Nitish @ Solutions Unlimited

By Group L2: Niket Verma Eti Srivastava Mani Thomas Makarand Madhav Pathak Sanjeev Kumar

Problem statement:
Nitish had strained relations with Meena and Alagu ever since he joined Solutions Unlimited making it difficult for him to work with satisfaction and commitment in the organization. Now, he has got an opportunity to move to the office at Nagpur. He has to decide whether moving to Nagpur and thereby staying away from Meena will help improve his chances of building a long term sustainable relationship with the organization.

Analysis of the problem:

1. Lack of issue resolution channel: Miscommunication between people in the organization, Nitish was denied the remuneration as promised by Venkat. 2. People skills: Nitish believes that he is outgoing and friendly and he cannot go unnoticed. He has a myopic vision as he has an attributes all situations to himself and does not consider factors affecting the situation. 3. Organizational structure: there is a lack of hierarchy in the organization; some of the higher management positions are vacant. 4. Lack of feedback mechanism: feedback mechanism and appraisal system is not properly aligned in the organization. 5. Roles and responsibilities of employees are not structured in the organization: Meena working under director operations is taking care of HR, for Nitish too the role or objective in the organization is not defined. 6. Level of standardization is not up to the mark: primary activities like revising, developing, coordinating, amending, interpreting is not aligned. 7. Lack of professionalism in employees: Meena following a dispute with Nitish on compensation at his appointment has build a personal bias about him and this in a way has been affecting Nitishs professional growth clear from the instances stated in the case.
8. Disrespect and ill treatment of employee: Meena and Alagu often mocked Nitish and

spoke to him very rudely in the coffee room where the other employees might also have been present for deliberately demoralizing him.

SWOT Analysis:

Strength: Highly Qualified, Relevant Domain Expertise, Sincere and Hard working attitude, Adaptable, Multitasking, Support from fellow Colleagues.

Weakness: Bit Careless, Lacks initiation taking ability in case of conflict resolution, Avoids confrontation.

Opportunity: Start-up company - growth and visibility are high, favorable change in strategy focus of the company, growth stage for the company.

Threat: Bitter relations with Meena and Alagu, His mentor Mr. Khurana left the company, Constant shifts in top management positions.

Constraints:
Constraints are binding situations which are present in the company and thus limit the scope of opportunities for the company. In case of Nitish also, there were binding constraints which acted as deterrents and impeding factors. These were the following constraints: 1. Juvenile Organization: As the organization is new and growing as it is moving from only technical field to other business consulting field, so, there are a lot of constraints on the resources in the company. There are other constraints also such as the tasks are not defined clearly for a new joiner for the organization. As in the case of Nitish, he was

taken in the organization for his competency in IT and as a banking consultant, but no projects were there which suited his competency fully for which he has recruited by the company. The company`s constraint on projects was because it was Juvenile in nature. 2. Recruitment Procedure: The recruitment procedure itself has problems in it. As in case of Nitish recruitment, the HR Meena was not in touch with Mr. Kapoor, this can be found from the fact that she was totally unaware of the unique competencies of Nitish and was not offering him according to normal market standards for those skills and experience. This created the starting of the problem between Nitish and Meena on the first hand.

3. Relevant opportunities for new recruits are not present: New recruits are taken in the organization but their tasks are not properly defined and there is a dearth of projects which constraints the performance and opportunities of new entrants.

4. Vacant positions in the organization: There were many vacant positions in the team so,

the agility in decision making was slow and sometimes it hampered the enthusiasm of new joiners. These also put constraints on the working capacities of the company and employees.

Factors:
There are various factors which resulted in such an intricate position of Nitish in the organization. Though he is quite perfect for the job with all the prerequisites , but a unfortunate start with a indirect spat with Meena has landed him in hot waters. Main factors are: As the firm is still in the nascent stage and shifting from its conventional technical expertise to consulting side, the organization structure is not well defined. The standardized processes are not fully functional with contradicting replies from juniors and seniors of the same team.

The communication is a huge factor here. The communication gap between top management and the internal departments, HR department and the new employee are creating problem for the employees as well as the company.

The feedback mechanism is not proper. There is lot of confusion regarding the company policies between the employees. The problem can be traced back to the level of corporate exposure to Meena.

Critical Factors:
Among all the factors mentioned above, there are some critical factors which have the lions share in this labyrinthine issue. The communication gap between the various levels of organization. The lack of standardized processes in the organization.

Theoretical Linkage:
The problems identified herein can be viewed mainly from two theoretical perspectives: Organizational Change Conflict Resolution and Negotiation Organizational Culture

1. Organizational Change Solutions Unlimited, as an organizational was going through a period of fundamental change, from being an IT technology firm to being a Business Consultancy firm. In this scenario Solutions Unlimited (SU) is facing a number of new situations which the company did not face before. Some of them are: An increased need to make business proposals that communicates SUs competence clearly.

The ability of its staff to change their purely technical perspective to a business oriented one. Ensuring adequate buy-in from the staff for the same.

