Question

Imagine you are a senior manager at Newskool Grooves who has been tasked with putting together a cross-functional team that will decide on which type of communication platform the company should use for corporate communications (e.g., email, video conferencing, secure group chats, etc).

1. Describe how you would put together your team and provide rationale for these steps based on relevant components from the team effectiveness model.

2. How would you evaluate if your team is effective?

Answer 1

1. The NewSkool Grooves require a communicational platform for corporate communication and as a Senior manager, the team working under is assigned to identify, analyze and brainstorm over the following factors for the right product for our company:

a) Need and Requirement Analysis: The first and foremost justification of any requirement is to ask the right questions like what do we need, why do we need and what are the implications before and after that particular need is fulfilled. The representative from the operation management team suits the best fit for such kinds of role as operation of the firm are in the hands of the team of operation management and therefore would be suitable for analyzing the need and requirement analysis, and their implications on business.

b) Availability of alternatives: The availability of the products in the market, their market share, their popularity and marketable features are best captured by the team of the marketing management professionals. Therefore, this factor is needed to be handled by the marketing department of the firm to get the latest as well as industry leaders in the market.

c) Degree of easiness and learning: The learning and training are one of the most difficult jobs for implementation of the technological changes into a firm. The training programs should be easier, user-friendly and short for the beginners and for the industry professional so to get the maximum benefits with minimum training inputs. The Human Resource teams are experts in this field and hence this factor should be handled by them.

d) Financial Implications: The financial budgets, operation costs, effect on the profits and revenue of the investment are point of concerns for the finance department. Therefore, the finance department competencies are required to decide the best path for these kinds of investments for a firm.

e) Debugging and maintenance: The more error-free and less maintenance software is, the more it will increase the productivity of the firm. To judge a product on this factor, the IT professionals and the support team are the best candidates to provide advice on such matter selections.

Therefore, in order to put together a team and select an appropriate option for the requirement of corporate communication tool, the team members from the above-mentioned department are required for an optimal approach of product selection and deployment.

2. The team effectiveness depends upon the performance and judgement criterias which can be set by benchmarking the absolute necessary qualities and expectations from the team. At various stages in the business, a firm has to face the trade-off between various factors, if something is absolutely critical for the business, then it cannot be compromised on any grounds. Keeping this approach, this method can be supported by the analysis of the tools and technologies used by the leading competitors in the market. If the solution suggested by the team matches somewhat the benchmarking criteria and a mutual agreement between the team mates of a cross-functional team is reached, then it can be qualified as the appropriate and effective team for the implementation of the new project of corporate communication in the firm.

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