At times it is way to difficult to understand the nature of a person who is selfish to the core and highly egocentric. In one of my previous jobs as Manager Coordination, I came across one such individual, who was so negative that at times it was frustrating for me to make him realize, what he was doing was not going to work for his benefit or for the benefit of our organization, which is providing bread and butter to both of us.

I was working for Siemens Pakistan as Manager Coordination and was deputed in Karachi Electric Supply Corporation on behalf of Siemens on Business Process Re-engineering Project. My boss a German Doctor (PhD) working for IAEA was looking after the project and I was to head the department in his absence as he had to be out of Pakistan for 3 weeks every month.

He used to give me instructions for the coming weeks and leave for three weeks, and I was responsible to execute the project making use of 9 project leaders (PL) selected by him, prior to my appointment, on the BPR project. The team selected by him was young and immature except for 1 PL.

Cultural difference and work ethics of Germany and Pakistan are poles apart and making my German boss and the immature team to understand the intricacies of organizational behavior is way to difficult as they (the team) themselves are the reason for such an eventuality.

Now how on earth, I being a Pakistani myself, can claim to have a thorough understanding of these variations?

I have been in Canada for an extended period of 5 years, where I learned to capitalize on diversity of differing thoughts to organizational advantage. I tried to inculcate that same understanding in my team, yet I failed miserably due to negative mindset of two such individuals in my team who kept conspiring against me and managed to instigate the same negativity among other team members. Working in such a hostile environment was again challenge to cope with.

One of the PL was a Graduate in HR from US, (but he kept telling everyone that he was MBA in HRM to portray himself as highly educated) and he was assigned the project of renovating the existing Training Center building for which Rs10 million were allocated. He was to coordinate with the relevant departments to carry out the project and get everything approved either by me or my boss, as he had limited authority to exercise to accomplish project deliverables.

Common sense is unfortunately something which is not very common. Civil Engineering Rule of Thumb is that the walls are always erected on beams. The actual plan submitted by site engineer, who happened to be a Civil Engineer was out rightly rejected by the PL without assigning any reason and he insisted the civil engineer at site to re-plan the map according to ‘his’ wishes.

I was kept in complete darkness and the PL managed to get the re-submitted plan, signed from my boss on his return from Germany The civil engineer did as he was told, making all the calculations according to the instructions of PL. Since I was new in the organization and he (civil engineer) was bit skeptical in discussing the issue with me.

The project work started according to the new plan in which all the walls were erected 2 ft. away from the beams in all the rooms leaving a space of 2 ft. useless. Whenever I asked the PL to let me know the progress at the site, his answer was its going perfect.

One day on my way back home, I thought I better have a look at the progress of work at site and to my amazement, I was shocked to see what I have written above. I blew the whistle and brought the whole situation into the knowledge of my boss and he was also shocked to learn what wrong was done.

A 3 hour long meeting ensued the incident wherein, all the PLs myself and my German boss were present. Amidst heated debate and allegations and counter allegations meeting concluded on the remarks of my German boss, that my and his (German boss) work ethics are very much similar, and he apologized to me and disbanded the entire department sending all the PLs to their respective department The department was a matrix set up in a functional organization.

The building was renovated according to the new plan and is still being used with 2 ft space wasted in each room and all the three floors.