Battery Recycling Growth

VinaClean is a new battery recycling company (just started this year) based in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Their goal is to stop the destruction of Vietnam’s environment from consumers disposing of
household batteries in landfills.
Suzi Tran, the head of VinaClean has received generous donations from many concerned citizens
in order to fund operations for the first three years. Ms. Tran’s goal is to make operations so
efficient that VinaClean can be self-funding after the third year. Ms. Tran has not worked out all
the details but she feels this is a realistic goal. If her vision does not fully come to life, she still
believes that spending her time to improve the environment of Vietnam is a worthy cause to
which she is happy to dedicate her time in order to benefit her future children.
In order to begin operations, Ms. Tran needs to hire at least two other people to help her. She
does not expect to find people who are willing to donate their time – she has budgeted 15m VND
per month per worker. She has also budgeted 2m VND per month per worker for the expenses
those employees will naturally have which mainly include transportation along with office
(including telephone) expenses. Ms. Tran believes that by paying above-market salaries she will
be able to hire above-average workers which should lead to more creative solutions going
forward. Ms. Tran expects the new hires to be future leaders – each new hire will eventually
oversee a team of workers.
The new hires will be responsible for developing VinaClean’s strategy but the overall vision for
VinaClean is to convince retail stores to host battery drop boxes where consumers can drop their
old, dead household batteries. VinaClean would then collect these drop boxes once per week,
bringing the batteries to a central processing center. The processing center would recycle the
batteries. While no processing center has been identified, there are not enough funds to build a
battery recycling center. VinaClean would need to develop a relationship with an existing center,
which might be in another country. The new hires would have to help with all aspects of
developing VinaClean including finding a recycling center.
VinaClean now has a team of agents who must work together to execute Suzi Tran’s vision of a
cleaner Vietnam, staring with Hanoi.
Each member of the team will be responsible for a different area of Hanoi. Ms. Tran does not
want to be involved in the details of the team’s work but she will step in as needed. She expects
her employees, who are paid an above-market salary, to work effectively together and be able
to negotiate their own responsibilities amongst themselves. She also believes in peer-evaluation
so each member will evaluate the other members of the team.
Key tasks that must be handled (there might be others that the team decides) include:
• Deciding on which role each member will fill
• Decide which tasks must be done in order to fulfill the vision of Ms. Tran
• Decide who will take the lead on each task and who will support the leader (not every
member must be involved with every task)
 • Ensure that everything on the list of tasks happens properly
Role
Your team must work together to divide up Hanoi into working areas and gain permission from
local retailers to host the battery “drop boxes.” The team also needs to design and produce the
drop boxes so the consumers will use them and the retailers will host them. In the end, each
member of the team is required to produce their own report with the following information:
Tasks:
• Assess the benefits that teamwork brought to VinaClean’s efforts to get consumers to
recycle household batteries.
• Report on your actual performance as a leader and member of your team and how the
team worked towards specific goals and dealt with any conflicts or difficult situations
• Review the effectiveness of your team in achieving the goals set by Ms. Tran and the goals
set by the team for itself.
• Explain the factors involved in planning the monitoring and assessment of work
performance.
• Plan and deliver the assessment of the development needs of one member of your group
• Evaluate the success of the assessment process