Marketing 6004 Team Characteristics analysis by David Demers

Team Characteristics (D Demers)

The team that I am assessing is my team for Marketing 6004.  The good point of this team is that once we get organized, the work gets done fairly well, although there are some stragglers that finish their parts a bit on the late side.  In fact, that is the big problem, there was no one that “took the bull by the horns” early enough in the project work to divide up the tasks and gets the ball rolling during our first group project.  The result was that our work was somewhat “last minute”.

To attempt to change our ways and shake things up, I have tried to get us rolling for our second group project that is due on 15 April.  I feel like I am being a bit “pushier” than I usually am, as normally I am a follower and not a leader, at least in subjects where I am not very strong (like Marketing).  For the project there are 5 initial questions (1x5%, 3x10%, 1x15%) based on the “case”, then the 6^th question (50%) is to propose a marketing strategy.  I asked the other four members to each pick a question to answer (I will do the remaining one), and also to “put something down on paper” for the marketing strategy (do a virtual brainstorming, then put the best ideas together as our response for Q6).

If I were to assess our team on the “forming, norming, storming, performing” spectrum, I would say that the forming and norming stages were achieved during our first group work.  The division into work units with each person taking one was done, then the revision process leading to the final version was a relatively efficient collaboration.  I hope that my proposition for division of work for our second group work will get the ball rolling, and if I judge our team’s work ethic well, we will do (brain-)storming then performing to come up with a proposed marketing strategy.  That is my hope at least J.

There is a big difference between our team that will achieve respectable results and “brilliant teams” like those that take part in “MBA games” type activities on the marketing side.  Watching teams like those “makes my head spin”, their thought processes are wickedly fast, with the ability to come up with original and innovative solutions.  I believe that our team is doing well with “the elements in place”, and I believe that our results are going to be very close to optimal for our team’s capabilities.  I am hoping that by getting all team members starting on their tasks rapidly that we will achieve very respectable if not spectacular results for our second group project.