Tuesday, May 12, 2009

GTSC

There are 7 Directors reporting to Sashikumar, along with 5 other bunch of fatty people who can be cut.
  • Communication manager
  • Manager Business Excellence
  • Program Manager
  • Executive Assistant
  • Business Manager

Effectively business manager role, business excellence manager role, program manager role and communication manager roles can be effectively done by single manager with bunch of vendors under them.

Since Sashikumar rose to the ranks from the grass roots, he always connect with people well. The interesting thing is we can see Sashikumar answering 'bangalore chat' queries some times occassionally. Have not heard it from other biggies of India, they are way above than the grass root people and not often connect with their organizations. This guy is another candidate who is much worth for VP, we can see the material in him always.

The bad part on him, not marketing the GTSC org across rest of the organizations in MS India. Other organization always take the internal transfer candidates whoever came from GTSC for a ride with their regular 'PSS & their guys $ucks' general branding, we can see always people struggling hard to prove their brand first when they move across the board.

Sashi, Marlena Werder & Kathleen Hogan- Don't expand the management resources, ramp up ground level support resources. Get them more help and ownership. Do not worry about the span of control, there are SMSG orgs and teams who are managing 30 people with single manager. Going more on the mid and top management may add lot of float as like other organizations.

One another secret of Sashi is, he empowers his followers and dont micro manage. We can see attrition is way low in his direct, HR, admin, trivial support teams.

Keep up the good work, do not go over board in recruiting. Stay flat as much as possible.

Great thing is, you've not become fat when your neighbours in India were growing without knowing the reality of ownership, projections, etc building their own empires.

GTSC- All of you are doing wonderful work at mid night and odd hours when other business are get to sleep. Continue the same without losing spirit. You were one among the early guys who proved India's talent to Microsoft and also about the Bangalore location advantage.

12 comments:

  1. Mini MSFT India - Comments are great about the GTSC and agree on some of those because I have worked with Sashi in the past. But dont belch out stupid suggestions on cuts and overheads. GTSC spans at dir level is very close to 200 and overheads are 6 or 7 including sashi for a team of over 1200 FTEs.It cant get leaner than that in a realtime business. Why dont you do the same analysis for MGSI ? and MSIT. Someday you can be a consultant for org re-structring and that would sound the death knell for the business given the bullshit nature of the suggestions that you are giving.

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  2. I'm aware about the span of control and # each directors manage under Sashi's team, but talking about the support roles like "Communication manager, Manager Business Excellence, Program Manager, Executive Assistant and Business Manager", it can be executed with a single FTE and handful of vendors under them. This can help save some cost. Though I agree the span under directors are around 200, I'm not for increasing anymore head counts in that layer.

    FYI I'm not asking to trim any of the current directors. I've seen not many (>95%) people at Director level not connecting oiften with their skip level directs. So what's the use if it's 200 or 400 under a director. Any way they're going to connect only to their directs alone.
    In case if the org gets expanded,place them under the existing Directors and Group Managers. Relax the span of control to 30, there's a possibility to do this with GM approval.

    Let them manage some handful of extra Group Managers and escalation managers for the sake of running the org efficiently forgetting their work life balance until everthing turns around.

    End of the day, help the ground level staff by having additional strength. How many of the support engineers can easily get vacation, reason told many a times are "no back up person and business need to run" refusing their requests. Add buffer and keep them happy.

    My take is, stretch the mid and top management, not the grass root which is already over loaded.
    But the way we're doing the restructuring here in India is, bottom up. We are trying to be paisa wise and rupee foolish. Hope we would not save much even when we're through with all this layoffs.

    Thanks for the piece of suggestion. I'm seriously contemplating this idea to float a new firm specializing on "organizational restructuring", this suggestion about alternate career is very timely since all of the teams around me is getting impacted. Who knows, tomorrow it may be me and my team.

    Will try to materialize this soon after, in case if i get departed from Microsoft.

    See my latest post about MS IT, recently after the mess up during RIF/layoffs it became one of the worst places in MS India to work with.

    GTSC- Do not ever think about coming to MS IDC or MS IT Hyderabad for the career growth sake, suicidal attempt. You all are in safe hands there under Sashi.

    Stay tuned for my post about MGSI.

    see you in the Ball(mer) boy's One India employee gyan webcast in an hour from now, watch the funny answers this funny man going to give.
    Hyderabad- Rotten tomatoe or shoe, what are you upto when you watch this man face face ? :-)
    I've sent my tough question which i want to ask B(al)ummer boy to indcomms, Did you ?

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  3. Way to go Mini dont let the monkey boy get away easy this time. We are all rooting for you

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  4. Do not miss this meeting, I'm starting now to the MPRs(Bldg 3).
    Hope it'll be his last meeting in India as CEO before he bids farewell to the company shortly around end of this year.
    Bye bye Big B Ball boy...

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  5. If you guys see one of the poll results of this blog, only 10% wanted Steve to stay.
    49% wanted BillG to come back after kicking out Ball boy and 11% not sure about who next, but confirmed about their interest in kicking off game.
    Interesting to see some 27% bluntly told they want to kick, have not spoke about the next candidate.
    totally 90% of the population( most probably MS) is against Steve Ball.
    Sample size: 177.

    Mini- other polls are also interesting, continue do that.

    Most of the poll results show the lack of confidence among the current leadership (Bummer boy, Kturner,tonysco,raviv,srini,etc)

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  6. Boring, crappy, same story...

    Did you see our Ball boy signing off saying he'll appreciate our good which is coming in the future for days, weeks, months ?

    That's it ! He didn't say "years"
    Either he's sure that he'll rip all of us apart in few months or he's planning to spend more time with his family.

    Ball boy- You're ripping the company slowly by managing this layoff just sleeping with a simple excel sheet ( only CEO who decides about lay off by crunching a simple excel)
    Please leave us so that we'll innovate

    Here is how i'm helping you.
    POLL to find out the appropriate alternate career for you which can be pursued after Microsoft.

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  7. http://mini-microsoft-gtsc-india.blogspot.com/

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  8. Mini Msft India: can i request you to please do a grammer and spell check in whatever you post ? the stuff posted could be relevant but makes for a VERY BAD read, let alone impresssion.

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  9. English is not my mother tongue, for past 35 years I'm trying to fine tune it

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  10. English is not a problem as long as get insights.. @Anon : It's Grammar and not grammer.. Improve yours before asking others to do so.

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  11. Well Guys Shashi is nolonger GM for iGTSC.

    anyone here works or worked for GPS in past?

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