1. Why does the Varsity team lose to the JV team?

As we look into the case, we will see that the Varsity Team and the JV Team was chosen by

Coach P. by following a series of steps during the Atlanta Trip. He performed a variety of

permutations and combinations to find out about the individual strengths of each team

members and then assigned ranks to them as per his methodology and then he put the top 8

rowers in the Varsity Team and the last eight rowers in the JV Team. Now, as the sport of

rowing goes, individuals do not make any team to lose or win. It all depends upon the whole

team on how they coordinate or set their path for winning of the team. It is not about

individual strengths but coming collectively as a team and then winning the race. In this case,

the JV Team which has team members which were marked as losers by the coach as per his

methodology were coming together as a team without their own individual egos and working

towards winning the race as compared to the Varsity Team which had a number of members

who were considering themselves as winners and then were competing against each other as

to who is better or who is worst. This becomes quite evident from the fact with their tussle in

the emails which have been mentioned in the case and how they have been fighting against

each other and not coming towards each other to form a team and they were more organized

in a group and they shared almost no bond with each other to win. So, that’s why the Varsity

Team lost to the JV Team as they were not working as a team as compared to the JV Team

which had weak individual members but they were working towards bringing the strength as a

team.

2. What should Coach P. have done earlier in the season to resolve this problem? At exactly what

point should he have intervened differently?

Coach P should have talked to the Team members of the Varsity before the outset of the

season. He should have met them and told them that despite being with great individual

strengths, they should work as a team. He should have talked to the members to give

respect to the other individuals in the team and should complement one another in the

team. As in the rowing team, individual performance means less as compared to the

complete performance combined as the team and thus, it would have been better. Also, it

would have been also the case here that the members of the Varsity team might be thinking

that they were superior than the members of the JV Team and thus there was this case of

superiority complex which had been breeding in the minds of the team members of the

varsity, which led to disastrous results in this case. He should have talked to the members to

shed all the various forms of egos which they had acquired during the Atlanta trip and then

concentrate on forming a close team without any onset of ego in between the team

members.

The coach almost immediately should have intervened at the time, when the Varsity Team

lost their Ist or 2nd

Match. This is because it was the start of the season and he could have

talked to this people about why they are losing and analyzed the situation as a whole and

he might have sorted out the ego issues and other problems which were not allowing the

Varsity Team to come together. This should have removed a whole lot of issues at the very

beginning and helped the Varsity Team to perform better and win over the JV Team.

3. At the end of the case what action should Coach P. take on Tuesday? How should he implement his

action. Please be specific.

Coach P. should switch the Teams as JV Team despite being with weak stakeholders has

been working as a strong team as compared to the Varsity Team with stronger

stakeholders. This has been discussed earlier as to why the Varsity Team was losing against

the JV Team as the JV Team was working in harmony and they were acting more like a team

as compared to a group which was the varsity. Thus, the Coach should switch the team as

switching players from different teams is not a good ideas as the coach had already seen

this in his failed experiment. Also, even if the coach wants to motivate the varsity team to

take on other opponents, I think the Varsity Team has reached such a point that they are

not ready to be embraced in the form of a team and this would lead to even more failed

exercise for coach and it would lead to further embarrassment to the coach. He must

encourage the JV Team to perform even better and look for strengths within their weakness

and never let the bond of strength of unity which they had formed not to go apart.

4. How would you compare the Army Crew Team to other kinds of organizational teams? What are

the key similarities and differences? What lessons can we learn from the Army Crew Team?

The Army Crew Team is similar to other kinds of organizational teams in several respects. In

organizations too, take the example of a company in which if a particular department

falters, then other departments which are related to that department falter as well. Also, if

we look into the people in the departments, if there is an ego issue between different

stakeholders in the department, this leads to negative result for the department. It is more

or less leads to the kind of Domino’s effect which leads all the organization to fail, if such

kind of practices becomes too rampant.

In the case of the Army Crew Team, since it was small and consisted only of 8 members, the

main distinction which might come to mind is of scale. But, crew team which was

performing as a team and not as a group was winning. In the same way, if there are ego

clashes between different departments of the company, it is definitely going to the hamper

the goals of an organization as such. Also, in the case of a company, some of the time, one

of the people falters, so another person does his work and thus helps him out of the

situation. In the case of the crew team, it is left to the crew member alone who was out of

sync with the other crew members to come in sync. Thus, it is the most important point of

distinction.

The lesson which we can learn from the crew teams in this case is that ego clashes have the

ability to mar the efficiency of the entire organization. In order to do better when we work

in teams is to put out the ego issues aside and then work as a team under harmony and

work towards the common goal. It reminds us of the family of ants who do massive projects

together and they work in complete harmony with each other. The best lesson which we

can take away from this case is that, one cannot be perfect alone in this world, where we

have to work with people. In order to perform better and excel, so that the entire performs

well is to keep our ego issues aside and work together and towards common goal.