I'm the General Manager of a medical device company based in Spain, which has a "complicated" product. That means it has a lot to deal with in terms of local laws and market culture.
I'm in charge of the LATAM project in our company, with the intent to adapt said product to each country in Latin America, i.e., launch our European product to the LATAM market, connecting with every sector in the company regarding local laws and market culture, mostly being engineering and marketing.
Being the project manager, I need to interact with each Director for all Latin American countries we'll be working with (Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Dominican Republic). The objective with such interaction is to collect enough data (about laws and market culture) to develop a strategy for our Product Launch Program.
My problem is: the Director of our Chile's operation does not want to interact with me in any way about this. I traveled to all countries but Chile, collected data, had meetings with lawyers, regulatory consultants, marketing people, potential customers, etc..
The reason being he never had time to attend our traveling schedule. Even though I tried scheduling 5 flights with a 5 work days schedule.
Then I tried to do it through online meetings, but he told me "I do not want this product in my market. F*** off" (literally those words).
He is a former doctor and disapproves this specific product because it's not aligned with his protocols and scientific knowledge. So he does not want doctors from Chile using it.
My objective is to report this to the CEO in Spain, which also happens to be the brother of Chile's director.
How may I approach him about this situation?
I have a major concern of doing this the incorrect way because since they're brothers, I do not want any trouble to my side. I love the company and I fulfill an important role besides this project, which I do not want to lose.
I assume (with strong background on such assumption), that the CEO does not want to kick his brother out of the company. So he'll stay at the company.
Do you have any advice?
Important facts:
- I do have a recording of such meeting where Chile's director said that.
- Not having Chile in this project means at least a 18% decrease in total sales in Latin American countries.
- Investors are considering Chile as part of the business.
- The company currently operates in all LATAM countries mentioned with other products.
- Above the CEO, there are no one but investors.
- I do have a close relationship with our investors, so talking to them first could be an option as well, skipping the CEO.
EDIT: I just had a meeting with the CEO about this problem, whose was very supportive, then he immediately put his brother on the phone call and told him to accept a reasonable schedule for my work. He was very harsh on the phone with his brother saying "the business should be above personal beliefs" (maybe too harsh?). The Chilean Director had a few words here and there towards his brother, not me (which is good), and then asked me to send 2 options of schedule.
Now, whether this is going to be hard for me or not only time will tell.
Thank you everyone here for the answers, which helped me a lot to build a solid, professional argument towards this problem.