INSTRUCTIONS
You may also do additional research and use the results, as long as you cite your sources.
Try to limit your responses to about 800 to 1,000 words for each case. (Each case should be 3 pages.
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CASE STUDY 1
Times have been tough in the plastic knob business. Ask Ed Rogan, the owner of Rogan Corporation in Northbrook, Illinois, and he’ll tell you how the introduction of electronic controls on calibrating instruments has lost him many of his customers. A declining market made pay raises for his 107 employees out of the question, which in turn made it tough to keep them from bailing out—never mind motivating them. Rogan’s solution was to give his employees an incentive to find ways of cutting costs by giving them a share of the savings. The hundreds of ideas he received not only helped the company to stay afloat but earned the employees an extra 17 percent of their annual salaries in recent years.The key to the success of Rogan’s approach is that sharing improvements encourages employees to take responsibility for their own work.
A similar idea is used at Aspect Communications, a communications equipment manufacturer in San Jose, California, where instead of pegging bonuses to savings, pay is linked to two aspects of customer service: the amount of time the company’s product is operational, and measures of customer satisfaction. The basic idea, explains CEO Jim Carreker, is that for the company to be profitable, employees must demonstrate a long-term commitment to customer service. This approach has kept all of Aspect’s 400 employees carefully watching the measures on which their pay (and their customers’ satisfaction) is based. And it has kept them quite happy with their paychecks!
Paychecks also have been full of pleasant surprises for the 190 employees of the Calvert Group, a financial-management company based in Bethesda, Maryland. These checks include bonuses for outstanding performers and regular distributions of the company’s profits. The better the employees perform, the better the company does—and the more the employees make. Says Butler Perkins, a microcomputer-support analyst, “We all know the things we have to do to make more money.” And, it appears, Calvert employees are doing those things. This is only part of what the Calvert Group does to show appreciation for its employees, however. In a very unusual move, the company also reimburses its employees’ commuting expenses. If you walk to work, the company will even reimburse the cost of a pair of running shoes. To save on other expenses (e.g. dry cleaning) still further, Calvert has dropped its dress code, thus allowing employees to come to work in casual clothes—a feature they all like very much.
1. Explain how concepts of organizational justice may be used to explain the success of the incentive programs described here.
2. Effective incentives involve more than just money. Explain what these three firms are doing in recognition of this fact.
3. What basic tenets of expectancy theory are illustrated by the innovative incentive systems described here?
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CASE STUDY 2
Students please note: The first article linked below is made available to you through the University’s library databases. Therefore, you must be logged in as a student through the University portal for the link to work seamlessly. If you click the link and receive a request for a username and password, use the username and password that you use to log into your Thomas Edison State University courses. The link should then work.
Read the article “The Reincarnation of Mike Milken.” (Morris, K. (1999). The reincarnation of Mike Milken. Business Week, 3628, 92-104.) Then answer the following questions and justify all responses.
1. How would you rate Milken on self-monitoring? Explain your reasoning.
2. On scales of low = 1 to high = 10, how would you score Milken on each of the Big Five personality dimensions? How does the personality profile you have constructed for Milken explain his incredible comeback after prison and cancer?
3. Does Milken have an internal or external locus of control, and has this tendency helped or hindered him?
4. How would you rate Milken’s emotional intelligence? Explain.
Another, more recent article on Milken is the following:
Cohan, W.D. (2017, May 2). Michael Milken invented the modern junk bond, went to prison, and then became one of the most respected people on Wall Street. Business Insider.
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CASE STUDY 3
Core teams. Satellite teams. Empowerment. Self-managed teams. Much has been said and written about teams in the work environment. Advice such as keeping teams small (7 to 9 members) and developing specific goals and objectives are widely discussed in the literature. Leaders debate what the essential elements of effective teams are from their own experience.
At AOL, Ray Oglethorpe has provided specific guidelines that have made teams highly effective at his firm. In a team-based environment, people who report to you as a manager probably get much of their direction from other people (including their team leaders). People may be on more than one team. The challenge for the manager is to ensure that no individual is stretched too thin and that all workers have the appropriate training for the tasks that have been assigned. He also argues that size is critical to team effectiveness. His advice is to have the smallest number of people possible on each team with no delegates. In other words, the team must have the authority to make decisions.
