Written Case Brief

“The Team That Wasn’t”

About the case:

FireArt Inc. is a family-owned glass manufacturing company in Indiana where the CEO, Jack Derry, is a
grandnephew of the company’s founder. It has historically been a high-quality, high-price producer
focused on a niche market in the Midwest region and its key customers included universities, fraternities,
sports teams, event venues, and so on. Eric Holt was hired by Jack to create a team of top managers to
develop a strategic plan within 6 months which in turn ran into issues as the CEO’s directive was vague
with no clear purpose. Randy Louderback, FireArt's appealing and highly competent director of sales and
marketing, was determined to sabotage the group's efforts. Eric was anxiously expecting the start of the
team's fourth meeting, and he was resolved to address Randy's behavior in front of the group. But before
he could, Randy started a fight, and the meeting ended quickly. The case highlights the need for a clear
team purpose, rules of engagement, addressing dysfunctional team members, and maintaining cohesion
through challenges needing a strategic turnaround plan from Eric’s new management team.

Case Problem and Issue in the case:

● At FireArt Inc., the Marketing Director, Randy Louderback was disruptive in meetings, resisting
collaboration of the team while other members became frustrated with the lack of progress and
threatened to quit, causing the other team members to shut down and disengage.
● The main issue I have observed with the company is dysfunction within the newly formed
strategy team. The newly formed strategy team meetings are filled with tension and frustration.
They don’t understand the work performance of the group. The team members don't know how
they are supposed to collaborate or what their common goal is. They complain the meetings are a
waste of time and are starting to walk out with no clear direction or leadership. I can say they can
be called a "Group" rather than a 'Team".
● The company has no clarity on the team's specific goals and success metrics. Without clear
objectives tied to company strategy and progress tracking, the team lacks accountability and
direction.
● I can say that the team did not take time to agree on norms and processes for meetings,
communication, decision-making, and sharing information which in turn failed to establish
ground rules. This lack of clarity on responsibilities and expected behaviors have created
openings for the team’s dysfunction.
● Another issue here is that Eric Holt himself lacks real experience with team dynamics, being the
team leader here. His experience operating efficient consultant working groups has not qualified
him to lead a truly cross-functional team. This is causing the group to drag down.
In conclusion, the dysfunction and lack of clarity in this new team highlights gaps in HCM practices
around organization design, leadership training, performance management, ground rules, and hiring at
FireArt.

Selected recommendation to address one of the issues contributing to the problem:

We can see that the bigger issue here is the poor team composition. The purpose of assembling a team is
mainly to accomplish larger and more complex goals, perform, get results and achieve victory in the
workplace which requires the best managers who can gather together a group of individuals and mold
them into an effective team. We can improve this by designing effective teams based on the typologies of
candidates. Here, Myers Briggs Personality and Team roles can be effective to understand interpersonal
styles, potential conflicts, and collaboration gaps among the group of individuals.
With this, we can have teams which in turn can have further improvement to become a successful team
having clear norms, roles and expectations among team members. We need to keep in mind the "Five
Dysfunctions of a Team" by Lencioni for dealing with difficult team members and managing conflicts to
have a high performance team. As a last resort, replacing overly disruptive individuals like Randy can
remove roadblocks only after trying interventions to align values and improve dynamics in the company's
workforce.

Conclusions/lessons learned:
At FireArt Inc., Randy Louderback was clearly a poor fit based on this disruptive behavior during
meetings. Seeing this, I can say that the team composition and establishing ground rules is crucial. More
intentional selection considering team roles and styles could have prevented this dysfunction.
Also, Eric failed to intervene with Randy's counterproductive actions like shutting down Carl Simmons'
proposal and his lack of facilitation experience allowed dysfunction to spiral. A team leader should
always have the capability to handle any kind of situation with the help of his managers as leadership
makes a difference to the company's workforce. With stronger skills, Eric could have created more
engagement and alignment on the company's purpose and goals.

References:

● Wetlaufer, S. (1994). The team that wasn't. Harvard Business Review, 72(6), 110-120
● Lencioni, P. M. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team. Jossey-Bass
● Fitz-enz, Jac. The ROI of Human Capital : Measuring the Economic Value of Employee
Performance. New York :AMACOM, 2000