Problem Statement

 

Given below is a case study of a fictitious fintech start-up followed by questions for you to answer based on your learnings from the course.

 

Company Background:

 

XYZ is a fintech start-up, founded by two friends from IIM Bangalore. It recently turned five years old. It is growing incrementally and is attracting a lot of investors. Many pundits of the field have cited it as the upcoming unicorn in the fintech space at the cusp of giving tough competition to the veterans such as Paytm, Google Pay and more. The top management is considering aggressive expansion plans for its growth.

 

The users currently love the design and experience of the application for payments but the product still seems to lack something that would make the users use the application for longer durations and in turn spend more. They are envisioning to  include gamification into their apps on the lines of the games that are created by Google Pay. However, this demands the product team to work under tight deadlines and a high-pressure environment. 

 

The product team consists of about 30 employees. For the sake of this case, we will focus on the following four key employees:

 

Karan Singh - Director of Product
Prateek Goenka - Associate Director
Maya Kapoor - Product Manager
Seerat Chawla - Senior Associate

Now, let's look at each of these employees.

 

Karan Singh

 

Karan has about six years of experience across industries. He joined XYZ four years ago when it was just a small company. Karan has contributed a lot to the firm and hence has seen rapid growth in his career.
Karan's managers find him to be someone who always completes his tasks on time. His stoic personality, coupled with his constant self-reflection, helps him keep calm in the direst of situations and continually betters himself than what he was. He prefers to work alone on tasks but does not mind working in teams either. Since the beginning of his career, Karan has always seen his methods succeed and hence he sometimes refuses to see or adopt methods suggested by someone else.

 

Prateek Goenka

 

Prateek joined the organisation about a year ago and has brought a lot of great insights to the table. He is  very easily approachable and friendly but loves to keep to himself whenever possible. At the same time, when it comes to deliverables, he knows how to keep a firm hand.
Prateek is often praised for his attention to detail but his passion for the work he does is often the result of raised tempers at the workplace.

Other than this, Prateek always explores new and more efficient ways of completing tasks and hence has optimised a lot of processes at XYZ.

 

Maya Kapoor

 

Maya joined this organisation two years ago and is a star performer. She has grown from a senior associate role to that of a manager within a year because of her attention to detail and her reliability as an employee. Maya  has also been known to bring very creative solutions to difficult problems and performs extra well under pressure.
Apart from her work, Maya is very friendly with her colleagues and often takes interest in their lives. Maya is also one of the liveliest people in the organisation and is the life of year-end celebration parties at work.

 

Seerat Chawla

 

Seerat joined the organisation about six months ago and feels very satisfied with her role. She is very fond of Maya, as she believes Maya is one of the best managers she could have ever had. Seerat and Maya are alumni of the same B-school and, hence over the period of the last six months, have developed a close friendship.
Maya brainstorms all the upcoming information about projects, etc., with Seerat before sharing it with the rest of the team.

Current Scenario:

 

Considering the company's dynamic growth, Maya was expecting to grow into the role of a senior manager. 

 

She had conducted several calls with Prateek, her reporting manager, and felt fairly confident about the promotion. Prateek and Karan had contradicting views about the promotion and finally, Karan being the key authority to this decision, decided against Maya's promotion.
Karan believed that Maya's creativity was too risky for the position and he also felt that her friendliness and openness could compromise her decisions. He felt that there was some power distance needed between a manager and the employee.
Karan, as a result, hires someone from outside the organisation to fill the position of a senior manager.

 

As a result, Maya feels disappointed and schedules a feedback call with Karan.
During their feedback call, Karan informs Maya on his disagreements with her way of functioning.

He further says that her style of management is not sustainable. Maya is unable to take away anything constructive from the call and feels demotivated.  Meanwhile, Maya reaches out to Prateek, who then explains to her how she can improve her work strategies and methods to represent her creative ideas. This helps Maya make the required alterations to her work style. However, she still feels demotivated as her work was not recognized.

As a result, Maya decides to look for opportunities outside XYZ. Prateek understands that Maya is not able to put her mind to work and  feels disconnected from the organization. So, he decides to come up with a plan to rectify this.

Maya gets into a conflict with Prateek over the promotion. However, after much deliberation, Prateek and Maya decide to make a three-month plan to show growth in Maya's work over the quarter so that she becomes eligible for the promotion. At the end of the quarter, Maya has worked and followed Prateek's  plan completely. There is immense improvement in her work and deliverables.

However, Karan is still unwilling to give her the promotion. As a result, Prateek and Karan get into a conflict and none of them is ready to give in. The VP is looped in for prompt direction and resolution. 

Question 1 .
 
Examine and evaluate the personalities of the following employees based on the Big Five Traits of Personality (also called the OCEAN Framework). State whether they are high or low on a particular trait by citing instances from the information given in the case. 

1. Karan Singh
2. Prateek Goenka
3. Maya Kapoor  
4. Question 2 .Identify why Maya feels demotivated and dissatisfied with her work. Base your answer on the following theories:
5. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
6. Two Factor Theory

 

  Question 3 .How can XYZ Limited create an ideal organisation culture and organisational structure to support their plan?

 

Question 4 

1. Identify Karan's leadership style and state your reason.
2. What leadership theory applies to the relationship between Maya and Seerat, and why?
3. Which quadrant of the Situational Theory of Leadership does Prateek try to lead his star employee Maya?

Question 5 

Explain the process of conflict between Karan and Maya through the five stages as suggested:

1. Antecedent conditions
2. Cognition and personalisation
3. Intentions
4. Behavior
5. Outcomes

Question 6 

 

What base of power does Karan use? Put yourself in Karan's shoes and try to explain your reasons for not giving Maya the chance to grow in the organization. 

 

Questions 7 

 

What tools of self-reflection mentioned by our adjunct faculty Abhishek could Maya have used to process the feedback better?