Free «Effective Management» Essay Sample

Introduction                                                           

Effective management is an important tool for the success of any team project. It is achieved by allowing all members of the group to air their views freely, forming a heterogeneous team, adopting proper decision making techniques and practicing good leadership. This essay focuses on why Advert team consisting of Evan, Conner, Alexis, Derek and Judy failed to develop a good project for launching their client’s 60-inch plasma flat-screen television.

The autocratic leadership style of Conner caused the poor performance of this team. He made all his decisions independently with little or no consultation from the other members of the group. He proposed that he had the best idea for the project without listening to suggestions from other group members. When Alexis suggested that she thought the client would not like the idea, he ignored her. In addition to this, although Derek had a good idea since he had worked with the client for a long time, he was not free to air his views since he feared Conner would shut him down. This led to the poor performance of the team since it chose a project that did not match the image of the client’s company. As a manager, I would tell my team leaders to adopt a democratic leadership style since it would include the employees in decision-making (Hackman, 89). This would ensure that the employees are free to air their views thus improving decision-making in the major projects.

Another factor that contributed to the poor performance of the team is that the team was homogeneous. The members of this team had similar characteristics such as all of them were about the same age, they worked for the company for about the same time and they were all sociable and friendly. Although homogeneous teams have an advantage of high cohesion among the members contributing, it has a disadvantage of groupthink (Lussier and Achua, 125). It affected this team’s creativity and performance and thus they did not oppose any suggestion proposed by Conner. As a manager, I would suggest to the members to form a heterogeneous team. In this team, the members would have diverse orientation thus they would offer more innovative ideas improving the creativity of team (Barry, 245).

Another reason that caused poor performance of this team is that it used poor decision-making techniques. Conner appointed himself as the group leader without consulting the other members in the team. In addition to this, he proposed the project that the company was to adopt without allowing the other members to air their suggestions. He also changed aspects in the commercial without agreeing with all the other members in the group. As a manager of this firm, I would have employed several techniques to improve the performance of the group. First, I would tell each member to air his opinion on the project that he/she thinks the company should adopt (Barry, 154). I would then tell each member to list the advantages and disadvantages of each project suggested as compared to the client’s requirements (Magliolo, 39). The next step that I would take would be prioritizing the alternative starting with the one that best fits the client’s requirements. I would then choose the project that matches the client’s priorities. In situations where there are conflicts, I would tell the group members to consider disagreeing politely.

The upper management team could be responsible for the poor performance of his team. They chose a team that had only worked together for one week. In addition to this, they allowed the team to have autonomy in decision making from the beginning to the end of the project. As a manager, I would advise the management team to pick a team that was more experienced in marketing. I would also set up a task force that would monitor the performance of the team.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is evident that effective management is an important tool for the success of any team project. Advert team had poor performance on their project since they did not consider effective management techniques since Connor used autocratic leadership style instead of democratic leadership style. This led to the company not adopting Derek’s idea. In addition to this, they formed a homogeneous group instead of heterogeneous group thus experiencing groupthink. They did not follow proper decision-making techniques leading to their failure. Lastly, the upper management delegated a lot of authority to this team and thus they made poor decisions.