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: