Question

Jamil Hassan heads a newly formed project management team for a major international corporation. The team is composed of 20 professionals who live and work in Oman, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Australia, Kuwait & Africa. All members of the team report to Jamil. The team is a virtual team now since March of this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and all are connected primarily via videoconference, group-decision support software, email and telephone. The team has met twice in a face-to-face setting before the pandemic to set goals and plan. All of the team members are quite competent in their respective technical areas. Some team members have a long and valued history with the company: others have recently joined the company through a corporate merger. The team members have never worked together on any projects. The task of the team is to develop and implement technological innovations for all global business units. The team members are excited about the importance and innovative nature of their assignment. They respect each other and enjoy being part of the team.
However, the team is having difficulty getting off the ground, and the members report being extremely overloaded. Most team members travel to business sites with their countries mostly, and sometimes internationally, at least 2 or 3 times each month. The travel is important, but it causes team members to get farther behind.
The team has a secretary-cum-coordinator (Rasha) located in Dubai. Her primary responsibility is to organize travel and meetings of team members. Team members are working on several projects at once and have great difficulty finishing any of the projects. One team member has 500 unread email messages because each team member sends copies of all messages to everyone on the team. Jamil is under constant pressure to prove that his team can work and provide a valuable function to the organization.
Kindly answer the two questions that follow:

The 8 hallmarks are : 1- clear,elevating goal. 2- Result driven structure. 3- Competent team members. 4- Unified commitment. 5- Collaborative climate. 6- High standards of excellence. 7-External support & recognition. 8- Principled leadership

1. Which among the 8 hallmarks of effective team is/are lacking in the team presented in the case? Substantiate your answer(s) with brief reasons connected to the case.

2. Given the situation in the case, what can Jamil do make the team finish their team and organizational objective? Provide at least 4 ways with very brief description of each point. Each point must be written in two to three sentences.

Answer 1

Answer)1) The hallmarks which is missing are -

Clear, Elevating goal, result driven structure,collaborative climate, principled leadership.

The first reason for clear, elevating goal is that their is no vision for the team members to attain. As there are multiple projects, handled by Different team members, there is no clarity what goal is of morr priority and what is of less priority and hence it creates a Kaos.

The reason for result driven structure is that their is no proper governing structure by which the team works and by which results can be achieved. The structure here is very complex where everyone is overloaded with work.

The reason for collaborative climate is that all the team members have never worked with each other and hence there is not smooth understanding between them and their efforts are not collaborated as a person sends copies of every message even if they are irrelevant.

The reason for principled leadership is that their is no commanding authority by Jamil. Jamil lacks Leadership capabilities as he is not able to properly manage its team by showing or guiding them how to be efficient.

Answer2-) The four ways are as follows-

1-) Jamil has to properly assign projects to every team member in which they are skilled and confident and shouldn't overload them with many things as they will be burdened by work which will make them inefficient.

2-) Jamil should take proper authority and responsibility about the team's actions and should closely monitor them. He should be strict about the work policies and procedures and see to it that everyone is doing accordingly what they have been assigned.

3-) Jamil should inspire and motivate his team members so that they dont feel low and dont compromise on their work.

4-) Jamil should see to that invidual goals assign with the company goals and the difference can be minimised so that the team members be more committed to work.