Application Of Organizational Behavior At Group/Team Level

Assignment # 2

By

Ashis R Nayak 10/11/2014

Course: Weekend MBA BMGT 513 Organizational Behavior

By Paul Thurston

This assignment is to apply the organizational behavior concepts learned to improve effectiveness, efficiency and/or engagement at the Group/Team level. The Situation described below is related to my real experience. To hide identity of the characters the name has been changed.

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Contents Introduction: ............................................................................................................................................... 3

Back-story: .............................................................................................................................................. 3

5 Dysfunctions of a Team*1 .................................................................................................................... 3

Team Analysis ......................................................................................................................................... 3

Challenge: ................................................................................................................................................... 5

Figure -1 *2 .............................................................................................................................................. 5

Planning to build an effective team: ........................................................................................................... 5

Productive Team communication: .......................................................................................................... 5

Shake it up and couple it up .................................................................................................................... 6

Leading By Example *4 ............................................................................................................................. 6

Reward .................................................................................................................................................... 7

Celebrate with Team ............................................................................................................................... 8

Feedback Section ........................................................................................................................................ 9

Reviewer#1 ............................................................................................................................................. 9

Reviewer#2 ........................................................................................................................................... 10

Conclusion Section .................................................................................................................................... 11

Evaluation Section .................................................................................................................................... 12

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Introduction:

Back-story:

I joined a new organization couple of month before, in new team, in a traditional IT Project

where first phase of development completed and working on further phase of development under

a fresh management team change. This team is not as huge team as compared to the other

modules of the project. The team is a mix of few experienced and few mid level experienced

members. After my on boarding process, I found myself alone, even there was no proper

welcome to the team expect few name on few emails, missing faces. I do not find the team is

working as team anywhere. The decisions are getting delayed. The back log of defects is not in

control, which is blocking the further development phase in time. There are so many work-

around and incidents to cover the defects, also the backlog count of these types of requests are

huge. This indicates the quality of the product is poor. After a couple of months of close

observation and assessment of team I figure out the team need improvement to perform more

effectively and efficiently.

5 Dysfunctions of a Team*1 In couple of month I have observed below symptoms in the team, which has resulted in

increasing backlog and the bottleneck of the poor quality of deliverable.

Observed Symptoms:

Hesitate to ask for help or provide constructive feedback

Hesitate to offer help outside their own boundaries

Ignore controversial topics that are crucial for team success

Create environments where back-channel politics and personal attacks thrives

Create ambiguity among team about direction and priorities

Watches windows of opportunity close due to excessive analysis and unnecessary delay

Breed lack of confidence and fear of failure

Revisit discussion and decision again and again

Misses deadlines and key deliverables

Encourage Mediocrity

Team Analysis Out of 6 members of the team everyone has equally important role and everyone is technically well

sounded.

First member “S.T” (do not want to reveal identity), oldest member in the team, have depth knowledge

of that application, as he is involved in the system from day one of the project, technically well sounded.

He is the key player in the team. He holds a good repo with client because of his technical ability and

extrovert nature.

*1: “The Five Dysfunctions of a team” by Patrick Lencioni

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The other side of his personality described as irresponsible, never show up in the meeting in time, spent

most of the time outside at smoking zone, greedy towards power and because of insecurity towards his

position he never want to share the knowledge. He could not able to delegate the responsibilities even

when chances were give to lead the team in past.

Second member “O.P”, he is technically equally as good as S.T and joined couple months after “S.T”

joined both have equal experience in IT industry , helpful in nature.

He won’t open up as he was been ignored in past because of his introvert nature. He often opens up

during meetings. He is well reachable individually.

Third member “A.C “, she is a certified business analyst, honest towards her job, but she thinks her

stakeholders are at only client side and she need not required to sync up with the team only the dry

document is her area of responsibility and rarely discuss further with the development lead or developers

for feasibility.

Fourth Member M.R, he is a dedicated, skilled technical developer with couple of years of experience.

He always waits for the experience member’s direction without much concern if everything is

documented well. He lost the interest in creativity as he was never included in the design and solution

level discussion.

Fifth Member “S.R”, he also has same experience as “M.R”, as there is no clear direction and

involvement his absenteeism is quite high and it seems, he is a good example of social loafing. He try to

push as much as his work piggy-backing through “M.R”.

Sixth Member “P.S”, she is a dedicated tester for the application development with a good track record

from previous projects, but reluctant to communicate in team for the issues but spare most of the time in

gossip, least attentive during meetings.

Other than this I felt there is no platform to share the idea or personal emotion in between the team

members which is an obvious reason for low cohesiveness in the team members.

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Challenge:

To build an effective team by building trust in between team members, increasing accountability, and

buy-in commitment to achieve a common goal

Figure -1 *2

Planning to build an effective team:

Productive Team communication: *3

As I have mentioned earlier there is no communication or common platform to share the conflicts or

issues or emotions between the team members. I am thinking of conducting a regular status meeting or

team meeting with team members. I believe this is critical to have similar meeting in place because this

not only give the status of the task but also give an insight of risks and issues. And tracking the milestone

and making specific member responsible or accountable for the task, and re-reviewing the tasks in further

meetings give a team to perform towards specific goal. These meetings also give a healthy environment to

discuss the healthy conflicts and transparency to the communication.

*2: “The Five Dysfunctions of a team” by Patrick Lencioni

*3: PM Network September 2014 page 20 “Voices | In the Trenches – The Four P’s” by Yael Cohen, PMP

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I believe in this type of meeting because in past experience when I was managing a agile project the

standup call every morning used to provide a clear direction towards the rest of the day’s goal and a

assessment of the previous day task, as the goal was clear for the day the enthusiasm of the team was at

peak and team was striving to finish the task.

