Five Heads Are Better Than One Essay Example
Five Heads Are Better Than One Essay Example

Five Heads Are Better Than One Essay Example

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  • Pages: 4 (940 words)
  • Published: December 9, 2016
  • Type: Article
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The management at Advert has decided on a team of their best producers to take charge of a special project. It doesn’t take a long time to decide as they were all very good in what they do. The creative team was like an ace in the hole, there are similarities in their characters, age, and duration of their time in Advert. They seem to get very well together and expressed lots of friendliness among themselves. To allow ideas to flow, the management has also given them the freedom to undertake the entire project by themselves.

Conner, who has been managing and leading teams, took the initiative in taking the hot seat of the team and envisions his idea on the commercial. He shared his idea concept of a loser college student who is trying to get

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a date, but with the client’s 60 inch plasma television, his ordeal has somehow diminished and attracted a group of attractive females into his room watching it together. That was how the commercial for Conner to materialize. For delivering an ideal like that, Conner expressed confidence that his idea is the coolest thing to happen.

As he scans the entire team to seek approval, Alexis was the first member to express some disagreement as whether the client will like the idea. But finally agreed to Conner’s idea thinking that been different should be able to capture both the audience and client’s attention. Soon after the rest of the team agreed, it was only Derek who has worked on several occasions with the client has his own ideas is very familiar with the client paused

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for awhile and later agreed.

With the entire team behind Conner’s idea, the team become more collaborated and were confident that they will be successful as they were in good spirits and in high morale. In a short span of time, the team completed the commercial way ahead of the deadline which impressed the managers. On the day of presentation, Adverts’ top managers, the client’s managers and Conner’s team all seat in with Conner’s leading the way of the presentation. It didn’t take long which the team realised the commercial was not having the effect they wanted on their clients.

Soon as the commercial ended, the clients kindly rejected their idea as it didn’t portray the image they were. Adverts’ managers were displeased with the client’s decisions and reprimanded Conner’s team and later then disbanded it. One month later, it was Derrek who kept silent about his ideas and was familiar with the client watched the concept of his idea being flashed on the screen produced by Adverts’ competitor. He was disappointed and vowed to speak up next time if he had an idea.

Question A:

What factors contributed to the poor performance of the Advert team? As a manager, what could you have done to help the team perform better?

Discussion A:

The underlying of the poor performance is contributed by a number of factors. There wasn’t much diversity in providing ideas, not much questions have been raised, lack of discussion among the team members, everyone jumped into band wagon deciding on one’s idea. Given a team of wide diversities, there might be fears among the members.

style="text-align: justify;">There isn’t any rule or policy as well as a clear leader within the team. Therefore, it is essential for management to assign the right person to pick up the position, monitor and provides all necessary supports which will ensure the team is heading towards the right direction throughout the process.

Question B:

Teams can be either homogeneous or heterogeneous. How would you characterize the Advert team, and how did this affect the team’s creativity and performance?

Discussion B:

The team was more towards homogeneous than heterogeneous. In spite of all these, it clearly shows the members were embracing organisational health, as they seem to be too sophisticated when management formed the team members with compatible in terms of age, abilities and personalities. Indeed, the result of the team would turn with a block passage of creativity. However, if there were a variety of ideas, they could have some chances of diversity in the project which they could actually undertake.

Question C:

What are some group decision-making techniques that could have helped reduce conformity pressures and groupthink among the Advert team?

Discussion C:

There is one technique which is the nominal group technique. A possible alternative to face to face is the brainstorming process for gaining consensus among the team members. The benefit of this technique is that the team share and discuss all issues before evaluation as each team member is able to participate equally.

This process actually prevents the domination of a discussion by a single person, encouraging more passive in team members’ participation, and results in a set of prioritized solution as

well as recommendations.

Question D:

What different forms of communication could have been employed to improve the sharing of ideas among the Advert team? How might this have affected its performance and satisfaction?

Discussion D:

Communication is not just base on verbal as in oral and written, but also including non-verbal through body gesture, facial expression and hand signals.

Team of Advert could make full use of all channels of communication. The objective of communication within a company is to provide staff with awareness of what exactly the organisation aim to achieve. This can be attained through the communication with organisation’s vision, objective, purpose and goals. Policies of an organisation should offer guidance to team members concerned in achieving outcomes.

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