MBA 2017 | Written Case Analysis Aston-Blair, Inc. | Organizational Behavior | | 17010046 | 10/11/2015 |

|

Synopsis and Summary: The case discusses the role of Henry Tam, a Harvard Business School student who joined a startup company, Music Games International. Dynamic and extremely diverse but very conflicted, the company lacked real world experience and Henry took on the assignment to formulate a strategy and restore harmony amongst the team members.
Statement of the Problem: The team faces the issue of cultural and functional diversity hampering their productivity. The responsibilities of the members are not clear and no clear leadership is defined.
Causes of the Problems:
*Multiculturalism and Functional Diversity: At first sight, the diversity of culture and function in the team seems like a wise choice since more ideas mean better productivity and creativity, before we see the first meeting. The whole team seems like to be functioning like a family with extremely loyal best friends who are capable of handling conflict and are cooperative towards the newcomers – Dana and Henry. However, the team is facing the issue of improper management of multiculturalism and diversity and there is low performance. Sasha does not think Dana has the practical experience and Roman and Igor do not understand what Dana wants from the project. The brainstorming sessions, according to Dana and Henry seem to drag on too long. It has an impact on the team’s processes and it affects the participation of the team members– for example, Sasha is highly stubborn and opinionated and highly aggressive and passionate which is good in terms of keeping the team together however, the way he attacks Dana during discussion sessions is leading to an atmosphere of conflict. There is an unequal level of participation and Sasha and Dana tend to dominate the team discussions while the newcomer, Dav is quieter and only speaks up when asked. It leads to a lower effectiveness of the team. There is also a seemingly high degree of influence of the founding members over the decisions of the team. For example, Sasha recruited Dav without consulting others which led to them feeling resentment. As per the Expectancy Theory, Henry’s desire is that his performance will lead to a permanent placement in the company but nothing has been confirmed so far. There is no agreement on how the group climate ought to be, with the creative members preferring a more relaxed and informal environment while Dana and Henry want the opposite. Sasha and Dana consistently disagree with each other and this leads to a hostile climate.
*No clearly defined leader or team members’ roles: The team has no proper designated leader who would help set the future direction and help make up an appropriate business plan. A leader is essential as Dana stated because he will help motivate the team. No roles have been defined for each of the individual team members. They are all committed towards the company and ready to work hard which is one of their main strengths but they lack the experience and the necessary. There is a high degree of conflict between the team members and lack of trust between Dana and Sasha and as a result of which - an improper transition to the storming stage of group development.
*Low level of team performance: There are still personality clashes between Sasha and Igor as well as Sasha and Dana. There are low performance norms which lead to low productivity of the team (as seen in Exhibit 1). However since the team members spend hours on brainstorming sessions and nothing fruitful comes of it and they tend to cover similar ground more than once according to Dana, the overall productivity is quite low and a lack of coherent strategy as Henry said is a disadvantage. Ineffective meeting are another problem; there is a high degree of diversity in functions.
Possible Solutions:
*Need a strong leadership: There needs to be a leader who can help the team move forward from the storming stage of group development. Leadership might however lead to power struggles between members since it is a flattened hierarchy.
*Dealing with multiculturalism: According to Nancy Adler of McGill University, multicultural teams can be highly productive compared to the homogenous teams – one of the biggest strengths of the team which they could utilize properly had they handled the first meeting appropriately. This is because they have a high potential for creativity since every member brings a different perspective and this can be as asset if they utilize their strengths in the right way. Sasha’s passion drives the team and Dana’s disciplinary nature can help make sure the team meets the goals assigned by Henry. Gatekeeping is needed so that members like Dav are given a chance to speak during discussions, reservations between team members can be discussed openly and there is an atmosphere of compromise and harmony established. A certain level of conflict is essential, however if not dealt with the right way leads to high inefficiencies.
*Assignment of roles and responsibilities: The roles of the team members need to be assigned to enable them to understand what tasks they have to complete in order to help achieve a timeline and then the eventual goal of the company. It will however mean that there is a possibility that the creative process might be dampened a bit since creativity needs as much time spent in informal discussions as possible.
*Better and more efficient meetings: It needs to be done in a more structured manner to get better productivity out of the meetings. As Alex put forth, ideas come in from everywhere and the end result is that the team ends up wasting a lot of time. It, however, might be an extra hassle to schedule, plan and conduct meetings in a formal manner.