A brief overview about how change was being handled at SU:

2. Conflict Resolution and Negotiation: Starting from the definition of conflict will make it easy to understand the current conflicts that existed at SU. Conflict is a process that begins when one party perceives that another party has negatively affected, or is about to negatively affects, something that the first party cares about. In this case Nitish surely perceives that Meena has a negative attitude towards him. There are several instances like the dispute about the reimbursement, Meenas suggestion to immediately attend the training, etc., where this is very evident. But as far as Meena is concerned, it is very unclear about why she perceives a conflict. It could be because:

a. Mr. Kapur overrode her decision about Nitishs compensation. b. Nitishs blatant bargaining about compensation during the interview. c. Jealousy over Nitishs increasing rapport with the senior management. There are three main reasons because of which conflicts may occur: Poor Communication: Here the nature of communication and the amount of communication are both crucial. Most of the communication was verbal and ambiguous. The company policy was not sufficiently circulated. Lack of Openness: The communication between Kapur and Meena could have occurred before the confusion regarding the compensation occurred and they could have arrived at a common decision. Meena tries to evade from giving clear answers to Nitish at several occasions. Failure to respond to Employees Needs: Here this problem can be understood from the attitude of the senior management to the junior employees. Mr. Khurana, in spite of being the mentor of Nitish, took very little steps in order to resolve the conflicts between Meena and Nitish. Also Mr. Alagu, took a one sided view of the problems when he summoned Nitish. He allowed himself to be influenced fully by what Meena had told him. 3. Organizational Culture: The organizational culture at SU is one that is typical of a startup company. Core Values: One of the often repeated core values at SU is that one will be duly rewarded for ones performance. Opportunity for growth: The employees who perform well can find themselves grow towards higher levels in the organization. Formalization: The level of formalization at SU is really low. Most of the communication remains verbal.

Though formal policies exist, they are not sufficiently communicated and are deemed to be implicit. Many of the decisions are personnel oriented. Eg. Meena could purely decide on the compensation until Kapur interfered. And when he did, his instruction prevailed. No standardized procedure exists.

The employees had ample opportunities to interact with the senior management. The organizational culture promoted a lean structure.

Minicultures within the organization: The employees were not given proper orientation in order to inculcate a common culture within the organization. Meena was a bit offended by the open bargaining of Nitish regarding his compensation. She was from a largely academic background whereas Nitish was from a corporate background. The formation of groups based on regions (Meena and Alagu) in the organization is also an indicator of segregated cultures within the organization.

Culture as a Barrier to Change: As the organization is heading towards a paradigm shift from IT Technology services to Business Consultancy Services, the current informal culture is proving to be a barrier to change. The new requirements in the organization calls for the recruitment of people from diverse backgrounds and even the HR seems to be incapable of handling such diverse people. The low levels of standardization in the organization can create ample amount of chaos as the organization progresses in a track of accelerated change and growth.

Possible Solutions:
Nitish is not feeling at home in the organization and there is a lot of friction with Meena which, in the long run would not be helpful for the organization. Also, the company is going through a transition phase or a change phase where it is important to maintain proper relations amongst the employees as they form the pillars of the company. We can use the following points as solutions to leverage during organizational change:

The Culture Track: The organizational culture needs to change. There has to be greater coordination between the employees. The culture shift will enhance trust, communication and information sharing in the organization. This to imply that that the present culture at Solutions Unlimited does not allow the employees to indulge in information sharing and communicating in a way that is transparent. The Management Skills Track: It was evident that the issue between Nitish and the management was not handled in the best ways. It ended in bad blood and led to complexity and confusion. The management skills track, if adopted will ensure that the employees and the department are better equipped to provide new ways of coping with the situation at hand. The management needs to involve its employees in such programs in order to resolve problems during change. The Team- Building Track: The management was guilty of not having a team spirit in the organization. This resulted in the tiff between Meena and Nitish. Also it is important to have a proper team building practice in place. This will result in the infusion of a new cultgure and updated management skills in the organization and its employees. This activity is important in the times of organization change. The Strategy-Structure Track: The company should go for the strategy structure track as it is a known fact that the strategy should follow structure. The structure is not in place which is why the differences and issues between Nitish and Meena happened. It is to be ensured that there is a revised strategic plan which suits the proper structure in place. This will ensure that during change, the team individually knows about its objectives and goals and in what ways it is contributing to the system. This will lead to transparency and the events and differences of such nature are not there.

Courses of Action:
The management should look to put proper structure in place by filling in the vacant places in the organizational structure. It is to ensure the roles and responsibilities are very clear and there is absolute transparency to avoid miscommunication between the employees such as the one between Nitish and Meena and the one with Venkat as well. Meena should be asked to undergo a training program in order to keep the emotions out of the business aspect and not to get carried away by minor disagreements. The focus should be on providing her with as much exposure as possible so as to improve her manmanagement skills. The organization structure is not proper and a lot of the spaces are to be filled by a rigorous and efficient process of talent acquisition. Putting the right people in the right positions will result in effective processes in place. As the organization is going through a change, the strategy should implement where the roles and responsibilities of the employees of the organization are clearly defined. There should be no conflict within the department. The recruitment of the Director-HR should be done immediately. A lot of the problems could have been avoided had there would have a person to whom Meena would have reported. The HR policies should be communicated to any new recruit as soon as the person is inducted. Therefore, stringent practices should be brought to the table as soon as possible. Proper communication should be arranged between Meena and Nitish so as they put the differences behind and work their way out as they are colleagues and would need coordination.