Chief construction manager Whitekar of one of the unit’s of Marvel Millennia, the multi unit, multi product conglomerate was having conference with his two senior civil engineers. One of the senior civil engineers said, “What is the purpose in making all the detailed engineering calculations and thoroughly comparing the quotes from the various construction contractors when we know for sure that this time also the management will award the contract to our permanent civil construction contractor Darub & Co. It seems that our company treats Darub & Co as its son-in-law.”
Chief construction manager Whitekar was in his usual pensive mood. He replied, “I agree with you that couple of times management went out of way to award the contract to Darub & Co while all our analysis showed that the other contractors were more deserving. No doubt, the quality of construction of Darub & Co is of quite high order but their commercial terms are also very steep. In those two or three cases, the other contractors were as good as Darub & Co quality wise and yet they were considerably cheaper also. I suppose that there was no harm to allot the contract to them and management should have done so.”
The other senior civil engineer said, “That’s why Mr Whitekar, we do not intend wasting our time in elaborate comparisons of various offers we have received this time for the new construction of buildings for the expansion project. It is a huge order and irrespective of what we do, it will be given to Darub & Co. I heard that our company and our management are quite indebted to Darub & Co for whatsoever reasons. I hear that kind of gossip.”
Whitekar dismissed this line of thinking of his staff, “Let us do a thorough professional job this time too. It’s a big project with lots of money involved. And so, we will do our job well and we will recommend whosoever is the winner as per us. We will forward our recommendations to the top management and there ends our job. It is the prerogative of the top management to award the contract to anyone whom they want to. Let us not waste time. Let us get on with our job; we have the deadline to meet.” He also added, “If we do our job well, management will have to be guided by our analysis; this time the stakes are far higher.”
The conference was over that day.
A few days later the CEO of the company was reviewing the analysis and recommendations made by Whitekar. These recommendations were forwarded by Moitra who was Whitekar’s boss and was Group President for all the construction and building activities of all the units of the company. Moitra had endorsed the views of Whitekar.
The CEO of Marvel Millennia was quite disturbed to see that Darub & Co was a bad runner up, way behind the building contractor whom Whitekar and Moitra had recommended after thorough technical and commercial analyses. Marvel Millennia management had almost got used to seeing Darub & Co as number one and it suited the management since the promoters and management of Darub & Co had proved to be of great financial assistance to Marvel Millennia on its rainy days. The CEO was in a serious dilemma.
He had a conference with the CEO of Darub & Co and asked him to look at the discrepancies and deficiencies of his proposal for the building and construction activities of the huge expansion project. He said, “Please review your entire proposal and revert to me in two days.”
Accordingly, the CEO of Darub & Co had marathon meetings with his civil engineering staff. One brilliant engineer pointed out a discrepancy in Whitekar’s workout. It was a controversial civil engineering technical angle which Darub & Co had tackled in a particularly different manner as compared to what interpretations Mr Whitekar had made on that point. If Darub & Co’s point of view and their subsequent calculations based on that assumption were to be taken as correct, Darub & Co’s proposal stood out as the winner.
While all this was a controversial issue, yet when presented by the CEO of Darub & Co to the CEO of Marvel Millennia, it appealed to the CEO of Marvel Millennia hell of a lot. His dilemma was sorted out and that too with all the justifications. Finally, the contract order was awarded to Darub & Co.
The CEO of Marvel Millennia called Moitra to his office and said, “Your civil engineering staff must be more careful. They made a critical mistake which we found out here in the corporate office. But for that, I would have been in a very embarrassing situation. The contract would have wrongly gone to the other company which would have been a disastrous mistake on our part. I suggest that you transfer one of your more competent chief construction managers from one of the other units in place of Whitekar. Looks like Whitekar has lost the touch. He should retire gracefully now.”
The CEO had almost asked Moitra to fire Whitekar. Moitra went to his office with a foggy mind. He did not know what to do, how to break this news to Whitekar. Moitra had tremendous respect for Whitekar. Whitekar was a gem of a professional and gem of a civil engineer. He decided to sleep over the matter.
Next day morning, Moitra mustered lots of courage to execute his CEO’s decision on Whitekar. Instead of summoning Whitekar to his office, he preferred to do this dirty work of firing Whitekar in Whitekar’s office itself. He felt it was more civil that way. With heavy heart and mind he walked to Whitekar’s cabin. The door to Whitekar’s cabin had a peep hole in it. He stopped at the door and peeped inside. Whitekar was leaning over a big civil engineering drawing spread all across his table and was keenly pondering over some thing. He gave the impression of professionalism personified. Whitekar was absorbed deeply in his work as if he would never stop working for Marvel Millennia and would never stop being the professional manager and the civil engineer that he was.
Moitra had no heart to disturb Whitekar from his serious and genuine work. He retracted his steps and started walking backwards to his own cabin. He rolled up his sleeves and said to himself, “I will have to tackle the CEO or I am doomed.”
Related Book
"Sensitive Stories of Corporate World" (available from Amazon, get it online)
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.
Other Related Reading
For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/
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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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