PGP1, 2008, IIM Indore
Organisational Behavior
Assignment 2: Case Study


Pritam’s Dilemma



Instructor: Prof. Sumit Kumar Ghosh

By,
R Balachandran
Santhosh Kanna
Shakthi Kumar S
Yashwanth Kumar

Section D


Pritam’s Dilemma

“I shall grab a bite at the cafeteria”, shouted Pritam to his wife as he hurried to his office in his car. His Santro was quick enough to get him to his office in 25 minutes. As he drove through the familiar busy streets of Mumbai, he screeched the brake at the crossroad signals, almost jumping them. He had always loved his city. But, today everything seemed out of place, the disorderly traffic, the long 185-second waiting time that seemed like eternity. He cursed himself under for not starting a few minutes early, given the importance of the meeting that he was to attend. He had waited for this very opportunity for the past 1.5 years for which he has been with Advaith Private Ltd.

Pritam Chakraborthy was a graduate from IIT Delhi and had done his MBA from a prominent business school in central India. He was always a go-getter. He was the secretary of the entrepreneurship club at IIT. He never let others mention what he should or shouldn’t do. He had his own beliefs and values, which he always lived up to. He didn’t think of himself as an extrovert, but others thought of him as one. He was known to invest in stocks of companies that were not mentioned in the TV shows and made good money. He was a prominent member of various interest groups and was known for the initiatives that he had taken. He has always been a self-confident individual who would take responsibility for all outcomes, be it positive or negative.

As Pritam waited for the signal to turn green, he checked out the other vehicles waiting along with him. There was a young man dressed uncomfortably in business formals with tension conspicuous in his appearance. “First day to work”, he thought. This reminded him of how excited he had been when he joined Advaith.

He was working in a large company prior to joining Advaith. He didn’t see himself growing in the company. He was looking for a change.

Advaith products were doing extremely well in the market and they were known for the exciting and creative advertisements. The company had gone through a, what was written about in magazines as, remarkable turnaround. A job in Advaith’s marketing team was just what Pritam had been looking for. He expected his job to be challenging; one that would make full use of his potential and he expected to make rapid progress in his career. Things were on expected lines the first few months. He often identified opportunities and took initiatives in the right direction and also voiced his opinion on significant issues, which reflected well on leadership abilities.

Of late, He always had a nagging feeling that he was not getting what he deserved.

Last week, Pritam was elated when his manager, Alok Gupta, managed to secure an appointment of Ashok Gaekwad, the CEO of Advaith products. Pritam has been working on this idea for the whole of the last one-month. He had carefully analyzed all the pros and cons and had come up with mitigation strategies for all the risks. While he was working on it he was having a constant feel of a funny churn in his stomach. He knew that no one could stop him this time.

After joining Advaith, Pritam had developed many ideas that would reduce the time to market considerably. He had prepared what he thought as, watertight cases twice and had presented them to Alok. Although Alok could not point out any shortcomings with the plans he still rejected them. “Ashok will not be impressed” was what he had said more than once before, whenever Pritam requested to meet the CEO.

Now when after this latest presentation when Alok said, “Be ready to meet Ashok on Monday”, Alok thought he had finally won. He knew that Ashok was a smart man. His colleagues often credited Ashok for the turnaround that the company had gone through. Pritam did not know what he should feel. Before joining Advaith, he had always been impressed by what he had read about Ashok. But after working in the company for all this while his adoration had reduced to just a formal appreciation due for a company head.

“Come right in. I was waiting for you”, said Ashok.
Not bad. Not bad at all “Thank you, Sir. I wouldn’t take much of your time. I would like to share with you a marketing plan for the our new product Sinewii”
“Your name is…” tapping vigorously the keys of the Laptop “Pritam Chakraborthy, is your name, right”
“Yes sir, sorry for not…”
Interjecting, “Come to the point…Why is Alok not here”
“Sir, I thought, well, Mr. Gupta asked me to meet you. I didn’t know you expected to have him as well”
“Pritam, I generally don’t meet people who don’t report to me. Anyway
tell me why you are here”
“Sir, I have this developed strategy that we could use for the introduction of Sinewii which I think would make it capture the market before Tuilio and Zufor could even launch their products.”
Searching for the files in his Sony Vaio.. “I would like to take you through this presentation”
“Am I the first person seeing this”
“No Sir. Mr. Gupta liked it when he saw it last week. He suggested I should meet you”
“Ahem… very well, go on..”
The meeting went in these lines. Ashok seemed impressed but not excited.
“Pritam, that was interesting.”
“Sir, I am glad that you felt that w...”
Interjecting, “But the idea is not something that we have done before. We will not risk everything just to try out a new way of selling”

He was dull throughout that day. He did not have the courage to reflect upon the events of the day. That evening as he was driving back, he thought about what he could have done better. The meeting had obviously not gone the way he planned. The CEO remained passive about the concept he presented, though occasionally, looked keen. He couldn’t figure out what would it take convince the CEO. “The idea was just perfect!”... he found himself stamping the accelerator hard.

