Question

Task Scenario A new financial product development cross-functional team was launched by a global investment group. Team members were selected from around the world. As team members began to feel more confident and their work together accelerated, the newly appointed chief financial officer (CFO), who had no previous involvement with the process, added new expectations, challenged the established set of priorities, and made negative comments publicly about the team’s interactions with senior functional managers. The team’s work suddenly slowed down, morale dropped and expectations of success disappeared. Team members’ inability to meet face-to-face at this critical time to work through the changes added to their frustration.

Tips:

a Identify the problems caused by the CFO’s approach to the financial product development team.

b Brainstorm and develop strategies you could use to reinvigorate the team.

c Prepare a list of guidelines about how the CFO could interact with any cross-functional team in the future.

Your Task Prepare a written report that discusses teamwork and work group communication, together with your findings and recommendations to be presented to the Board of Directors. The total word length should be 1500 words

Answer 1

THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

REPORT ON TEAMWORK AND WORK GROUP DISCUSSIONS

21.09.2020

Objective: To discuss about the Work Group Communication and Team Work.

Team Work plays an important role in an organization. It builds a sense of belongingness among the employees and they feel motivated to work together to achieve organizational objectives. An employee working with a team can generate far more better results than the same employee working as an individual. A team binds the people with common objectives and goals together.

With Team work, also comes the Communication which has become one of the most integral parts of the organization. With lack of communication, the ideas would remain among the employees and would not reach the top level due to which some brilliant ideas could be dropped. The people working in an organization are considered a valuable asset and thus must be given a free access to communicate among themselves and with their superiors and subordinates. The communication that takes place through the official lines and for official purposes is called the Formal communication and the communication that takes place among the employees during their free time and for their personal means is called the Infomal communication. While most of the firms have understood the importance of Formal communication and are following it, there still is a lack of support towards the Infomal communication which is also necessary.

FINDINGS OF THE REPORT

a. Problems caused by the newly appointed CFO's approach.

PROBLEM 1: The CFO had no previous involvement with the process, while the Financial product development team had begun to work towards the project together and they were working at a good pace.

PROBLEM 2: The CFO added new expectations and challenged the set of priorities already established by the team without interacting with the team once.

PROBLEM 3: The CFO made negative comments about the team's interaction that too publicly thus harming the reputation of the team and the organization.

Clearly, the apporach that the newly appointed CFO used for the Financial product development team had loopholes in it. A team must be handled with a Participative approach while the approach of the CFO was more of an authoritative approach. The recommendations and guidelines are discussed in the next section of the report.

RECOMMENDATIONS AND GUIDELINES

b. Strategies to reinvigorate the team.

To reinvigorate the team members and to boost up their morale, following strategies can be used:

1. The team members must be given some free space to make the decisions on their own and then consult these decisions with the top authorities. This way, the Team members would feel their belongingness towards the team and consulting with top authorities would result in a better decision making altogether.

2. Diversification is another important aspect in the organizations these days. The large companies have employees from different places who come and work together with different customs, traditions, beliefs. Therefore each and every employee must be respected irrespective of their backgrounds. Since the Team members of the Financial Product development Team have been selected from across the globe, their ideas must be respected and appreciated.

3. As said earlier, Informal commuication must be given adequate importance in the team. Though excess of it may create groupism and may also generate rumors, but if handled properly, it may infact work in favor of the top level. Social groups help the members to relieve stress which is a common cause of frustration and demotivation among them. All these factors may have a negative impact to even the orgainizational goals. Therefore, the most useful strategy would be to encourage both the forms of communication.

c. List of guidelines to the CFO

• A cross functional Team has members of different functions and departments having expertise in them, the members of the team have adequate knowledge regarding different functions and thus must be allowed to handle the non core areas themselves while the key areas must be consulted.

• The CFO also added new expectations and challenged the set of priorities. The established priorities help in achieving goals at a faster rate since the members are already aware about what is to be done and what not ,thus saving a huge amount of time which is a crucial factor. The CFO must challenge only those priorities which he finds unsuitable or which may not help in achieving desired goals.

• Making negative comments about the team on a public platform must be avoided because, this ruins the reputation and goodwill of the Team as well as the organization as a whole.

• The team members should be motivated time to time with various monetary and non monetary benefits.

• Informal, face to face or personal interaction must be encouraged otherwise it may lead to frustration among the members.