Henry Tam Case Report
Strengths of the Team?
Henry and Dana were business majors. They were the initial group members who worked on the business plan for MGI. Henry shows he is adaptive by not being confrontational and adjusting his voice in the meetings to be taken seriously. The MGI team respects Henry for this. Dana had a stricter approach and would constantly clash with Sasha’s type A personality. Diversity is shown in the MGI group already because they are composed of two musicians and a businessman. Alex and Dav acted as two neutral parties but also brought diversity to the group because one was a computer software major from MIT and the other was a student at Berklee College of Music interested in marketing. Majority of decisions in this group are made based on social interactions.
The Root Cause of Problems?
A root cause of the team’s process problem is that they are not following the planning process. The first step in strategic planning is to establish a mission, vision, and goals for the organization. The group members can’t come to a consensus on matters as simple as their marketing population because they are indecisive between focusing on education or entertainment. A mission statement could correct this immediately. A vision and goals point toward the future of the organization.
Another problem is that roles have not been defined within the group. Henry and Dana see themselves as the answer to getting the company on track. They did their own analytics between the markets and found education to be the more attractive to pursue. However, Sasha just sees the “HBS” team as “interns” and that they should just do as they are told.
The ultimate cause of the problems in the group is that there is no leader. There is no one/group that can make the decisions that need to be made and stick with them. The MGI group should have either named a leader or made the decisions in every meeting before the meetings ended. Instead, they kept passing around ideas and never chose one.
Henry and Dana were business majors. They were the initial group members who worked on the business plan for MGI. Henry shows he is adaptive by not being confrontational and adjusting his voice in the meetings to be taken seriously. The MGI team respects Henry for this. Dana had a stricter approach and would constantly clash with Sasha’s type A personality. Diversity is shown in the MGI group already because they are composed of two musicians and a businessman. Alex and Dav acted as two neutral parties but also brought diversity to the group because one was a computer software major from MIT and the other was a student at Berklee College of Music interested in marketing. Majority of decisions in this group are made based on social interactions.
The Root Cause of Problems?
A root cause of the team’s process problem is that they are not following the planning process. The first step in strategic planning is to establish a mission, vision, and goals for the organization. The group members can’t come to a consensus on matters as simple as their marketing population because they are indecisive between focusing on education or entertainment. A mission statement could correct this immediately. A vision and goals point toward the future of the organization.
Another problem is that roles have not been defined within the group. Henry and Dana see themselves as the answer to getting the company on track. They did their own analytics between the markets and found education to be the more attractive to pursue. However, Sasha just sees the “HBS” team as “interns” and that they should just do as they are told.
The ultimate cause of the problems in the group is that there is no leader. There is no one/group that can make the decisions that need to be made and stick with them. The MGI group should have either named a leader or made the decisions in every meeting before the meetings ended. Instead, they kept passing around ideas and never chose one.