John Katzenbach of Katzenbach Partners LCC has a different take on teams. He cites the Marine Corps as an excellent model of team deployment.He argues that teams are not always the best approach to problems.Teams should be assembled for appropriate problems and situations.He notes that in many organizations there are single-leader units that masquerade as teams. In these situations, group members work alone much of the time, yet there is pressure for the group to be viewed as a team. If a group tries to become a team when the performance challenge actually requires a single-leader approach, performance and morale suffer. The opposite is equally true. In fact, both miscues produce the dreaded “compromise-unit syndrome”: weak leadership, low levels of commitment, wasted time, and poor performance results.
Michael Leinbach is the Space Shuttle Launch Director at the Kennedy Space Center. His team deals with life and death decisions. For his team, communication that is clear and unfettered between team members and the team leader is essential for effective performance. He notes that it is a human characteristic to be sometimes intimidated by those in leadership positions. He stresses, however, the need for team members to be able to overcome this tendency. “I tell people that being on a team is like getting a huge family ready to go on a picnic. Say you have to get 50 or 60 people ready to go, and then one of the kids gets sick. Picnic scrubbed. You go when the kid is better. It’s as simple as that.” He emphasizes the importance of team members being at ease with team leaders.
Thomas C. Leppert, CEO of Turner Corporation, boils the essential elements of high-performing teams down to two elements: mutual respect among members and a common vision of where the team is going. At Turner they rely exclusively on high performing teams for all of their activity. Teams are not only internal to the organization. Team members consist of outside vendors and contractors as well.
“Innovative managers understand that they must do more than manage people. They need to manage the interactions between people. That’s not a subtle distinction. The best managers get their people to interact in creative ways.” This according to Michael Schrage at MIT Media Labs is the critical element in successful teams. He feels that many people are cynical regarding teams based on their previous experience in organizations that have paid lip service to the concept but have not committed the resources necessary to insure success.
Shared culture, leadership, and openness to new members are essential elements of effective teams for Tony DiCicco, former head coach of the U.S. Women’s World Cup Champion Soccer Team. He also notes that teams must learn from their successes as well as their failures.
Jeanie Duck at BCG argues that many teams do not spend nearly enough time in setting themselves up. She notes that teams are so intent on tackling the work projects that they do not invest adequately in the development of the team. She notes that rules must be established by the team to deal with a whole host of issues, including conflict. To attempt to deal with interpersonal conflict without a framework for doing so leads to serious dysfunction later on.
1. There are several different perspectives on team effectiveness subscribed to by the practitioners in this article. What are the similarities and differences of their approaches?
2. How do these actual experiences with teams compare to the academic literature on teams in organizations?
3. Do different organizations require differing approaches to team formation? Why or why not? Explain.
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CASE STUDY 4
Read the Wall Street Journal article: Petzinger, T., Jr. (1999, April 23). Lucent duo conquers distance and culture.
After reading the article, answer the following questions.
1. Could the 500 Lucent engineers who worked on the Bandwidth Manager project be called a team? Why or why not? Could Bill Klinger and Frank Polito be called a team? Explain.
2. What role, if any, did trust play in this case?
3. What lessons about managing virtual teams does this case teach us?
4. Which of the key attributes of high-performance teams are evident in this case? Which are not?
5. Based on what you have read, what was the overriding key to success in this case?
Case studies have been adapted from INC 5000 (“Best Compensation: Cashing In” and “The Productivity-Boosting Gain-Sharing Report” by Tom Ehrenfeld) and fastcompany.com (“What Makes Teams Work?” by Regina Fazio Maruca).
Case Studies
Name
Institution
Course
Instructor
Date
Case Studies
CASE STUDY 1
Organizational Justice majorly focuses on how employees perceive fairness at their workplace. Employees often judge simple behaviors conducted by their organizations, which can significantly determine their attitudes and behaviors towards the organization. Organizational Justice is composed of three main concepts of interactional, procedural, and distributive organizational Justice. Distributive organizational Justice arises when there is fairness in the outcome distribution. For instance, when employees believe that the organizations’ outcomes are equitable, then distributive Justice would have been achieved. These outcomes are tangible objects like pay or intangible objects like positive feedback. Procedural feedback focuses decision making fairness at the organization. Employees who feel that the decision-making process in their organization is not afraid to give their opinions on the decision-making process (Annette, 2019).
