ITPL Saga (Vol 04) Concluding Part- Lessons Learned as Project Manager
I was feeling on top of
the world being featured in a leading Business journal first time. It was the
best moment in my life, and this required celebration. However, my happiness
was short lived and what happened next was totally unexpected.
The history of Whitefield
is that about 4000 acres of land was
granted by the then Maharaja of Mysore
and is named after David White who established an Anglo Indian village in this
suburb of Bangalore and was planned with the central “Village green” area.
Later Whitefield became prominent with Sai Baba Ashram established in 1960 by
Satya Sai Baba as Brindavan.In 2001 the Super-Specialty Charitable Hospital
was setup in 2001 by Sai.
This IT Park project in
Bangalore was started with the infrastructure to develop three interconnected
buildings to house all the IT offices. The ITPL is now home to more than 100
software companies and has about 15000 Employees. Rest of the infrastructure
came much later which we see now.
The Business Today
Featured the article in their cover story. I got a call next day from my Boss
the GM of the unit from Pune HQ. He was furious how can I write about the
company in a leading journal. I told him that the article is a fictitious case
study of a company and does not resemble anyone and it was just to bring out
the travails of the PM. But instead of the contents he read the profile section
where the BT has put my name R Sivaraman Manager Projects THL as the author of
case study .So in his opinion reading between the lines the article represents the status of the
Business unit and the customers are not satisfied and the PM is not getting
support from HQ. I told him that I was only a coauthor and then I noticed that
the magazine has published only in my name as Author.
By then the local Branch
Manager another Tamilian at Bangalore office my counterpart in Sales has turned
against me. The Sales Manager joined my Boss stating that the Sales will be
impacted just with this one article. My boss wanted to take revenge and referred
the matter to corporate HR for taking disciplinary action against me. HR after
review of the article gave a clean chit and found the article has nothing to do
with the company. HR further reported to top management against my boss stating
why the customers are unhappy and he should report to the management on the
status of the most important southern Projects.
My boss flew to Bangalore
next week and met all the customers around Bangalore with the Sales Manager.
All our customers said that I have supported them well within my own limitation
of not getting support from HQ. They warned to take the matter to highest level
if there is no corrective action by the management.
Just before this incident
my customer for ITPL wanted us to finalize and release PO to a subcontractor for
laying cables. Any delay could have been catastrophic for the entire project. I
got the quote and asked HQ to release PO on priority. Our Purchase people in HQ
did not act fast waiting for multiple quotes and with their own preferences. In
the interest of the project I gave an authorization to the local Bangalore
contractor and they immediately put their resources at site. Our HVAC turnkey
customer appreciated my initiative which prevented possible rework and cost to the
company, had we missed the deadline. They mentioned this to my boss and Sales
guy and expected them to support my decision and act fast in future.
I met all the budgeted revenues
every month in crores till then because of the trust from my customers and the project
was on track. My boss after going back to HQ reported to the management that I
had authorized PO beyond my limit as Project Manager. One of our consultants in
Bangalore who was close to CEO and highly respected by the senior management
defended my decision and said this critical project cannot be executed like
other projects and what Project Manager did was in the best interest of the
company.
By this time ITPL project
was 80% complete and required just 2 to 3 months for completion. The atmosphere
was becoming toxic from then on. My boss started behaving mean. The company
driver who was assigned to me started reporting to Sales Manager. He asked my
counterpart a Bengali from Calcutta office who was my best friend to replace me
at ITPL. This guy a gentleman was very embarrassed to take that position.
I could not take the insult anymore and that
was the end of my PM role. There was an opening in Chennai office for Project
Manager and my consultant told me that that would be the better option for my future. I already knew the Regional
manager in Chennai through my work on other projects and the transfer was
finalized.
My regret is that I could
not see my own baby when completed. I
had been associated with this project from start of Engineering to construction
until close to completion
There are lot of lessons I
learned in life as a professional.
1) The founders of such great companies may have
good culture embedded but it is finally the people at the top who are
responsible for maintaining that culture
2) Never publish in magazines an article about
the field in which you are working. It would have been sensible had I asked for
approval of the article from the company before publishing, but it would probably
not have reached the stands.
3) Anyone joining new from other company fresh
will face resistance from the local company folks who are better
interconnected.
4) Never chew more than what you can digest. I
was trying to manage 40% of the country projects within south without adequate resources
5) If you have problem with your superior don’t
hesitate to escalate to the CEO level in the interest of the customer. I was
too soft trying to solve the problem myself.
6) You may have the best of intention as Project
Manager but that is not the recipe for success as it depends finally on
teamwork.
7) It is not worth fighting the battle alone.
8) I regret not spending enough time with my
children and the relocation became a pain to the family
9) This bitter experience made me start thinking should I leave the country as I realized I do not have the man management skills in office politics.
Last but not the least most important lesson I stopped writing about the field where I am currently working henceforth until now. Is publishing an article worth all this trouble?
What do you think?
How you would have handled this case differently?
PS: I was so naïve that I did not preserve the copy of
the BT magazine to share
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