(The case study presented below deals with “leadership”. It emphasizes one particular aspect of leadership and that is: “leadership means making ordinary people do extraordinary things” (Refer: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.net/index.php/2010/02/03/leadership-means-making-ordinary-people-do-extraordinary-things/ or http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/2010/02/leadership-means-making-ordinary-people.html. This case study reflects similar sentiments.
For many other management case studies/management anecdotes, read at: http://management-anecdotes.blogspot.com/ or http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/)
Shaan Bhatkar had truly earned the reputation of being the fastest and also, most promoted manager. First, his first employer “Universal High Tech Products Ltd” and now his second employer, one of the top most ranked companies of India, “Prestige Motor Company Ltd” had recognized his learned as well as innate leadership qualities.
While he had broken all the management conventions by becoming “manager” at a very young age of 27 in his first company, all and sundry used to go to visit his cabin in his second employment with some excuse or the other to peep and have a look at the person who had joined them from outside and was promoted just within one year to the position of “senior manager” at the age of 29 or so, overriding company’s guidelines on promotions and salary raise. He had turned into an enigma. This was perhaps the first such incident in Prestige Motor Company Ltd.
Within a very short time of joining his second employer, Shaan Bhatkar expanded his work and inducted more than 20 new people taking the strength of employees in his department to 26. He formed a formidable team whose presence was being felt throughout the organization. Shaan was head of “systems department”. It was a new concept introduced by him. Systems department would work as a very strong interface between the various line departments of the organization and the computer programming department (these days we call it “information technology” or I T department).
It was found earlier that in absence of creation of “systems department”, the user departments used to directly interact with the computer programming department. Though computer programming department was manned by brilliant programmers who were highly educated engineers of various engineering disciplines with excellent grip on programming, their very nature of programming work would not allow them adequate time and inclination to understand the exact requirements and intricacies of the user departments. They dismally lacked the appreciation of the various domain areas or the functional aspects of the organization. The result was invariably a half cooked; user unfriendly, computer system full of problems as far as the user departments were concerned. It had a significant negative impact on the promotion of computerization in the company. Management of the company got concerned about it.
Around this time, Shaan Bhatkar proposed creation of the new “systems department”. Management liked the idea of this department being responsible to define the system requirements, carry out the system design work, get it programmed by the computer programming department and also assist in implementing the system in user locations. The persons to man this department would have in-depth knowledge of the domain areas or functional areas for which they would define the systems and additionally, they would also have a decent grip on the computer programming requirements, the hard core technical aspects of computerization.
His team was mix of two kinds of people- at the higher end, he had functional experts with impressive, high end, formal qualifications and with long experience in various domains and at the lower end, he had implementers with just about any low end formal degree in any discipline who would iron out all the kinks that would be faced by the user departments in implementing the computer systems so designed, programmed and implemented. The persons of this section had flair for the hands on field work and had great service orientation and they were very user friendly. They would hand hold the users in implementing the computerized systems. However, due to the nature of their work, they were placed at the lower rungs of the hierarchy.
Shaan Bhatkar had augmented this second section of implementers by one young boy Anant Joshpura who had just become eligible at an age of 18 (minimum age criterion for employment) to be able to join a corporate organization. Shaan had reasons to recruit Anant. He had seen in him the qualities like enthusiasm, sincerity, service orientation, analytical capabilities, eye for details and hunger to learn though Anant was just about a commerce graduate with a poor second class- academically not much to talk about.
Shaan’s assessment of Anant Joshpura proved to be correct.
Then among the routine, there came a day of excitement. The first PC (personal computer) of the country was bought by Prestige Motor Company Ltd and it was installed in Shaan’s department for exploring its capabilities etc. For computer programming department which was manned by highly qualified professionals and who were used to work on the main frame computer systems of that era, the PC was thought to be a toy and that’s how it was bypassed to Shaan Bhatkar.
Shaan had no particular man to work on the PC. In his free time he himself used to fiddle with it and he soon realized the potential of a PC. He wanted to put it to real use in the organization. He pulled out Anant Joshpura for this purpose.
He called Anant and asked, “Do you know COBOL language?”
Anant Joshoura got scared, sheepishly he answered in his broken English mixed with his mother tongue Marathi, “Sir, I know only two languages, Marathi and a bit of English. I have not heard about COBOL language.”
Shaan realized his mistake. He then explained to Anant about the new PC and also explained that the programs on that PC were to be written a computer language called COBOL.
Shaan then said, “Anant, I want you to learn to work on this PC under my guidance. You have excellent analytical capabilities and therefore, you will be able to learn computer programming quite easily and fast. I am deputing you to learn programming and COBOL with an outside training institution for a period of two to three months. Our company will foot the bill.”