On the other hand, interactional Justice majorly focuses on how individuals are treated during decision-making. Employees will feel the treatment is fair when their employers explain the decisions made and treat them with sensitivity, respect, and dignity. Organizational Justice helps organizations by building commitment, job performance, job satisfaction, trust in the organization, and corporate citizenship. This is evident from the three case scenarios. Employees at Rogan’s corporation have been able to take responsibility and improve their jobs because Rogan’s activity of giving them incentives brought distributive Justice to the organization. The same is also true for Aspect communications and the Calvert group. Distributive Justice in these three organizations has resulted in the employees carrying out their activities promptly and happily despite the harsh economic times (Deborah & Meghan, 2017).
Motivation is an essential aspect of every organization. When employees feel motivated, they perform their tasks diligently and precisely, which leads to higher profits and returns for the organizations. Incentives are the most common form of making employees feel motivated. Employee incentive programs are programmed to engage, retain talent, and attract employees into the organization. Incentive programs mostly come in monetary terms, such as discretionary bonus plans, spot awards, profit-sharing plans, gain-sharing plans, retention bonuses, and project bonuses. However, these usually are considered only on a short-term basis. Effective incentive plans in an organization should involve more than just money. Having incentive plans that involve money will help an organization achieve its long-term goals, have loyal employees, and acquire much output (Kellie, 2020).
Effective incentive plans incorporate having activities that boost an employee’s morale and loyalty. Such incentives include offering employees extra vacation time if they hit their goals, coming up with department-wide competitions, organizing a team outing for the top performers in your organization, and giving out customized rewards (Erin, 2020). Rogan’s corporation gives out incentives to its employees by not providing direct monetary gifts but giving the employees a share of the savings, which has proved to be very effective. Instead of sharing money gains with the employees, the corporation shares its improvements. This is also similar to an Aspects communications company. Instead of giving employees bonuses into their savings, they are given incentives depending on the level of customer satisfaction and the operational time of the company’s product. The Calvert Group, on the other hand, have tied their employees’ incentives to the performance of the company. The employees make more money, I the company performs better. They have also added extra incentives like reimbursing the commuting expenses of its employees.
The expectancy theory of motivation suggests that a person’s behavior is greatly motivated by consequences or results they anticipate. A person will decide to adopt a particular behavior based on what they expect the results of their behavior will be. The three basic tenets of expectancy theory are expectancy, instrumentality, and valence. Expectancy is a person’s belief that some effort will make them achieve their intended performance goals. It is mainly based on an individual’s perception of the difficulty of their plan, self-confidence, and past experiences. Instrumentality is an individual’s belief that they will achieve some desired outcome if they meet their performance expectations. In instrumentality, individuals believe that if they accomplish one thing, they will accomplish another thing (Shady, 2016).
In valence, individuals place-unique values on particular outcomes. It is majorly associated with an individual’s values, preferences, needs, strengths, goals, and sources of motivation. They also vary from one individual to another. For instance, some employees may find outcomes like pay rise ad bonuses to motivate them, whereas others may not be motivated by such factors. The innovative incentive systems described in this case study illustrate some of the basic tenets of expectancy theory. One central tenet that is majorly presented is the instrumentality tenet. Employees in Rogan corporation were motivated to receive a share of the savings if they performed their tasks diligently and took responsibility for their work. The innovative incentive systems employed by Calvert group and Aspect communications illustrate the expectancy theory’s instrumentality tenet. All employees in these organizations believe that they will receive suitable bonuses if they achieve specific tasks within their organizations.
References
Annette, Towler. (2019). The benefits of organizational Justice and practical ways how to improve it. CQ Net. https://www.ckju.net/en/dossier/benefits-organizational-justice-and-practical-ways-how-improve-it/35572
Deborah, Rupp & Meghan Thornton-Lugo. (2017). Organizational Justice. Oxford Bibliographies. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199828340/obo-9780199828340-0044.xml
Erin, Nelson. (2020). The 4 Most Effective Incentives for Employees. Fond. https://www.fond.co/blog/the-4-most-effective-incentives-for-employees/
Kellie, Wong. (2020). 10 Employee Incentive Programs to Engage Your Team. Achievers. https://www.achievers.com/blog/employee-incentive-programs/
Shady K. Nemati. (2016). Expectancy Theory Overview. Confluence. https://wikispaces.psu.edu/display/PSYCH484/4.+Expectancy+Theory
CASE STUDY 2
Michael Milken was an American financier who amassed many fortunes from his high yield junk bonds for acquisitions, mergers, and corporate financing. Milken was indicted by the federal grand jury in 1989 and was forced to spend up to two years in prison, having pleaded guilty to security fraud charges. Michael’s revolution entirely transformed the financial system, but it was also overreached. He became a white-collar criminal, and he became a junk bond villain, whereas to others, he was a brilliant financial innovator (William, 2017).
