Dominating Any Industry

Dominating any industry and competition is very easily achievable if you can get all employees in a company to move in the same direction. A strategic leader establishes, leads, and leverages a cohesive cross-functional team for their products. This group can provide valuable support and feedback for all its members. For the company, the team provides considerable benefits. It helps communicate more broadly, gain alignment more easily, and build better products. The concept of a product development team is definitely beneficial to the progress of MediSys. However, any benefits depend on the smooth implementation of the new team.

To address growing competition, environmental challenges, investor pressure and a slowing economy, Art Beaumont, MediSys's new president's first step was to implement an executive team consisting of heads of the MediSys and IntensCare's structure: marketing, R&D, design and engineering, production, and administration to allow cross-functional communication between department and fostering efficient information exchange thereby promoting innovation and streamline product development. Beaumont's product development team does have some features that are beneficial to the success of IntensCare. First, Beaumont authoritatively set clear objectives and deadlines and explained the premise of setting up the product development team. In doing so, he has provided a shared goal & a challenge for the group which is critical to increasing motivation and cohesiveness. We also believe that he defined the roles & expectations of each individual member in the team. Secondly, Beaumont empowered the group by providing them autonomy in performing their responsibilities. The team was given the power to secure resources and logistics for product implementation. Third, the right leadership style should be directed with all members accepting the person and style. This forming requires natural progression and not orders from the president [1]. Beaumont achieved this by selecting Jack Fogel who theoretically fits this profile and is liked by his peers. Fourth, Beaumont has set the group size to be small but effective by getting the best people for the task. In doing so, he has facilitated task orientation & process orientation. The small size not only provides multiple but effective perspectives. This also provides a safe environment to discuss the various issues they are encountering in the development process. Fifth, the team & the company are much closer to the market and can react in a timely fashion to address market requests. Lastly, Beaumont retained the founding members of the product and empowered them with additional support to make the product a reality and a success. However, developing the right team is just the first step. Successful implementation is critical to its success and as we continue to analyze this case, we observe several issues that need to be addressed

One of the largest issues was how the teams were motivated. The parallel structure was intended to align the teams so they look at bigger picture together, and develop a mutual ownership of the project, as opposed to focusing solely on the success of their own group. However, as the case states, the core groups still reported to their managers outside of the parallel team, which led to diverging interests. This is Mistake #2 as listed in Hackman's "Why Teams Don't Work" [2], which clearly states that explicit actions must be taken to affirm boundaries, and establish common ownership and collective responsibility. Beaumont's "hands off" approach was not effective while working with this team. As talented as the staff was on this team their lack of direction from management left them less effective than they would have been if leadership was present. Beaumont specified challenging team objectives, but did not provide the organizational support to achieve it. While the IntensCare group was called a team, the authority and direct supervision remained