Chattanooga Ice Cream Company Case Analysis

The Chattanooga Ice Cream Division Case Analysis Name: TEAMB Institution: Strayer University Course: Leadership in the 21st Century Professor: Dr. Mario Barrett Date: End of Week 8 Introduction Teamwork has become so influential and determinant of outcomes on goals in many organizations. Thus, the concept of teamwork has been given a lot of attention in the management process. Instead of the old management models, contemporary management lays emphasis on leadership and effective teamwork approach.

Therefore, the potential of creating and managing teams in an organization is highly valued.

Managers or top company executives are highly encouraged to prioritize the concept of teamwork at their managerial levels. The importance of teamwork is practically invaluable. From enhancing decision-making through the provision of information to achievement of organizational goals through collaborate approaches; the concept of teamwork is indispensably relevant in the management process. Effective leadership steers this concept to high-value-addition to organizational outcomes.

The crisis in the Chattanooga company present a failed teamwork where member consistently “question the competency and trustworthy of each other” (Sloane, 2003) Team management and decision-making: what went wrong in the leader? From the case, it is evident that, the concepts of teamwork and leadership have ostensibly failed.

To begin with, Moore, the president only convenes team members, who are in this case not made up of a team, at the time of crises. The first failure evident in this concept is the lack of team coordination because of role incompatibility” (Davidson, 2001) through communication.

Thus, Moore has failed as a team leader in regularly updating his team member on apparent problems and thus, requesting for their suggestions because successful managers “regularly update, coach and build self confidence” in their teams (Welch, 2005). The lack of communication in the above step creates many complications, especially in the leadership of the institution. When times of crises emerge, leaders provide ways forward and always maintain a sense of direction; even when it is not obvious.

Moore on his part failed terribly in this regard and attempted to apply management principles in solution of current problems rather than providing direction for team members through motivation.

As evident from their meeting, the president sought ways of solutions and did not seem optimistic of realizing any permanent solution to the problem. Thus, lack of enthusiasm from the president deducts an extremely valuable virtue from the leader. The concept shows how lack of communication leads to ineffective leadership in the management process.

It is also evident from the case that the leader does not have the full sense of awareness. According to Goleman (2009), the most influential parts of awareness, namely organizational and service awareness are missing in the leader. As a leader, one ought to have a full organizational understanding through reading the changing moods in order to create networks that are vital in the process of decision-making.

These include; managing organizational politics and making available and reliable networks that provide solutions in the decision-making process at times of need.

Secondly, the leader seeming does not understand full service orientation. From the afternoon meeting, it is evident that group members provide areas of critical problems to the organization and products that have failed in the market, prompting a reader to identify lack of service orientation in the president. Improvements for effective teamwork and leadership The main purpose of a team is a collaborate approach towards achieving results. Therefore, a team should have one purpose, a similar approach toward implementing their vision and the same result; which should equally affect each member.

When team members embark on working together and not as a group, they forget their personal differences and find out available similarities in working together (Smith & Katzenbach, 2005, p. 164). From the case, it is palpable that dubiousness on the existence of the team is rampant. Members of the board act differently, without a unilateral approach hence showing how diverse the group is working. Therefore, the first thing under suggestion is the formation of a team that works together, and continually updates team members through constant communication.

Low levels of leadership are brought about by lack of or deficiencies in personality (John, 2008, p.

5). Secondly, team members need to stop the competition-approach in solving problems and consider a collective one (Davidson, 2001). During the meeting, group members namely Billy, Fale and Krane are in constant confrontations on appropriate suggestions of solution the provision to the problem. Despite interruption of the president, the team members still do not show appreciation or critically consider the contributions by members, but a dismissive approach is assumed in the case.

Each team member feels that different members’ contributions are invalid and highly costly in the process of solution the provision and end in assuming a central approach. Each member thinks that the personal contribution is the final solution to the problem even without critical consideration of the same.

Thirdly, the team needs to create regular and open-ended discussions to address areas prone to crises and deliberate on solution creations before crises occur (Smith ;amp; Katzenbach, 2005). It is clear the teams meeting was only prompted by the presence of the crisis.

Team members need to forget the individual approach toward solution products and create a collective work product whereby performance is measured on the outcome of the team. This is an indication that the team will achieve high efficiency. It also needs to make regular discussions during these meetings, agree together in the process of decision-making and thus, put efforts together towards achieving the same result, measured at the organizational level. Implementing all these will to a large extent help in improving teamwork and leadership at the Chattanooga Ice and Cream factory.

Recommendations on leadership improvement on teamwork

In order to form and maintain an effective team at the work place; managers must take into consideration various aspects of formation and improvement of existing awful teamwork situations. In the case of this company, Moore, the president is laced with the responsibility of improving the already worse teamwork situation at the institution. Doing this sometimes does not require expert knowledge. For instance, Welch and Kelleher did not possess expertise knowledge when they steered GE and SW airlines to successes respectfully (Lencioni, 2002). To begin with, leaders must possess vital virtues of leadership.

Previous debates have indicated that these virtues are either naturally acquired or nurtured. Therefore, the president should first evaluate whether he possesses any of self-awareness, empathy, social skill or enough motivation (Goleman, 2009) to steer the team members towards formation of a solid, one objective team. Next, the leader needs to reform the team with a common goal such that team members can take time in trying to understand each other. This step is crucial to forgery of a solid relationship of working together and forget their differences, either those arising due to work natures or simply personal ones.

This requires mastery of various leadership styles.

Although there are approximately six conventionally known styles, mastering the four highly influential such as “coaching, authoritative coupled with affiliating and democratic” (Goleman, 2000) create a highly favorable atmosphere to organizational success. In this regard, the leader of the organization can take the available opportunity to create or set common goals that the team will be working on, to achieve common results using results. This way, he will motivate his people as a leader (Kotter, 2001).

Next, the leader needs to put members together to enable them pass through the storming duration. This step is indispensably crucial since members overcome various confusions arising from the requirements of clear understanding of their roles.

They, therefore, end up in some forms of frustration but manage to learn how to handle each other. Thus, the leader’s role in this phase is to ensure that members have come together, undergone these changes and have come out with a clear understanding of their roles in the team.

This way, teams can make right decisions and avoid traps such as “anchoring, framing and confidence traps” among others (Hammond, Keeney, Raiffa, 1998) Lastly, once a team is in place with clear goals and every member has understood roles and function in the team, team leaders should ensure that they relinquish themselves of decision-making powers and pass them over to their team (Welch, 2005). At this point, team members are made responsible for making critical decisions aimed at helping the organization to achieve high performance.

From this, then the leader can start performance tracking and subsequent help in case the team encounters difficulties in the process of purpose achievement.

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HBR, 85-96. Patrick Lencioni. (2002). The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. (A Wiley Imprint).

San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Carl Sloane, (2003, October). ” The Chattanooga Ice Cream Division”. HBR, 1-11 Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K.

Smith, (2005, July-August). ” The Discipline of Teams”. HBR, 162,164-171. Jack Welch, Winning, Chapter 5: “Leadership (IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT YOU)” (1st ed. ). New York, NY: HarperCollins.