Sambac Energy
At Sambac upper management came from the two owner companies
in alternate years. In the previous chapter the differences in culture and style between
the two companies was noted. When an entrepreneur manager was in charge,
projects were initiated without much preplanning. The local in-country employees
and managers had little direction. Projects would get started, but few would
finish successfully. Some projects became sidetracked into purposes that were
totally different from the original purpose.
When the next manager appeared from the other company, all
projects would stop and be subjected to review. Since this manager was used to a
more bureaucratic approach, mountains of paperwork had to be generated to start
a project. This took so long that many projects were not completed at the end of
the year. And the cycle started all over again.
This example points out the need for a structured method for
defining projects. However, the method cannot be excessively bureaucratic due to
the cultures in many countries where the focus is on the short-term. The
approach in this chapter was employed to analyze each project and to select
which projects should go ahead.
At Sambac the method for overall project selection and the project
slate was also implemented. This resulted in many benefits, including:
-
The transition of management from Alpha to Beta and vice
versa was made easier since the analysis of the project slate was carried out
and made available to each country.
-
There was a more active effort to kill off projects. People
became aware that just because a project was underway, there was no protection
for it from being cancelled if it was not progressing satisfactorily
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