I work in the operations team of a leading consulting organization. The products we offer to our clients need to keep changing with the changing market trends and demands. While these products are created in concept by the consultants from my organization post inputs from the client, the delivery of these products is my responsibility. However, there is no representation from the delivery team when the product concept is created. Thus, there is a disconnect in the product promised to the client and the feasibility of delivering it in the said time, with the technical resources available. I have highlighted this issue to my manager and even our operations head. I believe, the need of the hour is for both the consultants and the delivery team to create the products together. However, despite raising this concern repeatedly to seniors as well as to consultants, the situation has not improved. I feel trapped, as I believe we, as a team, can add valuable inputs and can help create more products with the data repository that we have, but the same is not taken into consideration. Please advise on how to improve this situation.

This is a typical problem in many organizations. The product development team has to work closely with the sales/delivery teams, applications engineers, clients and the other experts in the company. While intellectually, most people will have no problems with this, the silos, the power centers, internal politics and at times, the urgency to bring the products to markets, lead to such problems.

I am glad that you have raised this issue with the seniors, I am sure they have their own compulsions in not acting on your suggestions. I will encourage you to keep talking about this in the organization at right levels, so that your views are not ignored/lost. While you do that, it will also be useful if you gather right data to prove your point of view. Once you are not only logical and reasonable, but are also backed by data, I am sure management will see the reasoning and act upon your suggestion.

Vivek is a Senior HR professional with over 35 years of experience, ranging several leadership positions, in India and abroad. He leads his consulting practice since 2003 and presently works as a Strategic HR Advisor to Reliance Industries, and is also an independent Director on the Board of Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd. Prior to this, he was based in Singapore for several years where he was Director HR - Operations at Hewlett Packard for the Asia Pacific Region.
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