Santori Co. Ltd Building Rapport

BUILDING RAPPORT!

Summary

This is a case related to an IT company where lack of communication creates dire problems. It deals with the CMO’s inability to create rapport within the team. It also highlights how age and region add to communication barriers and diminish productivity because of dissatisfaction.

Introduction

Santori Co. Ltd was a Taiwanese multi national electronics company. Founded in 1969 by JK Lee, it boasted of a presence in 80 countries and employed around 370,000 people. It was the leader in the smartphone market and had recently launched its own operating system, S-OS.

Since its inception, Santori had made steady profits every quarter. But the rising popularity of Chinese companies, which provided same features at a much lower price, was eating into their shares. Profit margins in Q1, 2015 slumped to 10% from an average of 20% over the last 10 years. The top executives felt the need for disruptive innovation. Consequently, Santori was looking to venture into the specialized phone segment.

The next big thing planned was an exclusive health and wellness phone. The entire assignment was given to the Chennai center. It was the largest overseas unit and had played a significant role in the S-OS roll out. Dr. Kaushik De, the CMO of Santori Chennai saw this as a golden opportunity to get himself noticed globally. He gave this M-Health project to Mithun Narayan. Dr. Vijay Thakur was taken for his medical expertise and Surbhi Mathur was handling the entire product development. Each of the 3 leads had junior teams working under them.

Dr. Vijay Thakur had a dual degree in medicine and fitness lifestyle. Surbhi was a B-Tech from IIT Delhi and had joined the company 3 years back. Her consistent outstanding performance had got her successive promotions and also a spot on this niche team.

Problem

Surbhi had requested for a 1-1 discussion with Dr. De but he was often travelling. Finally after a lot of rescheduling and cancellations, he called her to his cabin.

Kaushik: Hello Surbhi! How are you? How is the project going? I am sorry we could not get a chance to talk. I have been very busy with M-Health.

Surbhi: Hello Dr. Kaushik! I am doing well. This project is the reason I wanted to meet you at the earliest. It is going well but I am not very confident of the feasibility of our solution.

Kaushik: What? I had a detailed follow up with Mithun yesterday only and he was very happy with the way things are going ahead. Today, you are saying you are not very confident. I don’t understand this.

Surbhi: Actually I have not understood the problem statement and even after repeated questions, I have not got any substantial answers.