Understanding Effective Communication Skills

Case Study 1

Raymond Williams is the Managing Director of Raymond & Co. Pvt Ltd, a prominent law firm with their Headquarters in Washington DC, USA. They are also based in Singapore, Hong Kong, Delhi and London.

Mr. Williams, as the Managing Director oversees all legal operations in Washington and only handles high profile legal cases. As one of the co-founders, he has been a senior partner and managing director for 18 years. Mr. Williams is also on the BOD and being one of the key decision makers in the company, also holds 38% of its shares. 

In his term as the Managing Director, Mr. Williams has built Raymond & Co. from a 3-member team to a 250-member organization around the globe. With a Law degree from Harvard and Management Degree from Princeton, Mr. Williams was well aware of the opportunities in Law, not just as a profession but also a business. With the Internet revolutionizing the world and new cyber laws being implemented, Mr. Williams foresaw the demand for legal support in the cybersecurity sector. Their biggest achievement was last year, when Google chose them as their Global Legal Partner. 

However, even after 4 months of accepting the proposal, Google and Raymond & Co. are yet to sign a deal. In this context, Mr. Williams had written to Barry cage, Vice president at Google. Every time he wrote to Mr. Cage, requesting updates on the ongoing deal, the response was that - Google would need more time to review the MOU and will get back to them shortly. Mr. Cage is in charge of all partnerships and reports directly to Gavin Mitchell, CEO of Google. 

A week ago, Mr. Williams wrote a memo to Mr. Mitchell:

It has been 4 months since Google agreed to partner with Raymond & Co. We have invested a good amount of time at Google in the last 4 months, across 11 projects and it is quite frustrating to see that our partnership MOU hasn’t been signed yet. Based on the trust we have in each other, Raymond & Co. decided to start projects before the MOU was signed but the current scenario is compelling me to rethink about our partnership and in fact file a lawsuit against Google and believe me Gavin you wouldn’t want to be fighting a case against a law firm. 

Mr. Gavin immediately summoned Mr. Cage and questioned him about the delay in signing the partnership MOU with Raymond & Co. 

“Sue us?” Mr. Cage said, “Gavin he needs to understand that these MOUs take months before they can be signed. I am extremely disappointed and frustrated to see this memo. He is a legal person; he knows how messy such partnerships can be. A small mistake and we could both lose millions.”

“But Barry, what you don’t understand is that Raymond is an old friend of mine and has been a legal advisor to Google for a long time” Mr. Mitchell said. “He is frustrated and worried that we may not agree to this partnership and their effort would go to waste. Considering his relationship with us, I am sure we can overlook some aspects and speed the process.”

Mr. Cage thought for a moment. “No,” he responded, “As the VP, I say no matter who, we look through this carefully. I think it’s important that we keep our social relationships outside Business. If you still want to go ahead with this, please have me moved to a different project.”

As a student of Business English who has been exposed to effective communication skills, analyse and discuss the following questions: 

  1. Do you detect any barriers of effective communication in this case?

  2. Was there any scope for better communication? What other means could have Mr. Williams used to speed up the process? What is your opinion on Mr. Cage’s reaction?

  3. Do you think there was a communication gap between the two organizations? What do you think created these gaps? How could they be resolved?

  4. What is your recommendation to Google in this case? How would your recommendation improve communication between the organizations?






















 

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