With great difficulty, HR chief Harry Roman managed to get company’s Sales chief Sunny Omar’s agreement to meet up with him. And Sunny knew that it was the only way to decide about the annual rewards to his employees. It was the annual performance appraisal time and without this meeting with Harry, his recommendations to promote or raise the salaries of many of his important staffers could not be forwarded to the top management for approval.
Yet, Sunny had been postponing the meeting with Harry. He just did not have time for any meetings. Sunny Omar was enviably the busiest guy of the company. In a competitive market in which he was, selling his company’s products was an uphill task. The company was not doing all that great on product development front and so, also on the sales front. Therefore it will not be an exaggeration to say that the company was keeping a track of sales performance on hour to hour basis. Company’s every top shot’s performance was largely dependent on the performance of Sunny Omar. Everyone’s eyes would finally be set on what kind of sales figures Sunny reported day after day. And obviously he had many bosses in the company. Organization charts constructed based on the much talked about management principle of unity of command rarely worked under such situations. Here one person had many husbands. And Sunny’s every day was torn serving all of them.
He constantly was at the beck and call of all of his numerous bosses. The first boss was the family chief of the main promoter of the company who was the chairman of the company around 8 years ago but even after retirement believed that he was the supreme boss. He could not be satisfied without getting informed on the sales figures every 4 hours of the long 16 hours work day. He genuinely expected his executives to work 16 hours a day.
His second boss was the son of this ex-chairman, now the current chairman of the company. Being slightly younger and modern, he expected Sunny to report to him on the sales figures at least two to three times a day.
His third boss was the CEO of the company, his real legitimate boss as per the organization chart. He too was demanding but having risen to that position via the route of sales chief of the company, he fully empathized with Sunny.
His fourth boss was the chief of finance. This chief of finance is always considered to be the most dreaded person of any family run company irrespective of how so ever big the company may be. He is considered to be very close to the top most people of the company and a great informer. Even CEO of the company (if he is a professional and most of the family oriented companies appoint an outsider professional as the CEO for obvious reasons) has to beg from the chief of finance the much needed money to run a company. The chief of finance of this company was a tough nut too and would demand information on sales figures and more importantly the collection figures every two hours.
He had a few more bosses like chief of manufacturing etc, though less devilish but he could pay attention to them only if he was left with any time after keeping the above-mentioned four bosses humored hour after hour and day after day.
Apart from serving all these bosses he had his own work to accomplish every day- the main work of selling the products. He had to manage his department and the numerous dealers etc. So, he ended up doing overtime every single day.
And what do you expect this will do to any healthy person? Yes, you guessed right- high blood pressure and start of the heart ailment. Sunny Omar embraced both of them. And once you get them, you have to live with them over whatsoever little life is left with you. In addition to getting habituated to reporting daily figures many times to many bosses, he had also become habituated of gulping many medicinal tablets many times a day.
Now you can understand why Sunny Omar was not in a position to meet the HR chief Harry Roman. He selected a day and time for the meeting very carefully, the day when the ex-chairman and the chairman were away from their offices and were attending a family function somewhere abroad. He expected no disturbance from them at least.
But it was not to happen that particular day. As soon as the performance appraisal meeting started between Harry and Sunny in Sunny’s office, the chairman rang from wherever he was enjoying the family function and the family lunch. Sunny guessed that chairman could not have started his lunch. The first course of the lunch for him was knowing about the sales performance of the company. That call lasted for over 25 minutes.
Then chief of finance rang him as soon as Sunny was done with the chairman. On the days when chairman was away from office, chief of finance’s main job was to keep a track of who all from the corporate office were speaking with the chairman and what was it they were speaking about. He had his own way of knowing this. So he rang Sunny to know as to what the chairman wanted. The idea was to keep himself ready with all the information on all the fronts so that if the chairman or his father rang him, he was prepared for it. So Sunny got busy with chief of finance for the next 45 minutes.
After that, Sunny resumed his meeting with Harry only to be interrupted by the ex-chairman (the current chairman’s father). He asked more or less the same information and questions which the chairman had talked about just some time ago. Sunny cursed him silently, “Why the old man could not have got that information from his son, after all they were having their lunch together in the same room?”
By this time he was exhausted and in these back to back meetings with his three bosses, he just did not have time to take his medicines. Doctor had advised him to be very regular with his medicines but invariably he would miss the timings and sometimes, even the medicines.
Sunny excused himself for few minutes and swallowed a couple of tablets. Harry was patient with him.
Sunny said, “Where were we? Yes, I am exceeding my budget but if the company wishes to meet its sales targets, you may have to convince the management to promote these guys whom I am recommending. They are the pillars of sales department. Please get the approval for exceptional budget for this.”
He had barely completed his sentence, then, he was called by the CEO Jim Barker. Jim Barker would not tolerate any delays. So, without any delay, Sunny excused himself once more and dashed to the office of CEO Jim Barker. It was two flights up and he took the stairwell rather than waiting for the elevator.
By the time he reached Jim’s office and sat down in the chair in front of him, he was profusely sweating and panting. He was about to collapse and faint. Jim asked a few questions related to work but Sunny just could not manage to speak.
Jim knew a bit about the health conditions of Sunny. Jim was an experienced person in the sense that he was also a patient of high blood pressure. He could understand what was happening to Sunny. Jim asked Sunny if he had taken his daily blood pressure pill to which he said, “No.”
Jim asked, “Which one your doctor has prescribed?” Sunny gave the name of the pill. Jim was happy to know that it was the same tablet that he was also prescribed and so he searched his cabinet and administered that to Sunny. He immediately called the company doctor and arranged for his electrocardiogram (ECG) in his own chamber. Luckily ECG had not worsened. Doctor advised sunny to take rest for half an hour in Jim’s chamber and went away.
Jim did not disturb Sunny for nearly one hour since he had dozed off. After about an hour when Sunny woke up he started to apologize and said, “I am OK now. I am ready for work.” But Jim would not allow him to work.
He asked sunny to relax and said, “Sunny, today I wish to give you a very important advice. Please do not ignore it. I am speaking with you not as your CEO but as Jim and as your friend. Listen to me carefully.”
Then Jim continued, “I have been observing you pretty closely for quite some time now. You are a very sincere, honest, loyal and hard working person. I wonder if you are this sincere and loyal to your wife and your kids. Apparently you are not. The way you are burning yourself from both the ends, you are cutting your life span. You will be on the verge of a serious breakdown that might fall on you much sooner and without any warning. Please remember, you are mainly working for yourself and your family and not for any inanimate company. God forbid, if something serious happens to you because of your over indulgence with the work here and you die, let me tell you frankly that no one from this company is going to look after your family after you are gone. At best, a senior officer of HR department would represent this company on your funeral as per the HR manual of the company and hand over to your wife a check of your pension fund. And that’s it. They will sympathize with your family for a day or two and after that everything will be forgotten. Real life is like that. None of us, our chairman or his father or our finance chief or even me will be of any use to your family after you are gone, all of us have our own problems and all of us are busy with them; where is the genuine time and concern for others?”
Sunny Omar felt different from any of his usual office days. He was more relaxed. He got introduced to a new and important dimension of life.
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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