Case
(Re) Building a Global Team: Tariq Khan at
Tek
Submitted to
Course
Date
INTRODUCTION
The case revolves around Tariq Khan employed at Tek who is confused whether to
accept Global sales and marketing team manager position or not. He must make his
decision but seeing the previous manager’s failure to lead the team he is confused
whether to take this opportunity or not.
On one hand if he succeeds this will be the right road to executive position
On the other hand, it’s a big risk, if he fails to deliver, his reputation at Tek will
suffer and all his hard work and efforts for the company will go down the drain.
He fears he might lose his position on the “High potential” list at Tek.
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the best performers of the group. His product knowledge was a plus at one end but his
nature was not. Khan will have to deal with hm or fire him or transfer him.
Similarly, Khan had worked with a multilingual group before and he had sorted their
issues by forcing them one language of communication but eventually the people did
not receive it well. He was concerned what he should do for such a diverse group of
multilingual people.
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ANALYSIS OF THE TEAM
The team consisted of 68 people from 27 different countries and speaking 18 different
languages. The team members were aged between 22 to 61 years. In the last two years
there had been a decline in its performance when it was headed by Ali Amlak who was
leaving this position. The employee satisfaction had also reduced to half from its peak.
SYSTEMIC PROBLEM
There was an alarming systemic problem in the firm which was the organization culture
related and which rooted from the English-speaking ability due to which there were
groupings within teams and there was no collaboration among them. Lars also played
an important role in developing culture and religion differences.
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ACTION PLAN
Khan should take up this offer and accept it as a challenge in a positive way and
confident over his abilities and experience. With every new role there is a greater
challenge and responsibility, but the issues highlighted can be resolved by collaboration
among the teams and cohesion among them.
He will need to have strong contact with all the regional managers and country
managers.
Structure change is always resisted within the firms but employees should be
motivated towards working in a passionate way. This will increase their interests
and they will focus more on increasing sales rather than meeting their targets.
Reducing cultural differences is the most difficult -its at the bottom of the pyramid
but with constant effort it can be done
Help the employees less fluent with English through confidence and English
courses.
Bimonthly meeting with all the employees asking their views on the actual targets.
Khan should act as an Advisor (Manager’s Evolving Role) so that his team members
can take Leadership and facilitator roles. He will ensure that the team members have
the resources and support they need also this will inculcate ownership.
Take Lars on his team as his assistant so he can mentor him on his attitude as well
as take his advice on the product matters because he has experienced working with
Tek.
Celebrate cultural festivals to bring employees together.
Develop a proper set of procedures based on coordination among the teams and
deliveries (Lateral Processes).
Collaboration approach to be used.
Inculcate employee motivation.
Have a performance based monthly reward system.
Work like a network team.
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