Shake it up and couple it up I have tried this option most of the time whenever I got a project in between to gain the most productivity.

Let me explain what this is , revisit the task, discuss with the team if this task can be split into further sub

task level and if the sub task can go parallel. Share the task between team, assign the one part of the same

task to one experienced individual and other parts into less experienced persons, give a timeline to

complete the entire task and give accountability to one of them so this way the person who is accountable

will try to finish the task within the timeline and in the same time there less experience members will

interact and learn the things during the job. If the team is huge it is essential to do so but in a small team

also this is an effective way to build the team and manage the milestones/task. This also helps in reducing

any social loafing as this gives a clear bifurcation of each individual’s task.

To make the environment more challenging and interesting, and varied, it is better to cross train the team

during the job and break the team and shuffle the roles responsibility also give a better bonding between

the team. This also give a person independent capability in a team. This also minimizes the personal level

ego and more professional cohesive environment.

Leading By Example *4

This is a really best way to gain the trust of the team members, until I show the trust towards my team

members they will not going to accept me as part of their team. Until I am sincere towards the job I

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cannot ask them to be sincere. I remember an experience when I was working on an offshore-onsite

model and there was a critical deliverable to go, it was at opposite time zone, I responded the offshore

during my night time until we arrive at a common feasible solution, it was almost entire night I spent with

them then after a small nap I woke up found my team still working on executing the solution. After

couple of hours of negotiation I could able to buy-in some more time from client but when I asked the

offshore team that they can leave for the day and can finish tomorrow during their work hours they

replied if you can spent with us sleepless night, why cannot we. This was not the end they finished before

the expected hours and supported me during entire phase of project.

I believe this will certainly work in this situation as well.

Reward

The team and individual reward should be pushed by the manager to keep motivating the team and

individuals. This also gives a competitive environment to the team or individual to give his/her best

towards the goal. I have experienced when there is reward set for any such intra team competition the

team members work more closely to achieve the goal.

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Celebrate with Team:

A bi-weekly or monthly get-together or Friday lunch is a good idea for teambuilding. During such

celebration a play time with small group also helps build the team and improve interaction between the

team members.

Any successful phase gate or successful completion of the project milestone should be celebrated to keep

motivating the team5

.

Celebration of the anniversary or the birth day of team members increases the emotional bonding between

the team.

*4: http://www.mindtools.com/

*5: PMP Exam Prep Book by Rita Mulcahy

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Feedback Section

Reviewer#1 Reviewer Name: Om

Role in the Project: Senior Developer

Feedback:

Work satisfaction for each team member is very important ingredient for an effective team.

This is a complex IT project where people dependency is high, with lots of scope for process for

improvement especially in building effective team.

The size of this project and timeline is not suitable to apply agile methodology.

I would say celebrate with team definitely boost each team member confidence and motivate to work

towards achieving team goal.

Most of the time IT development team member fails to understands the important business scenarios of

the project. Team member who joins the project at later phase usually lags behind to gain required

business knowledge and end up feeling inferiority complex. We need to change our team induction

program in such a way that each team member has enough business process knowledge along with

underlying project design.

Due to complex nature of this project individual reward won’t work. Instead rewards for team definitely

boost the team morale and confidence.

We should motivate team member to adopt culture to help each other and celebrate the team success

rather than individual success.

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Reviewer#2

Reviewer Name: Vivek Gupta

Comments:

I agree that team meeting could be very good first step in filling communication gap between team

member and building trust. This also facilitates team members having more visibility to other team

members work/overall team work. This way team member feels part of team and they also become

committed.

Team building exercises could be additional step toward reaching the same goal. Reward could be also

one of the factor in motivating team member, but I think recognition from management/peer would

equally motivate team members and also make them more committed toward the project. Both rewards

and recognition should happen on regular basis and not limit to formal reviews only.

Apart, I would like to add, give individuals ownership of tasks to make them accountable, responsible and

gives them feeling that they are part of team and they are also contributing toward the project goal.

And last, there should be respect of the team members for each other and for the team regardless of year

of experience (fresher’s or orders) and this can be easily done by showing everybody works equally

significant to the project.

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Conclusion Section

I respect the true feedback from Om and Vivek. I am agree with Om that this is not the time to apply agile

methodologies in the middle of the project, but I was intended to say the meetings or communication

process which I have learned during some of my agile project was a better example of the clear and

effective communication towards the transparancy and the clear direction for team members to achive the

goal. I also believe the clear direction towards task or goal will increase the team efficacy and will raise

positive synergy in the team to work in a colabrative manner.

I understand the work satisfaction for the each individual in a team which actually galavnize the

productivity, to address the issue I have planned the steps in my section above “Shake it up and couple it

up” . This will improve the self-actualization*6

of each team member and will motivate them to achive

the common goal more effectively.

I also believe vivek’s idea of the team involvement is a great one which I have emphasized in the above

section of “Shake it up and couple it up” , not only the task ownership but also the decision making or

any change impacting the team at any point should have individual’s involvement to get the buy-in as

well as achieving the goal with a collabrative effort.

Team building is a progressive elaborative process and can not be achive with one or two team building

sessions, I have to keep on working with the team through out the project. I believe untill I feel like I am a

part of the team I have to keep trying to gather the team members to achive the common goal.

*6: Maslow's hierarchy of needs

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Evaluation Section

Evaluation By : Paul Thurston