BU491 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Umberto Eco, Voicemail, Online Banking
9-409-003
R E V : N O V E M B E R 1 , 2 0 0 9
TSEDAL NEELEY
THOMAS J. DELONG
Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun
Microsystems, Inc. (A)
Greg James, a global manager at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun), slumped on the edge of his bed in the
company’s corporate flat in Paris. He struggled to even move after only three hours of sleep.
James had embarked on this unexpected trip from Sun’s Santa Clara, California, headquarters six days earlier.
With only a few hours’ notice, he had set out to meet with his entire 45-member customer implementation team
spread across India, France, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the United States (US). He had already met
with his team members in the US, India, and the UAE. France was his final stop before heading home. For the
second time, the team had failed to respond promptly to a customer system outage as required by a service contract
agreement. James had begun this trip assuming he would find a swift resolution to the rapidly escalating customer
situation that had motivated it. Unfortunately, that had not been the case.
James knew that if he could just make it to the gym, exercise would invigorate him and clear his head: “Five
more minutes and then I’ll go.” Twenty minutes later, still in his room, he grabbed his laptop and launched his e-
mail.
Re: HS Holdings
James scanned his inbox, reliving the events that had plunged him into this predicament. Six days earlier, he
had received a string of e-mails, forwarded to him by his team. Rahul Ashok, service manager for the Mumbai
team, was in touch with Praveen Devilal (one of Ashok’s team members in Mumbai) and Nick Elliott and Robert
Chan in Santa Clara to trace the source of the breakdown:
To: Greg James (Global Manager, Santa Clara)
Fw: FYI in re: HS Holdings
Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 06:58:40 PST
From: Robert Chan (Sales Account Manager, Santa Clara Team): V. Urgent
To: Rahul Ashok (Customer Service Manager, Mumbai Team)
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_
Professors Tsedal Neeley and Thomas J. DeLong prepared this case with the assistance of Research Associates Alison Comings and Patricia Hernandez. Certain
details have been disguised. HBS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary
data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management.
409-003 Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A)
2
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Rahul,
We have a major problem with HS Holdings. Their server went down on Sunday at 23:30 PST, and
TIC [Technology Integration Company], their tech support group, called us for help. The issue was at a
critical level because their entire system was down for two hours. This was a disaster for their online
banking business. They’re now struggling to respond to their customers who are furious.
They have a 24x7 Sun software premium—a $300K service—annual contract, but NOBODY engaged
them. They’re outraged. They’ve escalated the matter to Sun’s higher management and are threatening a
lawsuit because we violated their service contract. We need to find out what happened and respond to their
complaints immediately. I’ve also left you a voicemail and a txt message about this.
Help!
Robert
Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 19:51:44 IST
From: Rahul Ashok (Customer Service Manager, Mumbai Team): V. Urgent
To: Nick Elliott (Application Support Engineer, Santa Clara Team); Chan, Robert
Re: HS Holdings
Nick,
Re: HS Holdings, we have paged the US team three times and left numerous voicemails for the past
several hours. We haven’t been able to get a hold of the customer either. Pls investigate why the US didn’
provide any assistance on Sunday. They should be on call to handle critical issues. We need to revert to
the customer and our senior management with an explanation ASAP. Customer threatening lawsuit.
Rahul
Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:30:24 PST
From: Nick Elliott (Application Support Engineer, Santa Clara Team): V. Urgent To: Rahul
Ashok (Customer Service Manager, Mumbai Team); Chan, Robert
Re: HS Holdings
I checked the system and it shows that HS Holdings’ situation was logged in 12 hours ago in the wrong
queue for resolution. We did not receive any pages about their system outage because it was in the wrong
queue! (It looks like it was the queue that is used to hold issues pending support service account number
verifications. The question is who programmed this queuing error? Jamal in Dubai? Praveen in Mumbai?)
Nick
Date: Tues, 27 May 2008 11:36:16 IST
From: Rahul Ashok (Customer Service Manager, Mumbai Team)
To: Praveen Devilal (Support Engineer, Mumbai Team); Elliott, Nick; Chan, Robert
Re: HS Holdings
Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A) 409-003
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Praveen, no page was received by the US support team. I am trying to understand where the ball was
dropped. I understand that US and Mumbai folks have exchanged messages.
Robert, the engineers have restarted the server. But we need to talk to the customer for confirmation
that related networks are not affected. We’re all on the conference bridge, but the customer has not called
in. We left a couple of voicemails at his ext. (45890) to join the conference call. We need him on the line
. . .
Thanks,
Rahul
At the end of the team members’ messages was Spurlock’s.
Date: Tues, 27 May 2008 08:33:12 PST
From: Stephen Spurlock (Global Vice President, Santa Clara): V. Urgent
To: Greg James (Global Manager, Santa Clara) Re:
HS Holdings: Lawsuit?!?
Greg,
Just got a call from HS Holdings’ attorneys. They said that their server went down for two hours.
Cost them thousands in lost revenue. They are asking us to pay for that loss . . . and they want the $300K
service contract money returned to them. Said it was the second time this has happened. I talked to Rahul,
and he alluded to problems with your team . . . Did you know about this? What the hell is going on?
SS
Before James left the office, he asked his team in India to address the technical failure at HS Holdings. He
then booked a ticket to India, the UAE, and France to investigate and resolve the issues.
James’s Journey
Though the HS Holdings’ system was up and running, the face-to-face meetings with his team had uncovered
deeper, more complex, interpersonal issues. James decided to seek counsel from another vice president (VP), Pam
Lawry. He picked up his cell phone and sent her a text message: “Can u video chat? I really need 2 talk to u.” A
few moments later, his cell phone buzzed. He quickly read her response, “B on in 30 mins.”
James tried to gather his thoughts. When he joined Sun, one manager had described him as “one of the best
hires that I have ever had work for me.” When Sun launched the Open Work program that allowed people to work
from anywhere, anytime, and anyplace, James had felt as if he were part of the most cutting-edge company in the
world. Yet, here he was struggling with his distributed team. His ruminations were interrupted when Lawry’s
video call screen popped up. “Hi, Pam.”
“What’s going on? Where are you?” Lawry asked with urgency in her voice.
“I’m in Paris.” James quickly explained his conversation with Spurlock and the HS Holdings incident. “I
spoke with Nick Elliott, who’s the primary contact for the account. He worked closely with HS Holdings and
TIC, their system integration contractor, to customize our software products for their online banking system
(see Exhibit 1). I wanted to know why Nick wasn’t the first to respond. Nick was mad and explained that no
one called him. Even though his cell phone was off, all the engineers have his home number for emergencies.
He didn’t learn about the problem until the next day. I also spoke with Robert Chan who said that he didn’t
know about the problem until he checked his e-mail on Monday morning. Both Robert and Nick think that
Mumbai dropped the ball. They should have gotten in touch with Nick or resolved the outage themselves.”
Document Summary
R e v : n o v e m b e r 1 , 2 0 0 9. Managing a global team: greg james at sun. Greg james, a global manager at sun microsystems, inc. (sun), slumped on the edge of his bed in the company"s corporate flat in paris. He struggled to even move after only three hours of sleep. James had embarked on this unexpected trip from sun"s santa clara, california, headquarters six days earlier. With only a few hours" notice, he had set out to meet with his entire 45-member customer implementation team spread across india, france, the united arab emirates (uae), and the united states (us). He had already met with his team members in the us, india, and the uae. France was his final stop before heading home. For the second time, the team had failed to respond promptly to a customer system outage as required by a service contract agreement.
