Henry TAM and the MGI Team 4, PROCESS PROBLEM AT MGI: Henry TAM and the MGI Team have three weeks to submit the final business plan to HBS. The MGI team was multi talented, functionally diverse, and extremely passionate and had a valuable product. However the team had little success working together due to individual conflicts, dysfunctional team processes, cultural differences, lack of organization and structure to the team process, identity issues, lack of formal roles and norms, formation of sub-groups with no integration to the main team, improper division of tasks and sub tasks and an extremely bad working culture. Above all the team lacked a leader. It is upto Henry to step up to the role of a leader and to find a way to salvage this team and improve the team process by working on maximizing each team members strengths and integrating the creative and strategic parts of the team 2. OVERVIEW AND ANALYSIS: MGI's team has diverse talents: Igor and Roman are accomplished musicians. Sasha has a keen business and finance acumen, Alex has substantial experience in music and business, Dav is software developer and an MBA student at MIT, Dana is a finance and Banking major and currently a HBS MBA grad while Henry is an investment banker, has experience in business development and is currently also an HBS MBA graduate student, MGI's productis a critical success but a commercial failure. The founders wish to market it as a game (entertainment) while the student team believes it should be used as an educational tool. The group dynamics between the MGI's leaders presents challenges. Historically they have been unable to work with others. Igor and Roman classify Sasha as being “Americanized” while they themselves are viewed as being poor in business. Sasha is viewed as the key businessman, Igor as the workaholic and Roman as the creative person with the ideas and vision. Henry and Dana's concem about Sasha and his limited accomplishments in each industry he worked in is reaffirmed when they first meet Sasha and find out that he is unfocused and jumps from idea to idea Henry and Dana are unable to establish any specific roles or tasks for themselves. While they wish to develop a business plan, Igor looks upto them as being visionaries and strategists but Sasha seems to discard them as salespeople and interns whom he can use to cold call alumni and possibly even as entry points to the HBS business plans. At the end of the first meeting sub groups had already been formed (HBS vs Russians), Dana and Sasha's personalities had clashed and tasks were un- equally divided (Henry got the bulk of the task). By the end of the second meeting Dana realized that the team needs a leader and that the core team has limited experience. Too much time is spent on brainstorming with individual clashes between Sasha and Dana wherein Sasha attempts at suppressing Dana's ideas. Henry and Dana's frustration is increased when Dav, an MIT MBA student is added to the group during the third meeting without Henry and Danas’ consultation. Dav also hadspenta lot of time with Sasha and Igor on the technical aspects of product design and on the patent design. Henry and Dana present a very professional PowerPoint presentation that summarized all the work done. Everyone except Sasha was impressed by the presentation and he reacts negatively with feelings of alienation. The identity crises, cultural differences and sub-group formation in the team are immediately noted by Dav. Alex presents the viewpoint that the conflict is due to people coming from different experiences, skill levels and different professional backgrounds and mentality. The group continues to meet each Friday but does not move ahead. None of the members of the group even had a similar vision for the organization. The major conflict was around the marketing of the product. After a lot of data analysis and market research Henry believes that the product should be marketed to the students and teachers in the education industry. Dana agrees with this perspective although Sasha and Igor do not, Dana presents a different viewpoint of using alternate short term strategy to win and realize the long term goal/strategy. Henry and Dana are begun to win over the rest of the team on the basis of their work. Henry is seen as a hard worker and an acute listener with both a creative and an analytical mindset. He is also regarded as superior in his interpersonal skills and his ability to handle trying situations. Although the team had some good debates about the direction of the company, they were disorganized and unstructured and did not realize any fruits as yet. Moreover the HBS team was doing the major portion of the work and subtasks were not equally divided. Each member of the team had a different goal: HBS team wanted to finish their business plan in time, MGI founders wanted a business plan to realize their vision although | doubt they cared for any timelines, Alex was brought in to only market the nutcracker game while Dav was involved in working on technical aspects of product design and patent application along with his participation in a separate contest. TEAM PROCESS AT MGI: AN EVALUATION: The MG/ team consisted of 3 founders — Igor, Sasha and Roman. In addition to which the team also consisted of Alex from Boston Berklee College, Dana and Henry from HBS and Dav from MIT. In the team design stage the founders made several mistakes. The founders did not select the right mix of people to perform the work at hand. They did not diagnose the task at hand and understand the complexity and interdependencies. There was no pooled, sequential or reciprocal interdependency that was planned for. The task objectives were very broad since there were 2 students from HBS, one from MIT, Alex who was roped in to market the nutcracker game, all of whom had different objectives. The founders failed to articulate