Think of a work-related failure that you experienced or you are aware of and aft

Question

Think of a work-related failure that you experienced or you are aware of and after describing it, answer the following questions: • What individual and/or organizational factors might have contributed to the failure? • What was the manager's or organization's reaction to the failure? How does that reaction compare to what you learned in this week's lesson? • Did it become a learning experience? If so, in what way? If not, why not? • Based on what your learned would you describe this organization as innovative? Why or why not?

This week we focused on the culture of failure.

There are many legends about the innovative success of companies and their founders, including great financial rewards. Microsoft and Google both started life in a garage and their founders are now billionaires!

Innovative companies should also accept that the innovation process is messy..

It’s easy to assume that the products or processes in these stories were “light bulb” ideas, generated in full form and ready for the market. What we don’t usually hear about are products that were tested by these same companies but were not successful, about the financial investments made in trial products that never earned a return.

Explanation / Answer

The work-related failure that I experienced:

Situation Involved:

I am working as a department manager in a retail company and I look after FMCG (food, nonfood, and staple). When the stock comes to our store first the Warehouse in charge does GRC (goods receiving challan) in software. Suppose 200 pcs of biscuit has come then Warehouse in charge will do its GRC in Software so the system will reflect that I have 200 pcs of a particular brand biscuit. Suppose one customer has bought 10 pcs then physically it will be 190 and system will show 190 as well.

The warehouse in charge has got another job and in hurry, he did not do the GRC of Sugar, Oil, Pulses etc the bill. I asked him before leaving for the completion of all his work and he said all of his work has been done and he can leave now.

Being a leader I believed in his word and did not verify. After few months when the vendor did not get the payment he enquired to me about the same. The vendor had stopped the supply and my sale was down and I saw the first failure in my professional life.

In yearly audit physical stock was high then the system stock. So from the above example here, I was the team leader and there were 8 members of my team including the warehouse in charge. I believed in his word but did not inquire then resulting huge loss and I was under pressure and was questioned.

Missing Traits:

The trait which was missing was trust ascend blindly. It would have taken 5 minutes to verify is the completeness of work but I believed in his word.

Lessons Learned:

So I stopped believing in people but first I verify. I was taught this lesson by this incident. I should be good at time management and do not procrastinate work. Get them completed then and there without any delays. I should improve in effective stakeholder management. Consistently build the relationship with all stakeholders and communicate the ongoing project updates and gain acceptance. I need to schedule recurring discussions with sponsors and key stakeholders on a fortnightly basis. When it comes to my team, I need to challenge the status quo on a weekly basis to ensure there is no deviation in the organizational objectives that are transformed into the team level goals. I need to set a clear vision, mission, and objectives to my team at the beginning of the year. I need to respond to all critical questions raised by project team members during project meetings. I need to be good at email etiquette and follow good business practices.

Barriers that impede an organization’s ability to adopt innovative practices and processes:

An organization that faced these barriers, the approach used to address these barriers:

The example of a reintroduction of organizational dynamism has many examples and in this note, we focus on the Indian fertilizer major Zuari Agro Chemicals Limited (“ZACL”) for illustrating the same. Fertilizer industry in India is controlled and regulated and the product offering is also commoditized to a very large extent. ZACL was losing market share in its captive home markets and its profitability was eroding during the period 2011-12 to 2014-15.

Thereafter the management of ZACL decided to follow an approach of integrating the marketing structure of the entity with its other sister concerns to form a large marketing structure, which has got good penetration in the market. It also started focused marketing campaigns with the cross-branding of popular products by leveraging the powerful brands already available with ZACL and its sister companies and also extending them to various territories. With the consolidation of marketing territories and the rollout of the new structure, ZACL and its other sister companies quickly regained the lost market share. Also, the management focused on introducing newer products and a new distribution channel of direct retailing, that is endorsed and managed by the company itself, thus bypassing the dependence on the channel partners, which was a paradigm shift.

Thus a combination of the realignment of marketing structure, the introduction of newer products (to create a product and brand differentiator) and a new approach to distribution enabled ZACL to regain old glory and its market share increased in the fertilizer year 2016-17. The profitability is also expected to return to its earlier robust levels.

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