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304 Case Study Essay

Better Essays

Lynn Hou, Alexander Jun, Lara Kasian,
Stephen White, Jennie Zhang

Jody Tolan

BUAD 304 Section #14728

3 March 2011
Team Case Analysis: Are Five Heads Better Than One?

In the case “Are Five Heads Better Than One?” a newly formed marketing group, composed of Evan, Conner, Alexis, Derek, and Judy, failed to resurrect the firm’s revenues. First, management failed to select a group of diverse individuals who would be able to contribute unique ideas towards the project. The backgrounds of these five members bared too many similarities for the members to work together efficiently. The article states, “Evan, Conner, Alexis, Derek, and Judy were around the same age, had worked for the company for about the same amount of time, and …show more content…

In this case, “P” (performance), is fuzzy; in other words the marketing managers did not clarify what the goal would be. The team focuses too much on the team morale, rather than focusing on creating a worthwhile commercial for the plasma-TV client.
Poor management is another contributing factor and reason the project fails. Initially, the company, “allowed [the team] as much autonomy as possible” (700). The firm intended to give the team “freedom to see the project through from start to finish by coming up with their own ideas, hiring someone to film the commercial once the idea was in place, creating and maintaining a budget, and presenting the final commercial to the client.” However, this proves to be too much autonomy for a team which worked together for only a week. The team is not given enough guidance or information by management to properly pursue this “home run” project. Management does not provide the necessary steps the team should have taken to effectively complete the assignment. In addition, as stated before, a strong bias exists towards the choice of which members would comprise the “home run” team. Management failed to choose group members based on group performance. Rather, they chose members based on surface-level attributes, such as age, time within the company, and sociability. Lastly, there is a huge problem with communication. The marketing team created an

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