Introduction

In this assignment, I am presenting a critical incident analysis that I underwent in 2012 while

I was working with Yamaha motor India as a graduate engineering trainee in the very

beginning of my career. And to present my critical incident analysis, I have used Gibbs

reflective cycle (Gibbs 1988) of description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and

action plan. My critical incident analysis is supported by the evidence of personal learning

and self-awareness supported with my thinking styles that I had to develop at Yamaha

motor. The narrative throughout this assignment is woven with relevant theories and there

is the inclusion of an MBA candidate lens from the ‘background of the incident’ and till the

end. The critical incident that I have presented is from my experience of Yamaha motor

India as a graduate engineering trainee (GET) of 2012, and this incident is important

because it had exposed me to globalization, cost-reduction challenges, building deep

relationship with suppliers, leadership, and organisation’s learning challenges in the

outsourced innovation R&D business unit, and in a global working atmosphere, and I will

discuss in detail later in this assignment. These are some of the challenges which engineers

in managerial role and/or managers in leadership roles handles in daily situation. After my

MBA, I want to work in the technology or management consulting company. Therefore, this

critical incident is very important for career plan and I have also discussed the importance of

learning from this incident last section.

Background of incident

Hired as a GET, I had received initial three months of classroom training to develop ‘deep

smart’ with the business-critical, experience-based knowledge (Leonard 2016), leadership

trainings, and Yamaha’s future growth strategies. During the training, I was equipped with

the knowledge on topics of communication (included EQ), teamwork, effective team

strategies, team roles along with the department’s functions (India, and Japan), team types

such as cross-functional team: a committee of people drawn from the relevant departments

to solve particular problems (Leinwand, Mainardi et al. 2016) formulated for short-term

activities such as new supplier development. During this training, I also underwent learning

by social interaction, shared standard of behaviour, problem resolution within established

work processes and patterns, communities of practice - not just skills and facts, but also

“how to be”, and is also a social cognitive learning theory by Bandura (Taylor, Furnham

2005). After this training, I joined the R&D-design department as a project in-charge of

Yamaha 150 cc series motorcycles models. As a project lead, I had the overall R&D

responsibilities such as selection of new suppliers, new business partners, and/or

shareholders, also I was responsible for decision making for all the changes in design or

standards. In the sixth month of my joining, I was suggested to change the supplier by the

department head, for cost reduction on based on the local (Indian) supplier’s

communication invite for the transmission chain components supply at lower cost than the

current supplier. I took this assignment in my job list and had started to work on it.

Incident description

As a project lead, I took charge to study this new supplier’s ‘transmission chain’ technical

specification for 150cc series. I accepted to work on this new development because, the

cost reduction was attractive for my own target. According to R&D managing director, this

assignment was truly global and challenging as it involved teams from more than five

different locations, and development of deep relationship with supplier. I did one week of

the study, I had developed some perception that this ‘new supplier’ technology was not

good in comparison with the existing supplier. To make a better judgement, I had decided to

push the prototype component for ‘test’ which took two weeks. And to plan the assignment

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ahead, I had meetings with new supplier company for the later requirements of quality,

delivery, and cost. And to avoid any error, I had meetings with the testing team to explain

the important specification changes. After two weeks, I received the reports stating that the

prototype transmission chain broke during the test, and thus failed the Yamaha test’s

standard. I checked the reports of this test results and observed that the prototype

transmission chain was not ‘tested’ correctly. In the second half of the day, I was called by

the department head for a meeting and before this meeting, he stated that ‘to teach testers

the correct procedure by evaluating his job’. I clearly told him that according to the current

department’s job role, this was not the R&D design department’s responsibility. I attempted

to adopt a firmer tone than I had previously used, and that comes naturally to me, and

became stricter to enforce my previous statement. I felt wrong because I was not

responsible to evaluate ‘tester’s job’. The incident acted as a wake-up call to think about

the ‘big picture question’ of what this (new supplier) produces (such as corporate social

responsibility by improving this supplier’s technology) for the business and for shareholders

(Johnson 2016). Also, before this meeting, I had clearly said ‘no’ to him for immediate

adoption of the ‘new supplier’ for the transmission chain and informed the ‘testes’ to test

again the prototype component.

Feelings

I had joined the organisation with knowledge of new hierarchy (with defined

responsibilities) of R&D company, and when I took this assignment, this new hierarchy

structure was announced. I was well aware my responsibilities associated with designation

according to the new company policies. However, my department head was unaware of all

these changes, and was trained like a Pavlovian conditioning (Fontenot 2013) with his main

stimulus was of meeting his own personal target and lack of awareness of the new

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responsibilities of my job role defined by the global team of human resources of Yamaha

motor. I had thoughts that ‘employees from two different department cannot report for

job’s evaluation or neither I can train him as both the department had the independent

function and duplicating the work of different department would be a waste of time’. I was

frustrated, with the fact that the only way of motivation to work for this assignment was

rewards based on the carrot and stick approach to motivation (Williams 2013), in this carrot

was the double promotion which I was going to receive if this supplier was successfully

developed.

The prototype failure news was more discomforting for department head because the cost

reduction was his idea. And when he called me for the meeting after this discomforting

news, I had sensed anger in his words, and I was expecting this kind of reaction, because the

disconfirming news are strong enough to pierce a person’s denial, the first typical emotional

response is anger (Lawrence 2014). I instantly guessed if I will say anything then this will

make him more angry. Therefore, to keep the situation under-control, I waited for him to

calm down, and used the ‘firmer tone’ to keep his focus only to what I was saying. I was not

hoping for a meeting, as I had already presented the results to him. I was annoyed with his

‘denial’ of not accepting the tests results, and angry as he wanted me to point-out the

mistakes and to mentor/teach an employee for whom I was not responsible for. However, I

was worried at the same time, because I wanted to achieve more than my target so that I

could be rewarded with double promotion. The difference in opinion of me and

department’s head had raised the conflict situation. With the meeting news, I had no

thoughts with “amygdala hijack” and to overcome this, I managed myself with four steps of

‘stayed present, let go of the story, focussed on the body, and deep breathe’ (Hamilton

2015).

