Henry Tam and MGI Team, Case Study Example

Abstract

This is a case analysis of Henry Tam and MGI Team in which Group 3 will have discourse on the individuals in this case study not having a defined leader during their time as participants in the Harvard Business School Business Plan competition.  While this is the main focus we are looking at individuals that did not work in a functional team dynamic.

Introduction

Henry Tam and the MGI founders are members of an elaborately designed team that can’t seem to work together to put together a business plan for the Harvard Business School (HBS) Business plan contest. They face a bevy of problems and time is waning down.  Everyone seems to be feeling the crunch of the dot com crash in the business world. Desperate for some type of experience/relief from the success and failure of what could be wonderful project MGI members needed a business plan as much as the business planner needed a business.  In order to solve their issues the team has got to come up with solutions to several problems that they seem to be facing as a pseudo-team.  However, functioning as a team is an increasingly hard task because they do not have a team leader to help bring focus to the group and keep meetings from getting out of hand.  Once they get a leader assigned, and the ability nailed down they will be able to better settle on how to create a business plan that everyone can agree on.  Because they are all so different this presents both strengths and weaknesses. Diversity on a team is good. Everyone brings something different to the table that can help. This can also be perceived as a weakness because everyone on the team thinks so differently. They are not able to pin down one complete thought without the other person either not commenting or commenting too much.

The team is comprised of a very diverse group of people—Henry Tam is a student at HBS. He’s really excited about joining a team that has a solid product to market; Music Games International—a group comprised of Sasha, Igor, and Roman. Sasha is the businessman/go-to-for-anything-else guy with a very aggressive personality, which could be partially due to him having to always do all of the work himself; Igor is one of the creative minds in the group who understands he needs to bring in someone to pull all of his ideas together. He has an established stake in the music world and can negotiate cheaper fees when it comes to obtaining the items they need to make the game work. Lastly there is Roman—the other composer, but part of what may be his problem is his lack of attendance at every meeting and his inability to speak good English. His role is sometimes that of the peacemaker between Igor and Sasha because they do not always agree. His vision is often where to take the things and then leaving it up to someone else to figure out how to get it there; Dana—another business student at HBS. She’s got a strong financial background and knows how to keep her focus set on where it should be. She could be classified as either goal oriented or overly focused on getting to the end product; Alex plays the role of the industry consultant. He knows as much about the music field as Igor, but on the industry side. He also has the same cultural background as the three founders of MGI so he can relate to several issues that they are having with their American teammates; Dav is an MIT student brought in originally to help them enter the MIT contest, however he contributes information on software design.

Group 3 has identified several issues that have led this team to severe dysfunction. However, before they decide to disband and go their separate ways, we have come up with several recommendations to assist them in making their team work and eventually getting their project out the door and on to a market of waiting customers.

Identifying Some Main Problems

The seven members of MGI have multiple issues of internal conflicts: ineffective timing, lack of a clear vision, scheduling and task distribution, and problems with determining the target market to sell their product.  Based on a thorough assessment of MGI team goals and overall performance they clearly demonstrate that they were experiencing a lack of control and organization. This is why their main underlying is issue that they need a defined leader who would determine their struggles and direct their efforts towards problem solving and project accomplishments. However, appointing a leader would not be the only possible solution for the problem, thus they could have implemented a team problem solving technique. Moreover, another sufficient move would be establishing performance-based reward system in order to motivate the members of MGI team and increase work performance without appointing a leader.

The following is an analysis of solutions to not having a team leader. As a group we determined that this was the main problem causing the dysfunction of the MGI Team.

Solution 1: Elect a Leader

The first solution would be appointing a leader for the project to perform directing, controlling, and organizing functions, thus coordinating the flow of ideas and information within the MGI team. Regardless of the situation MGI team did not define a leader or appoint one, but it does not mean that there wasn’t one capable of getting this position. We would suggest choosing between Henry and Alex for both of them have certain characteristics suitable for effective leadership. Henry demonstrated good conflict solving abilities when contributing to resolve the conflict between Sasha and Dana. He could also reduce some of the diversity issues by setting norms, such as deadlines for members, implementing voting system in the decision making process and using egalitarianism value. On the other hand Alex could be a good match, for he had already acted as a go-between being about Henry and Dana’s age and having creative skills similar to Igor and Roman. The team needs to come together in implementing democratic or participative leadership when the leader is supposed to listen and study the team’s ideas but still making the final decision. Thus each and every team player would have a chance to contribute to the final decision, which would increase their satisfaction and the feeling that their input was considered.

Solution 2: Divide Main Group Into Subgroups

Another good thing to do would be dividing the team into subgroups of self-directed work teams, when every team would be responsible for their part of the project, thus putting all the parts together in the end. I would put Igor, Alex, and Roman in a creative team responsible for the design part of the project. Sasha, Henry, And Dana could probably handle the business operations, analytics, and marketing parts. Dav would be in charge or product deployment and production. “A report in Business Week claims that teams can increase productivity by 30 percent or more and can also substantially improve quality” (Johnson and Chvala, 1995).

