Question

After two years of sales calls and persuasion, a large, multinational petroleum company—Big Oil Ltd.—decides to sign with your employer, Secure Bank. Since Big Oil is headquartered in Saudi Arabia and most of the meetings with the client have been in the Middle East, Secure Bank’s senior executive in charge of oil and oil products companies, Julie, has not attended. Although the Secure Bank employees who have met with the company have told the Big Oil executives that the lead on their account will be a woman, the news must not have registered, perhaps because of language difficulties. Today, the Big Oil reps are in Chicago to sign on the dotted line and meet with Secure Bank’s senior managers, and of course, they’ve met with Julie. A member of your sales team calls you to say that Big Oil’s senior team member has told him he does not want Julie to work on their account, period. Because of cultural issues, Big Oil execs are uncomfortable dealing with women from any country.

As Julie’s manager can you think of ways to respect Julie’s expectations and those of the Big Oil executives? Please provide extensive answer

Answer 1

From the above caselet, I gather following information

• Big Oil is very important Client for Secure Bank as they have been persuading Big Oil since last 2 years. So one thing is sure that Secure bank can’t let go of the Client.
• There is culture difference in working of both the companies
• Julie is a talented employee which is proved by her position as Senior executive in charge of Oil & oil product companies
• Client’s wish and culture must be respected but not at the cost of employee

Being Julie’s Manager I need to find a way to keep both Client happy as well as my employees.

First option:-

• Promote Julie to a senior position in the same Oil & Oil products portfolio
• Assign another male employee who is equally talented like Julie (and also from Oil & Oil products portfolio), to Saudi Clients. Let this male employee be the key account handler for big One and be their point of contact.
• Only in case of very important issues/decisions let Julie be the final decision maker as this male employee will be subordinate of Julie.
• Give Julie 2 to 3 other accounts so that she will get involved only in important matters rather than becoming the point of contact for the clients. This will help her to manage more accounts at once instead of just focusing on a single account and it will pave her path for higher position in the organization.

Second option:-

• As we all know that with Saudi Clients there is lot of language problems as well as cultural issues. So in order to avoid all this, better to hire a person from Middle East itself who has same level of experience & expertise like Julie and also has more cultural knowledge of Middle East. In this way Clients will also be happy and there will be no chance of any misunderstanding due to language /cultural barriers.
• Assign different project to Julie or make her point of contact/trainer of this new hired guy from Middle East.

Assumption:- As I am manager of Julie, I have assumed I am in that senior position where I can hire resource as per my need.