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Prepare to lead
Background
At the 3rd year after I joined in BP group as a global management trainee, I was assigned to be project manager in BP-PetroChina, a joint venture which operates 500 retail sites in south of China. The purpose of the project is to create a site cluster solution by clustering 500 sites in different group base on their market environment, and differentiate operation tactics for different site clusters, ultimately to improve operation efficiency and maximize profit.
Challenge
This project has been suspended for one year before I came onboard. After spending several day to listen feedbacks cross different departments, I figured out the main problem was that some department managers from PetroChina resisted this project because they were not comfortable to face potential big change of the current operation system. Although these managers also agree to improve operation efficiency, they prefer to cluster the sites just base on their experience and operation convenience, rather than on data analysis which proposed by last project manager.
Should I compromise to the managers because they are more familiar to the company, or conduct the project base on the data analysis which are more logical but unpopular? This decision become the very challenging one in the joint venture business environment.
Background
At the 3rd year after I joined in BP group as a global management trainee, I was assigned to be project manager in BP-PetroChina, a joint venture which operates 500 retail sites in south of China. The purpose of the project is to create a site cluster solution by clustering 500 sites in different group base on their market environment, and differentiate operation tactics for different site clusters, ultimately to improve operation efficiency and maximize profit.
Challenge
This project has been suspended for one year before I came onboard. After spending several day to listen feedbacks cross different departments, I figured out the main problem was that some department managers from PetroChina resisted this project because they were not comfortable to face potential big change of the current operation system. Although these managers also agree to improve operation efficiency, they prefer to cluster the sites just base on their experience and operation convenience, rather than on data analysis which proposed by last project manager.
Should I compromise to the managers because they are more familiar to the company, or conduct the project base on the data analysis which are more logical but unpopular? This decision become the very challenging one in the joint venture business environment.