Role Play - I

Brief for Ramakant Dixit, CFO

You are Ramakant Dixit, CFO of the largest vertical of the company that contributes to close to 40% of its revenue. You come with rich experience and have been in the company for the last eight years. You were made CFO of this vertical three years back. Lately the vertical has been facing challenge to maintain its topline. The topline has been consistently underachieved quarter on quarter. This has put a lot of pressure on you and your team. The internal audit conducted sometime back has been another pain in the neck. You hardly have any time for these in the current business situation. Smita Seth was the auditor and she has been following up on the implementation status of some of the recommendations she had made post the audit. You did not see much merit in the explanations given by Smita for her recommendations. You sometime wonder whether these people understand the challenges you experience. You find their recommendations trivial and nothing more than a list of things that they ought to come up with because they have done an audit. Post audit meeting with Smita was like a fault-finding meeting. Here I caught you is the best way you think you can explain the body language of Smita. You wonder where the auditors have gone who were collaborative and worked with you to help you improve the performance rather than people like Smita who seemed to work against you to win some brawny points for herself and a better performance rating. Your team is extremely busy working on various measures you have initiated to improve the topline. You dont think they have time to implement her recommendations that in your opinion is going to help her rather than you or your vertical. Smita had a con-call with you last week and you tried explaining her that you were in disagreement with most of the recommendations and those needed to be relooked. She was hardly listening to you and was stuck on why the recommendations were not implemented. Smita requested for a personal meeting. You have very hesitantly agreed. She is going to meet you in your cabin in a while.

Role Play - I
Brief for Smita Seth, Auditor
You are Smita Seth, an Auditor in the Management Assurance Services Team. You joined this team two years back and had been a good performer. One of your key responsibilities had been the audit of the largest vertical of the company that contributes to close to 40% of its revenue. The point of contact for you in the vertical is its CFO, Ramakant Dixit. Ram, as he is called, is a veteran and has been in the company for more than eight years now. You had various observations during the audit and made recommendations post discussion with the concerned personnel of the department including Ram. Some of the recommendations included initiating cost management projects, formal benchmarking of manpower cost and strengthening MIS process among others. You followed up with Ram on the implementation status, but havent heard anything concrete. The due date is close and you fail to understand why Ram is not acting on these. When follow-ups and e-mails did not help, you decided to fix a call with Ram last week. Very hesitantly Ram agreed for the call. You were surprised to hear from Ram that he wanted to re-look at the entire thing. You wonder why Ram is re-inventing the wheel all over again. He had disagreement and concerns with all the recommendations made. How can he say so when the due date is near? You strongly feel that Ram is doing all these just because he had not taken any action on the agreed points. He is doing so to save his skin. He apparently had no problems on the recommended points in the first discussion and suddenly he has started finding fault in everything when time for implementation has come. You are afraid that if the loose ends in the largest vertical of the company are not tightened, its not good for the company. You fail to understand why Ram is not able to understand the value of your recommendations. You believe these recommendations have the potential of improving the bottom-line of his vertical that had been underachieved continuously for the last three quarters. You have called for a meeting with Ram today. You are going to meet him in his cabin.