Solution and Implementation: What the team needs the most at this stage is Strong Leadership of Henry to help bring them out of the rut and progress efficiently and effectively towards their final goal and Henry is the right leader for them. What Henry should have done before hand was to arrange for a meeting with the three founders and express his reservations regarding what his expectation from the work was – to write a business plan and in future get a job. In that manner, since the IMG folks needed him desperately, they would have agreed to give him one without hesitance. He should have also discussed the product and its status such as the patent etc to get a clear idea. Seeing Exhibit 4, we can see that he meets all the 9 criteria needed for an effective leader. He is intelligent and enjoys a challenge and has a motivation towards problem solving as per McClelland’s Need for Achievement since he enjoys the competitiveness that the diversity of the team offers. He is specialized in formulation of business strategy as said by Dav too. Henry also had to handle the conflict between Sasha and Roman and by doing so, he sacrificed his limited time for sake of keeping the team together so he is cooperative too. According to the reading, Personality, Perception and Attribution (HBR) he has the drive and motivation and comes prepared for every team meeting and has a high degree of internal locus of control since he takes responsibility for his work, demonstrates high motivation and knows that his effort will lead to performance and eventually the reward of landing a job with the company as per the Expectancy Theory of Motivation. He also has high self-esteem which is why he didn’t accept the previous job offer that didn’t offer a challenge. He also listens to criticism without taking it personally. He creatively dealt with Sasha using the good cop/bad cop strategy. He is soft spoken which reflects the fact that he has a high degree of self-management whereby he is able to control negative emotions. He is also high on self-efficacy since he strongly believes he will find a way to help the company prosper using his skills. After becoming leader, as per the reading, Managing Oneself (HBR), he should ask himself; “Given my way of performing and my values how can I make the greatest contribution to the team?” He therefore needs to focus on following key issues:
*Multiculturalism and functional diversity: Henry needs to understand the complexity of the multicultural aspect of the team and focus on team development and communication (Exhibit 5). He needs to be aware of the stages of team development so that he knows why exactly the team is stuck on the second stage and how he can move it forward. He also needs to be careful and not indulge in any sort of bias based on ethnic origins, as did Dav when he had thought stubbornness is a Russian trait. He needs to use a collaborative tactic when dealing with conflict to help improve relationships since the diversity is very high and he needs to keep everyone happy (Exhibit 8). He should understand what motivates each individual team member. Applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Exhibit 3), it can be said that Danna needs a sense of self-esteem since she feels rejected by the constant conflicts with Sasha since she seeks mastery in making sure the team achieves its eventual goals. Sasha might need a little bit of ego boosting and recognition. He should assign roles and should function as a Coordinator, Implementer and a Monitor Evaluator as per Belbin’s Team Role Theory (Exhibit 6) since his role involves making impartial judgments and to delegate responsibilities to team members. Roman should be the Plant since he is creative and comes up with ideas for the product. Henry and Dana can both be Resource Investigators and Implementers to help avoid the team losing focus on the outside world as they had before and provide a workable strategy for the team. Complete Finisher can be Dana since she scrutinized data and makes sure it is usable. Team workers who help the team to work together as a family should be Igor, who according to Roman keeps everything together and also Alex since he sees himself as a mediator. Shaper should be Sasha since he has the drive to move the team forward and passion for it. The Specialists should be Danna and Henry in field of business and Igor, Roman in music and Dav in product design.
*Make meetings effective: For the meetings, he needs to define roles for certain group members (Exhibit 7); Process Leader needs to ensure that everyone gets a chance to speak and that can be Alex who will already be the mediator so that people like Dav speak up too. A Timekeeper needs to keep a check of how much time is assigned to each item– that can be Danna since she is very concerned about the sessions being too long. Henry himself needs to be the Facilitator to ensure the meeting stays on track on what has to be discussed, allowing one topic at a time. This is needed since in the first meeting, Sasha jumped from one idea to the other. Henry should have an agenda published beforehand so everyone knows topics in the discussion. Some norms should be established; he should ensure that all the issues are discussed with him directly. During the sessions, no one should be allowed to shoot down ideas and it will also discourage Sasha from doing so too. Decisions should be made by consensus to avoid members like Sasha exerting their greater influence when he hired Dav without consent.
*General Ideas from the Case: The case helps establish the fact that strength of a team, sometimes, a seeming weakness (multi-diversity here), given the right strategy with strong, leadership, can help the team achieve success better than any conventional team that might be easier to handle could. One aspect that needs to be tested further is how the performance of each individual (especially creative) in such an interdependent and diverse team can be measured.
Exhibit 1 (It discusses the performance norms’ and the cohesiveness’ impact on goal attainment of a company)

