The MGI Team of Seven Members, Essay Example

The MGI team of seven members was working on a marketing project for an educational game. They had multiple issues of internal conflicts, ineffective timing, scheduling and task distribution, and problems with determining the target market for a product. So, based on the thorough assessment of the MGI team’s goals and overall performance we could clearly state that they were experiencing the lack of control and organization. The MGI team definitely needed a clear leader who would determine their struggles and direct their efforts towards problem solving and project accomplishment. However, appointing a leader would not be the only possible solution for the problem, thus they could have implemented 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 first solution would be appointing a leader for the project to ensure directing, controlling, and organizing functions, thus coordinating the flow of ideas and information within the MGI team. Regardless 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. I 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. I would suggest 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.

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)

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 (like a week) 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.

References

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

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