He felt a lump in his throat as he tried to sleep that night.

“Wake up ! You are already late” shouted Sheetal when the clock struck 8:30.

He replied in a sleepy tone. I’ll probably go late or may be take the day off. Lets discuss the vacation you were talking about last week.

Pritam found himself unable to concentrate on work. He was staring at his table for a very long time. He had analyzed the market for the last 5 months and he knew that this particular initiative, a little risky though it was, would make them the clear market leaders within the next 3 months. Everything that Ashok and his top brass would need had been minutely researched and documented. He knew there was no reason this idea should have been shot down. Every interaction with Ashok only strengthened his belief that Ashok was very close-minded about the way the company should be run. While Pritam had a lot of respect for Ashok about how he had built this company from scratch by following a measured approach, Pritam believed that these were in fact what were making him closed to others’ opinions. Instead of adapting with the times and implementing advanced strategies and expanding, he felt that Ashok was adamant. He was the sole decision making authority and his emphasis on a sometimes-overcautious approach were holding the company back.

Pritam also felt that Alok was not backing him enough. As his manager, he had seen first-hand the thorough efforts he had put in. Also as someone who had been in Advaith’s marketing division for more than 3 years, Alok also understood what this would mean for the company. And yet, as with everything else that Pritam had asked of him, the reply here too was that there was nothing he could do. Pritam often felt that Alok was not assertive enough and blamed somebody or something else for things that didn’t go as planned. When he had talked about this to Alok, he had responded that with experience Pritam would also understand to what extent results are controllable.

Above everything else, Pritam felt that his personal career growth was being obstructed here in Advaith. While his classmates from IIM who had joined other companies now headed entire divisions, he was still yet to see his first idea implemented. While he felt very strongly about Advaith’s work culture and identified in particular with their policy on social responsibility and social inclusion, he sometimes thought if it was worth it to sacrifice his personal and social growth.

His suddenly realized what his unfocussed eyes had been on, a printed sheet of an email that he had taken two weeks back. With the suddenness of movement of someone who wants to start some action, he pulled the sheet toward him. It was from a friend of his who worked at H2O, a relatively new drinking water bottling plant that was starting to expand. His friend had talked of how H2O’s business interests were expanding and about how the position of Vice-President of Marketing & Branding had suddenly become vacant. He had forwarded Pritam’s profile and both the President and the Vice-President for Personnel Management had been impressed. They had expressed a desire to meet Pritam in person and everything looked to be a mere formality if Pritam decided to take up the offer.

H2O was one of the new plants that had come up to tap the growing market of bottled drinking water, particularly in urban India. Compared to the other entrants, H2O had shown startling success till date and the market generally expected H2O to soon become the market leader. A position such as the Vice-President of Marketing and Branding would pitch Pritam right into the center of this upward spiral where his ambitious nature would fit right in. However, not all was as glossy as it seemed. There had been some rumours about how H2O was not meeting some of the conditioning and treatment regulations in the manufacture of the bottles. The bottles were mostly manufactured from recycled plastic which came from a variety of sources. The industry specified several steps of processing to make sure the plastic that was finally used to make the bottles was not toxic on account of the number of types of plastic in the mix. The rumours were about this pre-processing and how H2O reportedly expedited the entire process by skipping a couple of conditioning and treatment steps.

His friend had also hinted that these rumours might be true. However, he also negated any prospect of danger by stating that there could be problems, if at all any, only when the bottles had been stored without selling for long durations. There was no need to worry at all as the government routinely made up regulations to take care of even very rare contingencies and in the current environment bottled drinking water, H2O’s in particular, was routinely out of stock in stores let alone being kept long enough for any danger. Pritam knew this wasn’t always true since bottled drinking water was often stored in warehouses for weeks sometimes during transport or delivery. As someone who had grown up in a small town, Pritam identified very strongly with social ethics and responsibilities and this was in fact one of his primal reasons in opting for Advaith.

Pritam spent the whole evening contemplating what he should do at this juncture of his career.