Exhibit 2 (It shows how a multicultural team can outperform a culturally homogenous team)

Exhibit 3 (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs)

Exhibit 4 (It shows the personality traits that make up a leader – Leadership Theory)

Exhibit 5 (The exhibit illustrates the steps to develop a collaborative environemnt for a multicultural team)

Exhibit 6 (The exhibit discusses the 9 roles that a team can allow for its members to take up – it is not necessary for one member to have all the roles

Exhibit 7 (The exhibit displays the roles assigned to individuals taking part in a meeting to make it more effective – roles are rotated).

Exhibit 8 (The exhibit discusses the five mentions of handling conflict in an organization and the pros and cons of each)

--------------------------------------------
[ 1 ]. Gabarro, John, J. and Hharlan Anne, Note on Process Observations, Harvard Business Review (9-477-029), 1986, p. 1-7.
[ 2 ]. Henry Mintzberg, Harvard Business Review On Point, The Manager’s Job Folklore and Fact, 1990, p. 1.
[ 3 ]. Deepa, The Unspoken Difference Between Teams, Groups and Cross-Cultural Teams, 2012, http://www.rshore.com/blog/2012/01/the-unspoken-difference-between-teams-groups-cross-cultural-teams/, Viewed on October 11, 2012.
[ 4 ]. Gabarro, John, J. and Hharlan Anne, Note on Process Observations, Harvard Business Review (9-477-029), 1986, p. 1-7.
[ 6 ]. Belbin et. al., Belbin Team Roles, Belbin, 2014, http://www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=8, 2014, viewed on October 11, 2015.
[ 7 ]. Planning an effective meeting, University of Minnesota, 2011, http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/toolkit/workgroup/storming/meeting/index.html, Viewed on October 11, 2015.
[ 8 ]. McNamara, S. S., How to Conduct a Brainstorming Session By Steven McNamara, 2002, http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~renglish/473/notes/chapt13/how_to_conduct_a_brainstorming_s.htm, Viewed on October 11, 2015.
[ 9 ]. Bodwell, D. J., Team Norms, http://highperformanceteams.org/hpt_norm.htm, 1996-2002, Viewed on October 11, 2015.
[ 10 ]. Greenlee, S., Kirkwood Management Nuts, 2010, http://shaungreenlee.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html, Viewed October 11, 2015.
[ 11 ]. Deepa, The Unspoken Difference Between Teams, Groups and Cross-Cultural Teams, Cross Cultural Competency, (2012), http://www.rshore.com/blog/2012/01/the-unspoken-difference-between-teams-groups-cross-cultural-teams/, viewed on October 11, 2015.
[ 12 ]. Herrington, A., article 6: Maslow's Hierarchy, Societal Change and the Knowledge Worker Revolution, 1999-2008, http://www.pateo.com/art6pf.html, viewed on October 11, 2015.
[ 13 ]. My MBA Journey, 2011, http://enjoymba.blogspot.com/2011/02/leadership-nine-traits-of-effective.html, viewed on October 11, 2015.
[ 14 ]. Ochieng, E. E., and Price, Andrew, D., Framework for Managing Multicultural Project Teams, 2009, www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/09699980911002557, Viewed on October 11, 2015.
[ 15 ]. Jose, M., Melvin’s Blog, http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/mjose/?num=10&start=10, 2012, Viewed on October 11, 2015
[ 16 ]. Effective Meeting Skills, MCA Sheffield Microsystem Coaching Academy, http://www.sheffieldmca.org.uk/news/17, Viewed on October 11, 2015.
[ 17 ]. Tung, T.N., Conflicts and Multicultural Team – Developing Competencies for Managers, Lahti University of Applied Sciences, 2013, https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/57124/NguyenThanh_Tung.pdf?sequence=1, viewed on October 11, 2015.