Like any organization or business firm, there can be many problems within the company and it could start with the management team. In the HGC case, there might be minor obstacles arising along the way but there is one major problem in this company fearing Sally Peters which is poor project portfolio management.
In this case, there is an extreme level of organizational politics. As described in the text, the same 10 managers who are repeatedly assigned new projects “seem to march to their own drummer”. In my opinion, this is stating that each one of these managers are only prioritizing and selecting their projects based on personal interests and fail to adhere to the company’s mission. The projects are being chosen for implementation by each manager to establish his/her existence and power in the company rather than improving HGC’s future success. As mentioned by Larson and Gray, a manager with an astonishing project and being a risk taker rather than an ordinary steady manager can develop power and recognition within a company. HGC managers might be misinterpreting that common organizational view, resulting with each one following a power plan and neglecting new projects prioritization, selection, and strategy implementations. A proof of my statement is the management idea of launching an extraordinary “international business games for college students” (which is not relevant to HGC’s mission of specializing in young children’s educational games). This example indicates that the management team members are only seeking firm promotional authority.
This main problem is leading to other issues due to external environmental threats neglect such as competing organizations attempting to “steal” HGC employees to gain facts about the company’s vast successful growth. Another arising problem is resource conflict. Poor project management lead to resource sharing and possible multitasking of different non-prioritized projects,