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Evaluation

The bad thing about this experience, first was my ineffective communication skill of saying

‘no’ to the department head, and supplier because they needed more explanation as

prototype rejection was not an option, and second was my unpreparedness for department

head’s denial with more evidence to support me. Also, the organisation along with him and

I was undergoing significant changes in job roles of hierarchy due formulation of R&D as a

new company and people experiencing significant change typically go through periods of

denial, anger, experimenting (Lawrence 2014).

The good thing about this experience was, I got the opportunity to lead a cross-functional

team in the global setting (I met the current supplier’s owner from Japan, new supplier from

Chennai (different state), project teams of Yamaha Japan and Indonesia). I led the team, and

had collected enough evidence (such as tests results) to support my decision for this

assignment. I practically applied the emotional intelligence methods which were taught to

me during the training sessions in the situation of “amygdala hijack”, and I did not react

with the anger because it is a more nuanced emotion (David 2017). This critical incident was

a learning experience because I learnt about my area of improvement in communication

skills and to improve my skills of evidence-based decision making.

Analysis

A job is usually defined in terms of the titles and list of responsibilities (Boyatzis 1982). As a

department head, Yamaha motor had given him the power to modify the job design of

employees in his department. No one in the department was aware about this activity, and

job design matters to knowledge sharing for motivational reasons (Foss, Minbaeva et al.

2009). And, and there is no stronger motivation for employees than an understanding that

their work matters and is relevant to someone or something other than a financial

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statement (Lai 2017). During this task of ‘new supplier’, this was the first time I was told ‘to

teach testers the correct procedure by evaluating his job’, stating ‘a feedback loop from the

R&D design department’ (Argyris 1977) . And his motivation behind making changes in the

job design was to encourage employees to share knowledge. However, if only knowledge

sharing was his concern and not the job evaluation, then I would had happily performed

that task. And he wanted me to evaluate the tester’s job and to tell him what exactly was

expected from him with knowledge share. If tester’s job evaluation was in my job role then

it was supposed to be counted in the performance review.

Also, knowledge sharing was not the part of the incentive system, this is why human

resources had not shared anything related to the employees. However, knowing about the

reason for a sudden change in my job function with the addition of a feedback activity and

its further discussion had created discomfort. Because employees have both material and

emotional needs and always want to approach good things and avoid bad things, firms

should take measures to make their incentive systems more comprehensive. Then,

employees can be motivated to share their knowledge effectively (Ding, He et al. 2016).

However, our minds develop remarkable techniques for maintaining a positive self-image. If

what we did in the past worked and helped us succeed in some sense, then we seek,

naturally, to maintain that positive self-image (Lawrence 2014). When the department head

came to know about the discomforting news, and the test results were incorrect was stated

by me, he wanted to a countermeasure by developing a feedback loop between the two

departments.

Conclusion

Leadership is nothing if not about change (Lawrence 2014). The organisation was

undergoing changes and my department head was at the position of five steps above in the

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hierarchy. He must be having advance information related to the new organisation structure

and expected job responsibilities. Now when I look back to that Incident as an MBA student,

I could have handled the situation in a better way with new learnings in three different

alternatives.

First, I could have confronted that ‘new supplier’ is not good in technology in comparison

with the current supplier with the evidence of technology difference, this would have

helped both of us in evidence-based decision making. Now, I have realized that the avoid

confrontation is also related culture as both India and Japan falls in ‘avoid confrontation’

(Meyer 2016).

Second, I could have not ignored the single loop organisation learning, according to which

when the process (here new supplier development process) enables the organization to

carry on its present policies or achieve its objectives (Argyris 1977). And instead of this,

double loop learning could have been practiced, which means that underlying assumptions,

norms, and objectives would be open to confrontation (Argyris 1977). Also, the double loop

learning occurs, because of a revolution from within (a new management) (Argyris 1977)

which was in the process of R&D as a separate company.

Third, I could have used better communication skills and in-depth knowledge developing

deep relationship with supplier such as supplier keiretsu: close-knit networks of vendors

that continuously learn, improve, and prosper along with their parent companies (Liker,

Choi 2004). By this, consideration of all the possible improvement in the ‘new supplier’

technology would have been a ‘must’ and thus, discussion of technology in the first step was

crucial for keiretsu. And, I could have kept my department head in the loop for entire

communication, instead of those I felt were important. This alternative also answered the

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big picture question (stated in description) as this new supplier that could continuously

learn and improve with Yamaha’s technology support.

Career Plan

This critical incident is important for my career plan because that was the first time I had

realized the importance of learning the managerial skill along with business sense

development was very important. With all the classroom trainings, I had handled the

situation very well as it could had been worst if I had expressed in anger. The leadership

knowledge had been useful, and after this incident I believed that a formal learning through

education in leadership, and managerial skill with sense of business would help me to gain

the position in the top management. The communication skill, and evidence-based decision

making was a challenge for me even in this incident where I had not travel to a different

country. The multi-national companies demand such skill as they expect their managers to

have global exposure and to gain that knowledge is very important. And to equip myself

with the knowledge of leadership, and management challenges, I chose to pursue an MBA.

After five years of my MBA, I see myself to hold the director’s role with responsibility of

multiple teams within and outside the country I would be working in.

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