Total Lubricants China Essay - After New Md’s Landing

After new MD’s landing

The Story

Background

TOTAL Lubricants China (TLC) is a Foreign Invested Company in China, 100% owned by TOTAL China Investment Company (TCI), the country holding company of TOTAL group in China. It was founded in 1999 with a lubricants factory set in ZhenJiang, JiangSu Province. After 2000, TLC set its company head office and back office in ShangHai, 250KM far away from the factory.

TLC has a simple organization. MD is the biggest boss in TLC, who reports to the president of TCI directly, and looks after all the activities of TLC. MD is usually an expatriate appointed by Paris directly with 3~4 years’ tenure. Except MD, all the department heads, the N-1 of MD, including Finance, HR, Marketing, Sales and Supply Chain, are local hired Chinese, who usually have no predefined tenure and can stay within the position for a quite long period until he/she resigns or gets fired.

Thanks to fast growth of China economy and effort of each employee, TLC kept double digits increasing in its production and sales volume during the past years, and also expanded its staff from less than 40 persons into a big team with more than 200 persons. Among the staffs, majority belongs to two big departments, Sales and Supply Chain.

Supply Chain is one of the first departments set in TLC. Its looks after the lubricants production and makes sure the right products can be manufactured and delivered to clients in time according to the demand of Sales team. Due to the good company reputation and competitive compensation offered in ZhenJiang, a small city in China, Supply Chain successfully maintains a stable staff team in the factory and quite a number of staffs stayed with TLC since the 1st year of the factory, including the Supply Chain Department Head, Roger, who was promoted from the team after 5 years’ working in factory.

In order to support production, Supply Chain also dedicates different persons or small teams to look after Purchasing, Logistic, Safety (HSE) and Quality. I was recruited by Roger in later 2008 as Purchasing Manager to lead 2 subordinates. My duty is to secure material supply according to production demand. As a leader of sub-team within Supply Chain, besides Roger, I was also well taken care of by other sub-team leaders, who had been working with Roger for more than 5 or 6 years. I did feel a family like environment within Supply Chain at that time. There was were trust and support among sub-teams, and the solution could always be found and implemented together for different issues, such as supply shortage, capacity limitation, which are normal crisis during fast developing of company.  Actually, it was quite amazing for Supply Chain team to realize 40KT output from a 10KT capacity designed factory with limited modifications in 8 years.

After the new MD’s landing

The previous MD left due to tenure was finished. The New MD, Pascal, came and was on board in early of 2009. Pascal is French, coming from Strategy Department of TOTAL in Paris, and this was his first oversea assignment in Asia. He was based in ShangHai, the head office of TLC, and scheduled 1~2 days’ visit to factory in ZhenJiang, once per month.

For Pascal’s first visit in ZhenJiang factory, Roger organized a big welcome dinner involving all the supply chain staffs from factory. During the dinner, each sub-team leader, or even each one of local staffs would like to make a toast to Pascal with Bai Jiu to show their respect and welcome. Pascal accepted first few toasts and refused the rest because it was really too much for him. Staffs well understood, but, in order to keep the warm atmosphere of the welcome dinner, staffs started to toast each other and made quite a lot noise. The welcome dinner party was ended very late at the night.

In the second day, when the staffs back to factory, they were shocked to find Pascal issued a notice to entire company that Bai Jiu would be forbidden to be served in all company gathering in the future, and only selected alcohol drinks can be served with limited quantity. People felt difficult to accept this prohibition, and the dinner party became not so interesting with only limited selected alcohol served. So, step by step, the gathering among staffs, especially within the factory of Supply Chain, became less and less.

While, this Bai Jiu prohibition was not the only shock to Supply Chain team. In middle of 2009, Pascal met Roger and me in his office and informed us that he decided to isolate Purchasing team out from Supply Chain. This is to be in line with group organization instruction and to ensure the independence of purchasing function. The new Purchasing team would report to MD directly and overlook all the purchasing activities of entire company, instead of only material purchasing within Supply Chain.

This was a huge shock to Roger, the Supply Chain Head. Although Pascal emphasized that this organization change was only to be more compliance with group principle and had nothing to do with Roger’s performance, it was difficult for Roger to accept. Because of losing a significant part of job scope, not only his peers, but also his team members may think Roger’s performance was not recognized and valued by Pascal. In the meantime, this was also a huge shock to me. Although it was a good news for me to be promoted into N-1 of MD and get a seat within the management committee of TLC, I felt unconformable to accept this sudden promotion. First, it was clear for me that this promotion was not because of my personal outstanding performance. Second, I felt facing very difficult situation to continue a successful career in TLC because of lacking of support within company from colleagues, right expertise and enough manpower.

Clearly, it was also a shock to entire company, not only to the Supply Chain team but also to other department heads, when this organization change was announced publicly.  I could clearly felt the supporting from other sub-teams of Supply Chain became less, although I tried my best to maintain the original relationship with the teams. In order maintain the sponsorship from Roger, I tried to consult Roger’s comments before any major purchasing decisions as I did before, but Pascal was unhappy on this obviously. During the interactions with other Department Heads, I could hardly get support and I was not treated as N-1 at all. It took me almost 3 three years to build Purchasing team up to a real independent department, which has the right capability to overlook the purchasing activities of entire company. And in between, I could not find back the family like feeling within the organization of TLC.

My Reflection

The story above is just a small part of my interaction with my ex-French boss, but there are few points can be extracted out when I review it with lens discussed in CCM.

Culture Lens

Alcohol (Bai Jiu) Prohibition is actually a typical case caused by different cultures, which may also be a starting for following difficult interactions between Roger and Pascal.

Alcohol Prohibition

For Pascal, who newly landed in China from France, welcome dinner party should be a good chance to know his new Chinese team through chatting and talking with different people and a proper drinking of wine. Such a noise dinner party together with dozens bottles of Bai Jiu apparently was a shock to Pascal, who even could hardly find a chance to talk with Roger due to numerous toasts. Seeing lot of staffs had too much drinking of Bai Jiu, Pascal worried about the safety of staffs, such as if they are able to back to home safely and if it is good to their health. So, Pascal thought it was necessary to issue a rule to limit the drinking activities during the company gatherings.

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