The self-monitoring personality trait incorporates regulating and monitoring self-presentations, behaviors, and emotions regarding situations and social environments. It involves knowing your behavior and how it impacts your environment (Kendra, 2021). Through self-monitoring, a person can modify their behaviors in response to social, situational, and environmental variables. People who rate high self-monitoring are likely to substitute their behaviors to conform and adapt to their current situations. People with low self-monitoring ratings are more likely to behave according to their internal feelings and needs. Michael Milken has depicted a higher self-monitoring rating. When he is diagnosed with cancer, he begins changing his lifestyle to battle the disease by enrolling in Yoga classes and eating healthy. Throughout his case, Milken demonstrated a severe consistency and resistance to change but later decided to display a strong discipline and strength by changing his lifestyle to fight the deadly cancer disease.
Most of the traditional and modern studies in psychology reflect on five major dimensions of personality. The five fundamental dimensions of personality are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (Annabelle, 2020). Openness is a personality trait that incorporates insight and imagination. People with a high personality trait in openness often exhibit their eagerness to experience and learn new things. Creativity is also a significant component of the openness trait. I would give Milken an eight score in the openness personality trait for his willingness and eagerness to adapt to new changes in life and the incredible creativity he displayed when he came up with brilliant financial innovations. The Conscientiousness personality trait incorporates high goal-directed behaviors, thoughtfulness, and reasonable impulse control. This personality trait is common for people working in high-retail finance and science-related fields where organization and detail orientation is a mandatory skill set. Milken would score a 9 in this trait for his recommendable job with financial innovations (Thomas, 2021).
Extraversion or extroversion is a common trait that almost all people experience in their lives. This trait describes a person who gets highly energized when in the company of other people. Extraverted people are easily recognized because they exhibit talkativeness, emotional expressiveness, and assertiveness. Milken was highly assertive and would rate 8 in this personality trait. He likes socializing with people and raised $75 million for research by regularly appearing on TV programs. I would give Milken a high 7 rating on the agreeableness personality trait because of his great deal of interest and care for other people and because he enjoys assisting other people and helping in contributing to people’s happiness. Neuroticism is a personal trait characterized by emotional instability, sadness, and moodiness. Milken would receive a low rating of 3 in this trait because he proved to be emotionally stable, is very relaxed, emotionally stable, and rarely feels depressed or sad despite all the things he’s been through. Milken’s trait depicts why he could make an incredible comeback after being imprisoned and diagnosed with cancer. He scores high in openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness, whereas he scores low on neuroticism.
The locus of control is a crucial aspect of personality. It refers to an individual’s perception regarding the underlying causes of events in their life (Kendra, 2021). When dealing with personal things in life, people often feel like they are in control of the situations, whereas others may feel like they have no complete control and are at the mercy of outside forces. People with an internal locus of power often feel like they are entirely controlling things happening in their lives. People who feel like they have no control whatsoever have an external locus of control. Milken has an internal locus of control. This tendency has helped him overcome most of his shortcomings, like fighting his cancer and being eager to win back his good name despite everything that has occurred.
Emotional intelligence, commonly referred to as an emotional quotient, refers to the ability to use, manage and understand your own emotions positively to defuse conflict, relieve stress, overcome challenges, communicate effectively and empathize with others. Emotional intelligence aids people to succeed in class, achieve personal and career goals, and build stronger relationships. Michael Milken has high emotional intelligence, and he has been able to manage his emotions positively for his good. He also relays the most common attributes associated with emotional intelligence, including self-management, self-awareness, social awareness, and relationship management.
References
Annabelle G.Y. Lim. (2020). The Big Five Personality Traits. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/big-five-personality.html
Kendra, Cherry. (2021). Locus of Control and Your Life. Verywellmind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-locus-of-control-2795434
Kendra, Cherry. (2021). What Is Self-Monitoring? Verywellmind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-self-monitoring-5179838#:~:text=Self%2Dmonitoring%20is%20a%20personality,it%20has%20on%20your%20environment
Thomas. (2021). What are The Big 5 Personality Traits? https://www.thomas.co/resources/type/hr-guides/what-are-big-5-personality-traits
William D, Cohan. (2017). Michael Milken invented the modern junk bond, went to prison, and became one of the most respected people on Wall Street. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/michael-milken-life-story-2017-5?r=US&IR=T
CASE STUDY 3
Team effectiveness is essential for every company to be successful. Most organizations are now using teams to help them gain a competitive advantage in their workplaces. Organizations can use different interventions to develop and improve the effectiveness and performance of their teams. Some of the common interventions that organizations can apply include team training, leadership training, team building, team debriefing, simulation training, crew resource management training, and team-based intervention training. These interventions can significantly improve your team’s performance (Annette, 2020).
