Case Study Analysis: (Re)Building a Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek

Masud Gaziyev

Undergraduate Student, Bachelor of Arts in Public Affairs

ADA University, School of Public and International Affairs

November 22, 2017

Case: https://hbr.org/product/rebuilding-a-global-team-tariq-khan-at-tek/414059-PDF-
ENG

Tariq Khan is offered global sales and marketing team manager position in Tek. The position requires
leading 68-person team which consists of people from 27 countries. During the last two years, the
team’s performance and employee satisfaction had been in a decline which were also accompanied by
the decrease in net profit margin and market share. It was expected from Tariq that he would solve the
current crisis and achieve substantial increase in sales and market share in two years. Tariq is in the list
of “high potentials” whose performances were constantly evaluated by top executives. Should he fail
to reunite the team and solve the problem, his reputation will be damaged. Tariq is confident because
he had a proven record of success in working on projects with culturally diverse teams. However, he is
also anxious about the team after speaking with previous manager who told Tariq that he left the
position because the situation in the team is simply “out of control”. Now facing the dilemma, Tariq
must decide whether to take the position or not. If he takes the position, he must figure out ways to put
back the team on its feet.
Before identifying the causes of the problem, it is important to define the principles and
practices commonly found in global teams which makes them successful. Firstly, in multinational
companies, there must be a high degree of integration within the teams working on the same projects.
“One team” mentality and identification of “we” should prevail over ethnocentrism. Secondly, there
must be a strong foundation for cooperation within the team. That requires the establishment of trust
within team members. Members should trust their colleagues in them getting their part of the work
done. Thirdly, there should be one common working language among the members to have effective
communication. Fourthly, the cultural awareness level must be high within the team. If members
recognize the cultural differences within the team and establish their business practices, keeping those
differences in mind, cultural misunderstandings that might arise from work will be minimized. Finally,
all team members should have open access to the information. Members and project manager should
be transparent with one another regarding information that they get about market cycles and work in
general.
After analyzing Tariq’s observations during his meeting with the team, it becomes clear that
team members have failed to be integrated into one team mentality and instead division based on
ethnocentrism prevailed. The team members commonly divided themselves based on their cultural and
religious backgrounds when they were sitting. This shows the existence of strong ethnocentrism within

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the team. Division, based on cultural and religious identities is more prevalent than integration based
on common goals and values irrespective of cultural background. The biggest problem which arises
when workers in global teams adopt ethnocentrism is that during the crisis, members start constantly
blaming other members from different backgrounds for the problem. There was already a problem of
integration within the team itself, even before the emergence of external factors such as the increase in
the price of oil and decrease in the profits. When organization members fail to integrate based on
shared goals and values, they become unable to cope up with the pressure imposed from external
environment into the organization which is in this case increase in the price of oil.
Team members also have a problem of cooperation and trust which further contributed
integration becoming impossible. Distrustful relationships between team members can be seen when
Lars and Ramazan both blamed each other for the problem, rather than giving constructive feedback to
the new manager candidate, Tariq about the situation. Those executives blamed each other because
they did not have any predefined direction or evaluation criteria to use when assessing the performance
of their colleagues. The absence of those practices show the unwillingness of team members to
cooperate and define the direction and evaluation criteria. During Tariq’s meeting with the team, no
one seemed to have a clear idea of what is wrong, as it is evident from Tariq’s observation that “from
9:00 to 5:00 p.m., everyone was repeating the same points they made earlier”. When he continued the
meeting for deeper understanding, it resulted in personal blame-assigning fight between members.
Another problem was that the usage of one common working language was absent. As Tariq
walked around, he heard “English in one corner, Russian in another, and Arabic in another.” People
divided themselves into clusters based on the language they were speaking. The level of fluency of
English also varied from person to person making less-fluent members to become not confident
enough to open their minds and speak up. The absence of common working language and division on
native language established defective communication flow within the team, and made the integration
process more difficult, thus contributing to the ethnocentric mentality among team members.
The team also had a low level of cultural awareness within the group. Cultural awareness
requires understanding of the differences between people from other countries and cultures. It is
necessary for multicultural teams to have cultural awareness to function properly. Its existence or
absence can transform diversity into an advantage or disadvantage. It is evident from Tariq’s
observations that team at the hand have low a level of cultural awareness among its members. Some
people in the group did not know where their colleagues were from, and some incorporated their
colleagues into broad categories like “European”. As cultural awareness level was very low, members
started to identify their colleagues based on the pre-established stereotypes they have. For example,

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one Saudi Arabian team member was assumed to be German just because he had been working in the
organization productively for many years. Not being able to recognize cultural differences also resulted
in cultural insensitivity among colleagues. That is evident through the example of Lars who joked with
his Arabian colleague when Arabian man refused to drink vodka for religious reasons. Cultural
insensitivity then created the illusion that diversity is a problem to be dealt with or the group is “too”
diverse. However, the real problem is the absence of cultural awareness within the team in the context
of diversity.
Workers have high levels of self-motivation when there is a transparency among team members
and when the management at the top is willing to share the information openly among the members of
the organization. Providing information to team members and keeping them informed motivates
workers and give them a sense of purpose to be a part of something greater than themselves and keep
them loyal to their organization. When Tariq met and talked with Farah, a Lebanese customer service
associate, it became clear that the team did not provide open access information to every worker. When
talking about decrease in market share, Farah told that she had no idea that the team was doing poorly,
and the targets from the top only come up for a few times per year for her. It shows that the
management failed to provide open access information to every member.
Division within the team based on ethnocentrism and low level of cultural awareness which
later created cultural misunderstandings among the workers transformed diversity into disadvantage.
Restricted information and the failure of workers to communicate in one common working language
resulted in ineffective communication. Distrustful relationships and the lack of clear direction made
cooperation too difficult. Additionally, increasing oil prices made these internal problems to be seen
more clearly. In other words, the pressure from the environment outside the organization showed how
the team was not prepared internally to deal with the potential crisis from outside.
Based on the above analysis, several recommendations can be made. Tariq Khan should accept
the position, if he is ready to implement important changes to put back the team on its feet. To ensure
that the performance will be increased during the next two years, several measures aimed to solve the
causes of the problem should be implemented. Firstly, Tariq must recognize that diversity itself is not
the problem. The real problem is the absence of cultural awareness within the team members. This
absence turned diversity into disadvantage. To solve this problem, cultural sensitivity trainings must be
held for all team members. Members should recognize the diversity of their team, and they should
understand that cultural insensitivity might cause misunderstandings between team members which
would demolish all the hard work that has been done. Additionally, cultural activities and interactive
events between workers should be held to increase cultural awareness and trust among team members.

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Irrespective of their performance levels, principles of cultural awareness and sensitivity should be
accepted and upheld by all members including Lars.

Furthermore, Tariq should also promote one team mentality and to stimulate trust and effective
communication between team members. English should be used as primary working language among
team members, and language courses should be held for the members who are less-fluent in English.
Common language will help rebuilding of the trust between team members, and will result in the
establishment of effective communication flows and cooperation. In addition, Tariq should also be
transparent when dealing with members and giving targets, which will increase the self-motivation
among the workers which will then increase the likelihood that they will associate themselves with
their organization rather than their ethnicities.