Was Silvio the right choice for General Manager of the Indian operation? Evaluate the entire range of factors such as experience, education, skills, personality, etc.
- Silvio’s experience can be deemed as one of the primary factors for choosing him as the General Manager (GM) since he had already gained a deep understanding of how the company worked y the time that he was appointed (4);
- Napoli’s education should also be considered a significant advantage that needed to be taken into account when choosing since his MBA degree showed that he was ready to break new grounds (4);
- The fact that he was rather young, especially compared to the other option that the organization had, should also be viewed as the advantage since his age was the evidence of his propensity to being open to new strategies and approaches;
- Napoli also had the temper that met the needs of the organization impeccably – he was willing to promote active change and improvements in the corporate environment (4);
- Finally, Napoli had a perfect understanding of the local culture and could develop the philosophy that he marked as the one of a monk so that it could be combined with his temper of a warrior and, therefore, help him gain success in India (6).
As Luc Bonnard, how would you evaluate Silvio’s performance for the first seven months? What advice would you give him?
- Napoli’s tendency to be very emotional about the progress of the organization shows that he could use better personal management skills and work on his negotiation abilities (6);
- His willingness to introduce innovative approaches is admirable, yet Napoli should be able to give a project enough time to let the dust settle – thus, the general tendency can be identified at an early stage and the necessary measures can be designed accordingly (6);
- The absence of an appropriate risk management approach, as well as an exit strategy, should also be listed among the primary problems – Napoli has to learn to identify all possible outcomes and be able to pull all the available resources to address an emergency (10)
- The product strategy, as well as the branding approach, could have used a significant improvement, especially with a competitor as strong as Otis in the target market; therefore, Napoli should have put a stronger emphasis on improving the company’s competitive advantage (8);
- Furthermore, Napoli should have considered the opinions of his managers before releasing the product seeing that a lot of them had doubts about the feasibility of the project; thus, he could have avoided some of the problems (10).
How could Silvio use the key issues namely glass-walled elevators, transfer of specifications, transfer pricing, and increase in customs duties to develop his strategy execution ability?
- Glass-walled elevators can be used to build the company’s competitive advantage and represent itself in the target market as the producer of a unique product (7);
- The transfer of specifications can be viewed as the foundation for meeting the required quality standards by adhering to the corporate standards (8);
- Moreover, the transfer of specifications can be deemed as an essential tool for promoting continuous improvement of the staff’s skills and, therefore, the increase in the product quality (8);
- Transfer pricing may also help improve Napoli’s strategy execution ability by creating prerequisites for a change in the resources management framework so that a more sustainable approach toward using the company’s assets could be developed (8).
- Increase in customs duties, while being an admittedly negative factor, may serve as the point at which the redesign of the company’s financial framework could start so that the organization should come up with a cost-efficient strategy and reduce the number of expenses, at the same time using all available resources to the maximum capacity (9).