Managers can apply numerous perspectives on team effectiveness to ensure their teams are effective. The most common perspective used by most managers is reinforcing a shared purpose. Leaders should illustrate how changes can impact their purpose and individual goals to their teams. By showing their teams they greatly value their efforts, leaders will have reinforced a shared purpose. Another common perspective on team effectiveness is providing role clarity. Teams can effectively work in a remote working environment if everyone is directed on the roles they need to do. Jobs are diligently conducted when every employee is sure of their functions than when there is no role clarity. Another common perspective on team effectiveness is promoting an enabling process. Managers can do this by ensuring their teams have the time, resources, staff, and funding to perform their tasks. Teams with transparent processes on managing, documenting, planning, and tracking their work are effective (Kelechi, 2020).
Managers/team leaders should be conversant with the emotional security of their team members. Whereas all team members always want to feel involved, comfortable, and valued, most don’t always feel this way at their workplaces. Lack of team leaders to promote an inclusive team environment makes team members lack emotional security. Leaders need to enforce emotional security, which has a high level of comfort, understanding, and trust. They should also emotionally engage their team members to keep them productive. Some leaders promote team effectiveness by encouraging a collaborative spirit. Through a collaborative spirit, team members are engaged and develop practical ways to tackle their work. Growth orientation is also an effective form of encouraging team effectiveness (Martin, 2017).
The practitioners in this article have subscribed to different perspectives on team effectiveness. These perspectives contain distinct similarities and differences. At AOL, the managers have resorted to giving their team the authority to make their own decisions. This can be attributed to being aware of their team’s emotional security. However, the Space Shuttle launch manager has opted for a different approach by focusing on providing role clarity at his organization. He ensures clear communication between the team leaders and team members. The manager Turner corporation has opted for building a collaborative between his team members to help them accomplish their goals. He has brought up a shared vision for the team members and built mutual respect. This approach is similar to the one applied by Michael Schrage of MIT media. However, a different kind of approach has been added at MIT media. The manager promotes an enabling process for his team members by ensuring that they are given the necessary resources as a prerequisite for success.
The experiences subscribed to in this article directly reflect the academic literature on teams in organizations. Lauren and Elizabeth (2019) highlight that whole groups are made up of four essential elements: interdependence, authority, clear boundaries, and moderately stable members. They further state that six dimensions hallmark real teams, including tightly coupled interdependence, specified roles, agreed-upon objectives, high autonomy, and a performance review or systematic reflex. Team members need to interact to manage their task interdependencies and pursue their shared goals. Verity Creedy (2020) documents that the six primary factors suitable for team effectiveness are reinforcing a shared purpose, role clarity, enabling process, being aware of the emotional security of your team members, a collaborative spirit, and growth orientation. These all have similarities to the actual experiences depicted in this case study.
Different organizations require different approaches to team formation. This is because various organizations have different teams with multiple members and structures. Teams need to be looked at according to their sizes and layout. One suitable approach that can be suitable for one organization’s team can hence not be ideal for another organization due to the difference in size and structure of the teams. Most organizations currently form teams to aid them in reaching their business objectives. Different approaches like personality-based, activity-based, skill-based, and problem -solving based approaches can be applied by organizations when forming their teams. Still, they all depend on the organization’s goals and objectives (Martin, 2017). skill-based team formation approach is suitable for organizations yearning to form teams with a high skill base. Activity-based strategies are ideal for younger and energetic employees who want to try different things. Organizations need to apply different approaches to team formation depending on their desired objectives and goals.
