Effective Team Management

Effective team management is crucial to business success (Mazzarol and Sophie 73). As Pertland portended, to manage successful teams is a remarkable fete, and that not many managers achieve. As such, Jenny McConnell's management woes and the vast responsibility bestowed to her by the senior management showcases management strategies that managers employ to turn around organizational performance. Vance (36) stated that it is possible for a company to have qualified and dignified employees yet present dismal performance on return on assets as applicable to the determination of company performance concerning competitors in the industry. This paper analyses McConnell's case study concerning team management how the IT Company can use the issues management process to become more productive and attain the expected company performance levels.

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As the new Chief Information Officer, Jenny McConnell is presented with a talented yet disjointed team of professionals. At departmental levels, the company's performance is up to standard. However, such a team of highly skilled personnel should at least surpass the industry's average performance threshold. To effectively manage the IT Company's departmental and regional heads, McConnell has to deploy effective team management tactics. These include strategies such as planning for team building activities where employees come together for non-work related activities, benchmarking, industrial workshops, as well as improve the quality of communication between the managers. These are crucial activities that the company should undertake if McConnell is to realize her new responsibilities as the new CIO.

Issues Affecting Team Performance

The talented IT specialists and managers under McConnell portray a lack of cohesion in their group. The majority of the team members are individualists who perceive to work alone rather than work as a team. Lazar et al. (36) stated that such a group of leaders have a firm belief in their capabilities to the extent that they do not trust others to perform as well as themselves. The main problem with the team is the members of the team lack trust in team building, and they lack maintenance of proper communication among the members. Luck of trust in the group can create division among the members (Pertland), and this results in low productivity of the organization as the members lack the attention of the work they are doing.

The managers should know that working together is what constitutes a team is and that it is not the purpose of teams practice teamwork but its sole function to work well for the greater good of the organization or the group (Vance 76). The members of the team had the problem of not communicating well as they did not share information among themselves. This behavior was seen during meetings where members had distractions from their iPads and smartphones. This shows that the members did not openly discuss and solve their issues with the previous CIO.

The previous manager did not practice a hands-on-approach to effectively conduct meetings, hence the slow disintegration in strategic communication to bolster team performance. Given that regional CIOs admitted that Bob usually went into oblivion whenever he chaired meetings, it is evident that in the previous meetings, Bob believed in autonomous management. Individualism is the most significant concern impeding cohesion and teamwork within the company.

Steve Jobs, the late Chief Executive Officer for Apple, remarked that great inventions are usually a result of teamwork (Vishnevskaya et al. 34). Lack of communication and brainstorming sessions to share solutions to technical IT problems costs the company double resources and time as individual departmental heads struggle independently with similar issues. Teamwork could save the company significant time to deliberate on other matters relating to customer service and quality IT management practices to their clients.

How the Team Disintegrated To Low Levels of Cooperation and Cohesion

The autonomous leadership style practiced by the previous manager takes up a more substantial portion of the blame for the present woes of the IT department. The former CIO had no objections nor improvisation to strategies that juniors presented during the meeting. Though useful in highly skilled managers, this leadership approach failed to deliver desired results due to miscommunication between the management. The former CIO believed in autonomy to give a chance to the sectional heads to run their departments to the best of their knowledge.

Poor communication also played a role in the dismal performance of the team. There was no clear and targeted communication between the team members. Effective communication empowers the team and bolsters team spirit to trust and believe in each other (Vance 81). A common approach and unity of direction also affected team performance. Each departmental and regional head was focused on individual performance to own jurisdiction, yet collaborative efforts could have propelled the company to more exceptional organizational performance.

Recommendations

Planning for Effective Meetings. Meetings are a quite common aspect of organizational communication. People communicate with each other very often using electronic devices, but they feel good about physical sessions. However, not planned and executing meetings well leads to the team's unproductivity. Such was the type of meetings previously chaired by the former CIO. McConnell, should, however, strive to conduct a successful meeting with well thought out agendas and mutual participation amongst all the attendees.

Common approach and unity of direction. The greatest significance of unity of direction and common approach to management problems is the potential to gain greater trust levels and constructive debate (Vance 38). Team focus should as well be all around. McConnell should not only focus on the effectiveness of the team but also to the general efficiency and high performance of the whole company. Roles should as well be duly delegated so that the company encounters no role duplication or wastage of resources solving the same issues.

Openness to highlight problems affecting team performance. The most daunting strategy, and one that is in sharp contrast to McConnell's management philosophy, is coming out open with the real problems that affect the team.

Benchmarking and workshops. McConnell should organize visitations to top-performing IT companies and departments for the team to learn what drives the other groups to achieve higher performance than their parent company. Swaminathan (84) stated that the purpose of benchmarking and attending workshops is to borrow competitors' best practices and apply the same within the organization.

Diversity and Communication. McConnell should realign communication mediums of the organization to improve on quality and transfer of real-time information amongst regional and departmental CIO's. Moreover, as the new CIO, and in collaboration with the HR department of the organization, McConnell should put together a team of managers with diverse management and ethical backgrounds.

Summary and Conclusion

Jenny McConnell's case study facilitates to discredit the notion that having exceptionally skilled members is a guarantee for successful team performance. Field and Brown (25) intoned that a group of experts with no teamwork performs poorly than a group of amateurs working together. McConnell was presented with a great team but with poor team management ethics and codes of conduct. The team was disjointed, and the various CIOs struggled independently to attain departmental goals and objectives at the expense of the realization of the company's overall mission and vision. The greatest significance of unity of direction and common approach to management problems is the potential to gain greater trust levels and constructive debate. Team focus should as well be all around. McConnell should not only focus on the effectiveness of the team but also to the general efficiency and high performance of the whole company. Roles should as well be duly delegated so that the company encounters no role duplication or wastage of resources solving the same issues.

To change the performance of her new IT team, McConnell should undertake to implement the strategies as the author has detailed herein. These strategies have the potential to instill teamwork and create an environment of trust, creativity, innovation, and united artistry for the greater good of the organization. Moreover, in contrast to the autonomous leadership style of the previous manager, McConnell should deploy a hands-on approach to run this group of professionals effectively. Adherence to this deliberations will ensure that departmental heads have a sense of direction and hence collaborate to share timely information and also suggest useful solutions to support the organization attains the level of performance as that enjoyed by the Fortune 500 companies.

Works Cited

Field, R., & Brown, K. (2019). Effective leadership, management and supervision in health and social care. Learning Matters.

Lazar, Moran, et al. "Entrepreneurial team formation." Academy of Management Annals 14.1 (2020): 29-59. https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2017.0131Mazzarol, Tim, and Sophie, Reboud. "Work Book: Small Firms and Human Resources." Workbook for Small Business Management. Springer, Singapore, 2020. 67-73. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9513-0_7

Pentland, Alex. "The New Science of Building Great Teams". Harvard Business Review, 2012, https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-teams. Accessed 18 April 2020.

Swaminathan, M. (2019). Steve Jobs and The Value of Interventional Imagers. Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography, 32(10), A21. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.echo.2019.08.008Vance, David. Business Essentials. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.

Vishnevskaya, Elena, Veronika Petrova, and Tatiana Varentsova. "Leading approaches to project management in steering creative projects." 4th International Conference on Social, Business, and Academic Leadership (ICSBAL 2019). Atlantis Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2991/icsbal-19.2019.2 Accessed 18 April 2020.