BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE TEAM

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Instructions

Scenario

You are a consultant hired by an established medium-sized manufacturing corporation with 250 employees. It directly markets one unique product. The corporation is run by a new CEO and 11 other executives who have been with the organization for varying lengths of time. The new CEO has an aggressive growth objective for the corporation of 100 percent over the next five years. The current business model will not support this objective and needs to be updated.

Your task is to create a team that will work together over a 9-month time frame to develop a proposal for a new business model and growth strategies. Your responsibilities include convening the team, assigning roles and responsibilities, structuring the team, monitoring activities and production, and documenting outcomes. The team members must come from at least three different functional areas because the new CEO wants input from a variety of stakeholders. The challenge is that under the old business model, none of the personnel working in the functional areas communicated or collaborated. In addition, the former CEO never asked for new ideas and seemed oblivious to issues the corporation was facing.

 

Create an overview of what should be considered when developing teams.

  • Introduction.
    • Briefly explain the goal of your plan and the high-level approach you took in developing it.
  • Functional Area Team Member Selections.
    • Select and describe the team members from three of these functional areas: human resources, accounting/finance, marketing/sales, information technology, and operations.
  • Reasons for Functional Area Team Member Selections.
    • Explain the reasons for including each functional area and team member in an organizational team in terms of the advantages offered and the type of role an individual would fill.
  • Characteristics of Effective Team Members.
    • Describe the characteristics (knowledge, skills, and abilities) each team member brings to the project, and explain how those characteristics support a team effort and will be crucial to its success.
  • Communicating Team Objectives.
    • Explain how you will effectively communicate team objectives, and consider the consequences of failing to do so. Will you draft a team charter? Will you write a mission statement?
  • Strategies for Delegating Responsibility.
    • Explain the types of strategies you will use to delegate responsibility within the team, how the strategies take into account individual strengths, and how responsibility is delegated fairly. Will you assign tasks or ask for volunteers?
  • Strategies for Managing Conflict.
    • Describe strategies that will be used to avoid and resolve conflicts between members of a team, and consider the consequences of not dealing with conflict.
  • Success Measurement, Tools, and Process.
    • Explain how the success of the team will be measured.
  • Conclusion.
    • Summarize how your plan will result in an effective team that will contribute to organizational success.
  • References page.