References
Annette, Towler. (2020). Team effectiveness and team performance What it is and how to improve it. CQ Net. https://www.ckju.net/en/dossier/team-effectiveness-and-team-performance-what-it-and-how-improve-it
Kelechi Udoagwu. (2020). 6 Different Team Effectiveness Models to Understand Your Team Better. Wrike. https://www.wrike.com/blog/6-different-team-effectiveness-models/
Lauren E. Benishek & Elizabeth H. Lazzara. (2019). Teams in a New Era Some Considerations and Implications. NCBI. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6520615/
Martin Studencan. (2017). Four Effective Approaches to Team Building. NextRetreat. https://blog.nextretreat.com/four-approaches-team-building/
Verity Creed. (2020). Six Factors for Team Effectiveness. DDI. https://www.ddiworld.com/blog/six-team-effectiveness-factors
CASE STUDY 4
The 500 Lucent engineers who worked on the Bandwidth manager project can be called a team. A team refers to a group of people who achieve a common goal. Teams can either be small or large, depending on their membership. All team members often collaborate on perfuming sets of different tasks that are somehow related and necessary towards achieving set objectives. Teams often work in the same way as sports teams work at the workplace. For instance, every player in a basketball team has their own set of roles they need to contribute to winning a game. The same is similar in organizations. Teams can be formed either for permanent or temporary purposes. Teams are formed to accomplish tasks that are somehow very complex or too large for one individual to execute. Teams also help in works that need a variety of expertise and skills.
A team comprises different individuals coming together to perform interdependent activities to achieve a common goal, and this is precisely what the 500 Lucent engineers were doing. The 500 engineers were primarily tasked with assembling the most delicate hardware globally besides writing over one million code lines for Lucent Technologies (Petzinger, 1999). This was a numerous task that one individual could not undertake. Several individuals with different skills and expertise had to be brought up to help achieve this task. The 500 engineers had a common goal of achieving a specific task despite working from different diversities and locations, making them a team. The 500 engineers could also experience some communication gaps between them, but the general aim of working towards one specific common goal makes them a team. Frank Polito and Bill Klinger can also be a team since they worked together to create a bandwidth manager for Lucent Technologies.
Trust is an essential element for all teams. Trust refers to the reliance on truth, ability, character, or strength of something or someone. Trust plays a critical role in making teams effective because it provides team members safety. When the team members feel safe, they, in turn, feel comfortable to expose vulnerabilities, open up and also take appropriate risks. Trust within team members improves collaboration, innovation, productivity, and creative thinking. Trust is also a prerequisite for knowledge sharing. In this case, trust plays an essential role in bringing the engineers together despite working from different locations globally. The managers are working in different time zones, countries, and cultures, yet they can still collaborate and carry out their tasks diligently towards achieving their common goal. This can be attributed to trust.
This case teaches us a lot about managing virtual teams. Managing virtual teams can sometimes be a very hectic task. Virtual teams are primarily tricky to manage because managing them requires a remote creation of corporate culture. To successfully manage a virtual team, you need to define your work systems, come up with multiple communication tools, regular schedule meetings, have detailed and clear deliverables, ensure your work hours overlap, establish a professional work environment, prioritize making video calls other than emails and chatting and lastly, using project management tools. This case shows that managing a virtual team can be very difficult if face-to-face interactions are inadequate. Cultural diversities are also critical in the management of virtual teams. For your virtual team to be successfully managed, chatting and emails should be minimized, and face-to-face interactions through video calls should be embraced.
High performing teams are characterized by ten primary attributes of aligned and clear purpose, clear responsibilities and roles, use of relationships to build trust, effective and frequent communication, often collaborating, encouraging and appreciating diverse thinking, managing conflict constructively, learning and adapting, showing appreciation and celebrating success, and measuring success and outcomes (Blue Beyond Consulting, 2021). From this case scenario, the critical high-performance attributes that are evident include clear roles and responsibilities, which is evident from the shared responsibility, shared vision of the team members of coming up with a new product, participative leadership of their leaders, and highly effective communication of the team members conducted through the face-to-face discussions and conference calls. However, they lack effective collaboration between team members, probably due to location differences and distance.
Several factors can be a key to the success of most teams. For teams to be successful, there need to be clearly defined goals, a well-developed action plan, clearly identified roles and responsibilities, monitoring and measuring success, effective communication, and ensuring that all team members are committed and engaged (. In this case, effective and clear communication is the overriding key to success. Despite sitting and working globally from different countries and locations, the team has effectively communicated using face-to-face discussions, conference calls, and web directories to ensure every member is engaged. The face-to-face interaction played a vital role in eliminating the team members’ cultural differences.
References
Blue Beyond Consulting. (2021). 10 Attributes of High-Performing Teams. https://www.bluebeyondconsulting.com/thought-leadership/10-attributes-high-performing-teams/
Petzinger, T., Jr. (1999, April 23). Lucent duo conquers distance and culture.