Henry Tam and the Mgi Team Essay Example
Henry Tam and the Mgi Team Essay Example

Henry Tam and the Mgi Team Essay Example

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  • Pages: 6 (1501 words)
  • Published: November 13, 2017
  • Type: Case Study
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The MGI Team Case Study is a lesson in the difficulties faced by a team with inadequate leadership.

Indications of possible problems in the group’s functioning were evident even before the MGI team’s first meeting. At that time, the group consisted of the three founders of MGI and two Harvard Business School (HBS) second year students. The heterogeneous nature of the group was an area of possible conflict. Three or perhaps four different cultures were represented on the team. Two of the founders were from the Ukraine and remained very close to the culture.The third founder was from St.

Petersburg, Russia and was considered by the other two members to be more Americanized. Dana, the first student selected to join the team, was the only woman and was Romanian. Henry Tam, the only American, rounded out the initial

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team. Differences in age also represented areas of possible difficulty in group dynamics as the two students were significantly younger than the founders. Members also brought either musical or business oriented skill sets to the team.Although there appeared to be a common goal shared by the members of team – preparing a business plan for MGI – the group could come to no agreement about the direction the company should take and thus no agreement about the content of the business plan.

The decision facing the group was a non-programmed decision and thus more appropriate to be decided by a group rather than an individual. However, the group’s process in coming to a decision about the direction of the plan was unproductive. The MGI Team’s process consisted of endless discussions and arguments about the relative merits of

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various directions the company might take.The root cause of the lack of progress was the fact that no clear leader emerged from the group.

Igor, the most charismatic member of the founders and perhaps the most logical choice for leader, made it clear that he lacked business and organizational skills and effectively took himself out of the running for the leadership role. Sasha, the founder with business skills, did not have the confidence of the student members of the team, and there is some indication that the other founders were unsure of his ability to get the job done because he was overwhelmed with too many tasks.The students, who perhaps had the requisite business planning skills to lead the team, were unsure of their status within the group due to their younger age and newness to the team. Without a strong facilitator directing the group to evaluate the various alternatives, the meetings devolved into one long brainstorming session with no clear agenda. The team had several potential strengths. The very heterogeneous characteristics that brought conflict to the group also provided creativity in problem solving.

The three founders and the two HBS students were highly committed to the team and motivated for the team to succeed. However, the differences between the team members became a liability to the group without a leader to channel the conflict into productive, functional conflict rather than dysfunctional conflict. Compounding the team’s problems was the incomplete formation of the group. Igor and Sasha each added team members (Alex and Dav), causing new group dynamics and prolonging the forming and storming stages of the team’s development.The team was ineffective as evidenced by the

lack of even a first draft of a business plan only three weeks before the HBS business plan deadline. A high level of conflict emerged within the group over almost every aspect of the planning.

Sasha’s style of negotiating was highly dominant, and this caused frequent clashes with Dana. The ever-changing composition of the group contributed to the group’s inability to progress beyond the norming stage and caused issues of trust between the founders and students.Conflict emerged over the different expectations of the students’ roles on the team. Sasha apparently expected them to have a more limited role writing the business plan and providing the marketing legwork reaching out to HBS alumni, while Igor believed the students’ help was needed in providing direction to the team. The students were initially unclear about their roles in the team, but eventually emerged as the strategic direction setters.

The team naturally progressed into two different sub-groups.One consisted on the three founders of the company (the Russians) and the second comprised the two HBS students. The founder/Russian team wanted the company to pursue the entertainment market, and their focus was long-term direction of the company rather than the immediate need to produce materials for the HBS business plan contest. This sub-group’s norms were high commitment to the team, creativity, an informal and disorganized approach to the work and high conflict among group members, this latter characteristic likely a product of their Russian culture.The student team was extremely goal oriented and eventually focused on taking the company in an initial direction to market the product toward the educational market. Their objective was meeting the immediate requirements of the HBS business

plan contest.

The norms of this team were high cooperation between Henry and Dana, high levels of preparation for the meetings and a more structured approach to the problems at hand.Henry and Dana demonstrated their cohesiveness in the fashion that they strategized together and played good cop/bad cop to deal with Sasha’s aggressive obstinacy toward ideas brought forward by Dana. The Russian sub-group was committed to the product and each other, but showed some lack of cohesiveness in that Igor and Sasha did not always share the same opinion and Sasha and Roman had some personality conflicts. Nevertheless, this sub-group had fairly strong cohesiveness on the basis of their shared history with the company and long term friendships.Henry and Dana recognized the lack of leadership in the group almost immediately.

If Henry had assumed the critical leadership role earlier in the process, it is likely that many of the barriers to progress could have been avoided or overcome. Henry could also have suggested bringing a trained facilitator into the group to help with organizing the scattered brainstorming into productive decision making. The students had a faculty advisor for the project; yet there is no mention that the students consulted this valuable resource for advice or assistance.At this point, it is still better late than never for Henry to take the lead. Henry has established a base of power for himself through the information he has gathered and by his demonstrated level of commitment, hard work and listening skills. Henry should now grasp the reins and focus the group on the looming contest deadline.

It is also critical at this juncture for Henry to delegate work

he has taken on to others in the group such as Dav who are well suited to the tasks but underutilized.In the longer term, it is my belief that the efforts of the MGI Team are likely to be unsuccessful. Despite the hard work put in by the team, and by Henry in particular, the team has a critical weakness is its lack of the necessary marketing expertise to reach their ultimate target entertainment market. The team may be able to develop a business plan that garners a degree of support from outside funding, but without the vital knowledge to break into the highly competitive entertainment market, the effort will likely go unrewarded.The structure of the MGI team is a task group formed to deal with the specific task of writing a business plan for the company.

It is a formal rather than informal group as it was created to do work rather than for a social purpose. It lacks the organizational structure of a command group with specific reporting relationships. Stuck in the formative stages of group development, it has yet to mature into an effective team. As I reflect on the case study, I am reminded of a cross functional team at a hospital where I once worked.The group was composed of clinicians from various areas of the hospital along with members of business office staff.

The team was responsible for the design of a new information system that would integrate previously separate functions of patients’ clinical and financial records. The system captured and stored information in a totally new way and represented a great leap forward for the clinical aspect of the

work, while posing a number of possible problems for patient accounting.The clinicians and business office types formed two sub-groups which represented their separate interests. Like the MGI Team, this team had the potential to spin its wheels making no progress on some of the weightier design issues except for one thing: the group was led by an RN with an MBA and excellent training in leading effective teams. Able to speak the language of both groups, she maintained a clear vision for the group about its direction and guiding principles and helped the team use its differences to productive advantage.

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