"Team Pandav and their Business unit was thriving under Yudhi's leadership and the core Leadership team including Arjun, Bhim, Nakul, Sahadev and Krishnaa Dru. Duryodhan decided to do something to bring this empire to dust- He onboarded the master of ceremonies and master negotiator, Shakun Gandhar to help negotiate a sly deal that would leave the Team Pandav stripped off of their rank and glory and respect.
Duryo invited Team Pandav to an offsite with working lunches
and team bonding activities. They played 2 Truths and a Lie, Improv sessions
and finally Switch the Roles. What
ensued in those games and discussions was a very intense political power play led by Shakun that Yudhi was supremely
unmatched with to meet. What was supposed to be a bonding activity turned out to be the start of a negotiation that shook all bonds within the organization. Fuelled by ego of everyone involved, the negotiation outcomes were far from a win-win outcome. Duryo ended up getting the contract
to employ all of the Team Pandav board members, resources and the entire set of
business units.
The very emotional Krishnaa and Bhim shouted at the advisory council. “ Where are your principles of organizational and enterprise agility, Dev Brat? You are supposed to support collaboration whereas you hide behind a contract and act helpless. Out here if something needs to get done, you’ll need to rely on people who are ready to do what it takes instead of just laying out scaled enterprise guidelines and principles. How can you let this happen".
Their cry echoed through centuries to come which helped shape better culture and better core value principles for the organizations to come.
(“They should both be sent to an Emotional Intelligence training "- Dron made a mental note.)
The entire senior leadership team present in the offsite
were stunned. Dev Brat had no choice but to disagree and commit. Dhrit turned a
blind eye as usual and let this bad behavior grow in his company. Most other
advisory councils took up an advisory role, that is, to advise pointing out the negative
effects of the path that Team Duryo was going down. They essentially took up the consulting/coaching approach where they
decided to let the leaders in their team make their own choices and learn from
the near certain failure in the imminent future. Should they have interfered
knowing the consequences of such a decision? Where does one draw the line as to
what extent of failure you let your teams make? It is certain though that
several leaders in the years to come learnt from this very mistake.
In a rather Steve Jobs style oust, the very powerful Leadership team of Pandav were ousted. While Steve Jobs bounced back almost immediately, Pandav’s deal also forbade them from starting up any new company in the same domains based on the non compete clause compiled by Shakun. This made Pandav to go away on another long sabbatical and a much needed Detox."
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