Anant was very apprehensive initially. He was scared that if he did not come up to the expectations of Shaan in learning programming and COBOL; he might lose his job from the company. He sounded his concerns to Shaan.
Shaan assured him, “If you fail in this, you will revert to your earlier assignment of system implementer. But I am sure that you will succeed. Every day I read in the magazines that the PC is the future of the computers and if you get a grip on it early on, that much better for you. You will retire at a junior position if you continue as the system implementer but as an expert on PC, only the sky will be the limit for you.”
With this assurance from his leader, Anant plunged into an entirely new territory. And he was smart enough to pick up everything that was expected of him. By the end of three months of training, he started writing programs in COBOL quite proficiently.
On Shaan’s recommendations, the company decided to induct more and more PCs in the organization in the planned and phased manner. Shaan proposed an awareness training for the future PC users of the organization. He assigned Anant the new responsibility of training the people at various managerial levels in the working of PCs. Anant hesitated a lot to start with. How could he face the seasoned managers who were much experienced and older than him and were at the hierarchical level far higher than him?
Shaan advised him, “They do not know a naught about PCs. You are the most educated person on PCs right now. So….”
Soon, Anant Joshpura was not only knowing most about the PC, he was even recognized as a good COBOL programmer even by the highly educated and experienced programmers of the hard core computer programming department who were writing the programs on the main frame computers. Anant started mingling with them pretty freely and learnt lots more about computers and programming. He learnt a few more computer programming languages.
One day he approached Shaan and requested, “While I am formally assigned to working on PC, I would love to work with the main frame too. Can you formally assign me to do that?”
Shaan was convinced that Anant must make his future career in hard core “information technology (I T)”. He recommended Anant’s transfer to the computer programming department through the chief of company’s HR department. The chief of HR declined saying that the company rules did not permit an ordinary commerce graduate to be a part of highly technical computer programming department. As per company rules, only engineering graduates or postgraduate with first class could work in that department. Anant was not eligible.
Shaan wished to recognize the contribution of Anant and since the doors to computer programming department were closed to him, all Shaan could do was to promote Anant by one grade. But that would still put him in a junior hierarchical level. Shaan believed that Anant’s caliber deserved much higher position in the organization. But company’s red tape would not allow this.
Anant sought advice from Shaan, “Now that my future here is almost sealed, what do you suggest?”
Shaan said, “The IT (information technology) area is going to explode in the entire world like nobody’s business. IT is the future. Keep an eye on the prospects in other companies. They may need a person like you as an IT specialist. If you had any chance of faster progress in our own company here, I would not have suggested you to look out for a job. But now it makes sense. You are just about 20 and you have more than 40 to 45 years ahead of you. Yet must build up your computer software skills at the best possible levels while you are here. I will allow you to work with computer programming department informally though you will be at same junior level getting same salary.”
It seems that Anant took the guidance of Shaan to his heart. He went on improving his IT capabilities.
And the Y2K fever attacked the world. As compared to other countries, United States of America needed the maximum number of computer professionals, literally thousands of professionals who could go through each and every computer code that was mostly written in COBOL and fix up the Y2K bug.
Who else were the better people for such a job than those in India- the ones who had a deadly combination of knowing two most important languages: COBOL and English?
Anant Joshpura was not to be left behind. He soon shifted to USA along with one of the many Indian companies who got contracts from companies in USA to fix up their Y2K problem.
Then onwards no one could stop the progress of Anant Joshpura. He went up from strength to strength and the last news from him to Shaan Bhatkar was that he had just taken over as Vice President (Global Software Delivery) of a startup.
Related Books
1. "Sensitive Stories of Corporate World" (available from Amazon, get it online as a paperback or an eBook)
Read many more management anecdotes/management case studies in the eminent author Shyam Bhatawdekar's best selling book "Sensitive Stories of Corporate World" available online from Amazon as an eBook as well as a printed book.
2. "Sensitive Stories of Corporate World (Volume 2)" (available from Amazon, get it online as a paperback or an eBook)
Read many more management anecdotes/management case studies in the eminent author Shyam Bhatawdekar's best selling book "Sensitive Stories of Corporate World (Volume 2)" available online from Amazon as an eBook as well as a printed book.
Other Related Reading
For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/
Also, refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/
For “out of box thinking” articles by Shyam Bhatawdekar, refer: (Out of Box Ideas) http://wow-idea.blogspot.com/
Read other blogs of Shyam Bhatawdekar at: (Home Page for Writings of Shyam Bhatawdekar) http://writings-of-shyam.blogspot.com
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