Solution 3: Implement a Reward System

Implementing performance-based reward system would also be beneficial for overall project success and MGI team performance. Rewards do not only include bonus plans or stock options, but also promotions, reassignment, recognition etc. as well as non-monetary bonuses. I would suggest applying the public recognition reward system, when after a certain time period there would be a meeting when all the employees would come to a decision announcing the best team member of the week. This would definitely motivate the person who was announced as well as others who would like to achieve this status. Moreover, I would also try giving the employees who did a great job in fulfilling their task more complicated and responsible parts of the project so they could feel their value as team members and realize their professionalism.

Recommendations

As the consulting group we will take portions from all three solutions to help form a more functional, effectively communicating, and goal-oriented team. When done correctly, the MGI Team can present a great product.  First the team must elect a leader. Out of the seven of them, we recommend using Alex as the team leader. He has the business savvy that they need as well as some of the creative skills that they can utilize to come up with some great ideas. Alex is also culturally apart of the group and can bring the sensitivity to cultural communication differences that the team needs. “Research has revealed that individuals are usually more comfortable and at ease communicating with those who share similar experiences, lifestyles, and cultural values” (Nemiro, p. 102). The creators of the product will greatly appreciate this and the business students will greatly respect him for his skill in knowing his industry. He also seems like he will function well as keeping the peace in the team.

Once the team has a set leader, then they will be able to move forward with addressing the other issues that hinder them from moving forward as a team. The team leader will be able to effectively lead them into focusing on their other issues. With Alex as the leader members of the MGI team will be able to come up with a clearly defined vision for the team. A vision is essential to any company, but especially to a company preparing to market a product. The vision can and should provide insight as to what direction they should take. In the case study it mentions that once everyone wrote out their vision for the company it was determined that they all had different visions and ideas for what it was supposed to do. Each of the MGI team has the ability to lead the team to success. They must however seek out ways to create a compelling vision that takes MIG to a new place and translates vision into reality. It’s important for the leader of the team to begin “developing a team’s vision, mission, and strategy with input from team members and stakeholders…clarity and shared understanding of vision, mission, and strategy direct the action so team members in ambiguous situations” (Duarte & Snyder, pg.  77). With a clear vision underway the team can then press on to the next steps. We recommend making their vision one that embodies everyone’s ideas and opinions without compromising the group in anyway. For starters, identifying what three objectives the team shares will help them adequately form a clear goal. From there they can build a mission, and a strategy to achieve this goal.

The MGI Team now armed with leader and vision will be able to build upon their foundation and then focus on other issues they have. Having ineffective timing and not being able to divide tasks up into subgroups will then all fall into line because they have a leader that can keep them on track, divide the team members into sub-groups if necessary. He can efficiently thrust through the problems that arise and make decisions when the team needs them to be made. When conflict arises, as a team leader, Alex will be empowered to delegate tasks to someone else with the proper skill set, such as Henry, in conflict resolution. “There are intervals in which the leadership shifts, given the specifics of the task, to a team member who has certain expertise or access to a unique body of knowledge or who is closet to the action. Leadership emerges and is redistributed as expertise becomes relevant and as problems arise and shift” (Duarte and Snyder, pg. 218). In cases like these, it is important to remember that a team is dynamic and no one person is ever the sole owner of the team—they simply are leading it to cut down on the chaos.

Conclusion

Henry Tam became a member of the MGI team for his HBS Business plan contest, along with other students – Dana and Dave. The team also consisted of Igor, Roman, and Sasha, who were its founders, and Alex, who already had a past experience of working with them. Their primary task was creating a marketing campaign for educational gaming software, where through gameplay the user could actually learn while enjoying the music. However, the team was demonstrating relatively poor team decision making performance, acting in unsystematic and disorganized manner. They experienced multiple issues that had to be solved: ineffective task division and group forming, inability to develop a good working culture, the absence of clear leader, and lack of determined target market. The team had to resolve all these issues for successful project accomplishment. They could have elected a team leader, divide the team into subgroups of self-directed work teams, or implement a performance based reward system. Thus, they would apparently accomplish their goal and establish a strong decision making team. In a contemporary world of fierce competition and business team leadership has become an inevitable part of decision making process, thus demonstrating high efficiency and productivity. “Effective managers would demonstrate a participative approach to leadership, preferring the supervision over closer control of individuals, and fostering cooperation and joint decision-making.”(Marturano & Gosling, 2007) Therefore, democratic leadership applied within team decision making appears to be the most efficient strategy to implement in the case of MGI team. The best would be dividing them into self-sufficient work groups so they can come up each with a decision. They would still need a leader to ensure project organization and team building, but the leadership style must be collaborative, democratic, and participative. Consequently, each and every member of the MGI team would fully reveal and utilize his/her skills and abilities and feel their key role in the project development, thus substantially contributing towards its successful realization.

References

Duarte, D. L., & Snyder, N. T. (2006). Mastering virtual teams: Strategies, tools, and techniques that succeed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Johnson, W. C., & Chvala, R. J. (1995). Total Quality in Marketing. CRC Press.

Marturano, A., & Gosling J. (2007). Leadership: The key concepts. Routledge.

Nemiro, J. E. (2004). Creativity in virtual teams: Key components for success. San Francisco.

Verzuh, E. (2003). The portable MBA in project management. John Wiley and Sons.

Whilson, T. B. (2002). Innovative Reward Systems for the Changing Workplace.  McGraw-Hill Professional.