any compelling purpose to motivate team members or provide them with a bigger picture mission so that they understand how their work fits into the larger purpose. While establishing the team environment the founders made the folly where Alex was a free rider who only gave his opinion when he was asked for it. Task roles were also undefined In the team process and the forming stage we saw conflicting expectations, frustrations, tensionand confusion. Dana and Henry had a self identity of being strategic analysts but Sasha perceived them as interns and business plan writers. The team launching was a terrible process as Roman and Alex were introduced late to the team. Above all, Dav was introduced in the third meeting which caused a [ot of insecurities and trust issues with the HBS team, Henry and Dana had doubts with Sasha's intentions and felt that they were being used to get into business school contests. The team norm setting stage was a disaster and paved way to dysfunctional behaviors that went unsanctioned. informal communication was completely absent. Roman disagreed with the other founders. Henry and Dana were in consistent disagreement with Sasha. Sasha and Dana had continuous lack of behavioral integration and lacked collaborative behavior or joint decision making skills. No polls were conducted to reach any agreement. There were sub groups formed between the Russians and the HBS team and the fault line was very quickly established with a very wide gulf. The brainstorming sessions were far too lengthy and reached no conclusions. The norm setting stage led to problems in performing. There was high conflict, no decisions made, too many convergent ideas being floated around and improper task distribution. This resulted in the business plan being way behind schedule. ROOT CAUSES OF THE FAULTY TEAM PROCESS: The team did not divide the main task (writing a business plan) into sub tasks. Work was not equally distributed and brainstorming was in a disorganized manner with no clear outputs. Henry seemed to do most of the work with Dav not having much to do. There seemed to be groups and subgroups. HBS contested against the Russians even though they had similar goals but there was no integration of the groups. However roles were not defined for each individual on the team. The team itself was improperly formed with Alex and Dav joining in late without the consultation of HBS students. As a formal organization the team did not have a leader and no one was empowered to define role structure or hierarchy or decision making process and assessment of ideas and performance. The team did not set any norms and values in developing a good working relationship from the start. Henry and Dana had to play good cop/bad cop with Sasha. The team members blamed each other for their faults: Igor and Roman blamed Sasha for being overwhelmed with lot of work and missing the sales while Sasha blamed Dana. Alex neglected the cultural clash. None of the members were effective listeners and beat around the bush by persisting with the same ideas after many meetings HENRY TAM: WHAT COULD HE HAVE DONE? : The HBS students had identified that the team required a leader, Henry should have grabbed the opportunity of volunteering to be a leader, He had the personality and the right skills to be a successful leader. He could control his emotions, was confident, good listener, analytical, well iked, and hard working. Henry could have discussed with both Sasha and Dana that their intrinsic personality clashes were an impediment to the development of the goals of the team. Hen could have asked them to adapt to either one another's style or reach a neutralground and be more tolerant of each others ideas, especially during the brainstorming sessions. Henry could have taken some preventive measures to prevent conflict amongst the team. To some extent he had already done it by being the compromiser. He needed to enforce the same to reach constructive decisions out of existing conflicts. Henry could also have added norms and values to the team. He could have enforced a decision making process like voting. He could have stated the objectives of the meeting in order to manage time appropriately. He also could have written the meeting objectives and communicated them clearly to the group prior to the meetings. Dana could have been the time keeper and the minute taker. Above all, henry could have set a democratic principle where everyone's opinion mattered equally. He could take over the role of a compromiser to resolve the conflicts, especially between Dana and Sasha and have explained the need to work in a team to them 3. CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATIONS: (HENRY TAM: WHAT SHOULD HE DO NOW?) : Henry should step in and become the leader of the group. He should advice the team of the deadlines for the Business Plan Contest application. He should continue to maintain his healthy relationship between the team members. He should follow Dana’s suggestion and specify the short term and long term goals of the team. He should then set activities and task items for every member to translate to achievement of long term goals. Henry should convince the MGI team to follow the educational market, for its short term goals since the entertainment market will be down after the Christmas and new year holiday season. That way, the team will have more time to plan in advance for the next Christmas holiday. He should specify roles, duties and norms for each team member and delegate tasks and responsibilities. Henry should also keep a close monitor on how the team communicates formally and informally with one another and should nip all dysfunctional behaviors in the bud. Henry should also look for a new leader outside of the team. Someone with plenty of industrial experience and teamwork skills should be appointed as the new leader in the long run