a process to monitor, track and correct the projects. Satisfied customers are more important than adding new customers. They will continue giving business without asking. How did I miss this for so long? Is it because I assumed that Rengarajan is taking care of technical aspects?  

I remembered Rengarajan’s statement in a Leadership Meeting about 80/20 model with 80 % revenue from 20% big and satisfied customers. How will that be possible if projects are not being taken care of properly.

“What are the issues here” I had no other option but to change the topic.

Ananth had no clue. He turned towards the Project Manager Ashok Kumar for the explanation. Ananth’s body language clearly indicated his unease.

Ashok is one of the technical project managers at EmergePro. He was timid. His unease could be seen from his mannerism. He was shifting his stance quite often and rubbing his nose at fixed frequency as if it is a flawless perfectly programmed robotic action. Ashok has very high propensity of getting COVID19+ infection. I heard from different discussions that Ashok is technically very sound.

I comforted Ananth. “Ananth, you are doing well. I spent most of my service in project management and delivery. It happens sometimes with some tough clients. If you and Mathuram would have met frequently and reviewed with the teams, we could have got some early warning signals. Don’t you agree?” “Mathuram, you could have called such review meetings with me.”

It was a balancing act between them.

“Agree, Krishna”. Both Ananth and Mathuram agreed I could see that both cooled a bit. Seniors call me Krishna. I feel quite comfortable with that.

 “Simple. We pathetically failed to keep up our commitments in this project. If we keep performing like this, word will spread very fast and we will not get any new project”. Mathuram started his aggression from the word go. I said “Mathuram, slippages and outrages are there in all projects. What we miss to do is to keep the customer updated and giving them the assurance. I could see Ashok lifting his head after listening my statement. 

I tried to counsel Mathuram earlier multiple times to be accommodative. It seems he has somehow developed a strong belief that aggressiveness alone can get the results for him.

“It is because you salespeople commit impossible things to get the order by hook or crook and then shift the problem to us. Did you check with us before committing impossible timelines to the customer? Nobody could have done a complex ERP migration such as this in 3 months. It is ridiculous. You said we received paltry advance. Why did you agree for such pathetic payment terms? That is the problem here. Customers are taking advantage of your meek surrender. You then come and run roughshod over us” Ananth did not want to give up easily.

I allowed him to pour out. I wanted to point in the end how could the blame be shared instead of pointing fingers at each other.

“How do you want the company to reach ambitious targets. All of us need to stretch if we need to grow. You people don’t have number targets and hence you want everything to be a `cakewalk’. My team is not like that”. I realized that it is very difficult to match Mathuram in an argument.

I intervened. “Guys, don’t make it a real #WAR_ROOM. WAR ROOM is A BLOOD LESS, NOISE LESS AND RESULT ONLY gathering. Introspection, agreeing to agree or disagree and finally converging to a set of actionable to move forward should happen in WAR ROOM. Everyone here should come out a WINNER” I slightly raised my voice for the participants to know the seriousness of collaboration.

I paused for some minutes. There was total silence after my loud voice, I smiled looking at all the participants. They reciprocated and I continued.

“Guys. Please remember you all are working for EmergePro more than your teams. Bring in `Big Picture Thinking’ please. What is more important is organization’s interest. Each team’s targets must align with the organization’s target” I tried to shift the topic for a compromise between the warring groups

“This customer is basically using many legacy applications. Integration requirements mandate involvement of multiple vendors. We don’t basically have direct control on these third-party vendors” Ashok explained the crux of the problem. “Customer does not understand the technical issues and blames us for all the issues whereas many issues are not even under our control”

“Has the scope been defined clearly before starting the project? Has there been a signed-off `Scope of Work’” I asked?

“Yaa, we asked the customer, but customer never gave us. What is the point in writing SoW? We end up doing what the customer dictates” Ananth replied. I am now getting used to guess Ananth’s response for my questions. I guessed this would be his answer before I asked the question and he did not disappoint me.

“Customers would think that way by default. It is our responsibility to manage the customer properly. It is possible to convince the customer provided we brought in clarity in the beginning. That is essentially the benefit of #ProjectManagementPractice. It is quite natural for sales team to agree on customer’s demands. That is the reason a SoW is very important so that the project team understands the expectations from the customer”. I went into teaching mode.

I remember an old incident where the customer was demanding that I had to be deputed at the customer site for 3 full months as part of the scope. I jocularly told the customer that they bought the systems and me as a free package offer with the system.

“Third party application vendors basically do not report to us basically. How can I manage them basically?” Ashok intervened.

“EmergePro has the culture of being very flexible with customers. We normally do things which are not part of our scope as well. This is how Rengarajan developed us to be” Ananth chipped in.

I was waiting for Ananth bringing Rengarajan’s name into the conversation. Ananth normally does not finish any meeting without referring to Rengarajan’s name. He would somehow find the justification to bring in Rengarajan whenever he is at disadvantageous position.

“That is a problem. Being flexible is different from getting into work without having clarity about our responsibility. You will have to undergo training on #ScopeManagement, you will then understand the difference” I replied without raising my temper but at the same indicated that I am confident of what I am saying.

“I am sure Rengarajan would know the difference and I am OK to talk to him even otherwise” I quickly added.

Ananth apparently did not like my retort. “I remember a meme about Scope Management in Projects” Ananth diverted the attention. He went to the board and drew the meme and explained.

Everyone in the room laughed out. It was a good joke, but I did not like the timing.

“Jokes apart, let us come back to our discussion. Ashok you asked me a question. There are many tools in Project Management practice to manage the scope so that something like this does not happen” I indicated the white board.

“Have you heard about RACI chart? RACI chart helps to bring in the clarity to the customer when multiple stakeholders are involved. There are many other tools available for managing various stakeholders’ expectations” I explained

“OK. Have you prepared a Project Plan and are you tracking the Project Plan?” I started getting doubt if the basic requirements of Project Management are being followed in such a sensitive and complex project.

“Yes. I basically prepared a Project Plan and following the Project Plan. Here is the Project Plan for this project basically” Ashok projected an excel spreadsheet on the screen which had list of various tasks with Start Date, End Date and Duration. Ashok was beaming profusely that he had done this correctly.

I noticed that the number of ‘basically’ increased in Ashok’s speech. I know that the number of ‘basically’ per minute of speech is directly proportional to the stress and tension. I have to comfort him and reduce the number of ‘disfluencies’ used by Ashok when he talked. But not now.

“This is not the Project Plan. This can at the most be called ‘list of milestones’”.

Ashok’s enthusiasm vanished quickly. I should not have been so blunt. Unfortunately, I had to call `a spade a spade’

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Rest of the dialogue in the next episode of Monday Musings as it is too big to fit into one episode. Please send comment your feedback & suggestions by commenting for this article or by sending email to [email protected]. Looking forward to constructive feedback.