According to Belbin teams work best when there is a balance of primary roles and when team members know their roles, work to their strengths and actively manage weaknesses. Belbin also mentions that their should be a balance in a team of various roles for example One Co-ordinator or Shaper (not both) for leader, a Plant to stimulate ideas, Monitor/evaluator to maintain honesty and clarity, One or more Implementer, Team worker, Resource investigator or Completer/finisher to make things happen.
Info tech and Professional clearly lacked definition of roles; Howard has found it very difficult to co-ordinate both the teams and as a leader it is important for him to clearly define roles to employees. The roles for each team are not well defined and this is resulting in duplication of the work. It is important for the company to recognise the importance of motivational factors in the success of the project Shield. Many motivational theories such as Maslow A. H ‘Pyramid of needs’ gives a good understanding of basic concepts of motivation at workplace.
The pyramid of needs theory shows five steps top one being self actualisation and the last one being physiological needs such as air/water. This theory can be related shield project as when the project initially started in 1996, there was a great excitement in the Indian team. This was the biggest project they had received. The employees felt important initially and felt involved in the project. This gave them a feeling of belonging within the organisation. But, then after the Project manager Radhan left the job, there was a breakdown in co-ordination leading to Indian team being de-motivated about the job.
The self esteem of achievement and growth was absent. Therefore, many of the software programmes left the project shield. Leadership A model proposed by John Adair (1973) argued that it is not who you are but what you do which establishes you as a leader. A leader needs to balance the needs of the task, the team and the individual, shown clearly in the diagram below in his 3 circle model. The effective leader carries out the functions and demonstrates the behaviours appropriate to the circles, varying the level according to the needs of the situation.
The leader whlist balancing the three circles, sits in his/her helicopter above the process, ensuring the best possible overview of what is happening. Since info tech is based in a highly creative industry. Therefore, the role of performance plays an important part. Armstrong and Baron suggest that at its best performance management is a tool to ensure that managers manage effectively. Armstrong (2004) has listed few important things which Info tech can use to manage their teams. 1.
It is important for Howard and other project managers to ensure that both the Indian and the US teams know what is expected of them. Looking at the current situation both teams clearly lack a sense of purpose about what is expected of them in this project. Armstrong suggests that performance management is about establishing a culture in which individuals and groups take responsibility for the continuous improvement of business processes and of their own skills, behavior and contributions. It is about sharing expectations.
Managers can clarify what they expect individual and teams to do; likewise individuals and teams can communicate their expectations of how they should be managed and what they need to do their jobs. The culture of improvement needs to be created by the organisation in order for the project shield to be successful and the managers need to convey this message across to both teams. In order for a performance management to be successful for project shield it needs a structure to support it. The company should provide a framework to help employees operate, and to help them to help others to operate.
But it should not be a rigid system; there needs to be a reasonable degree of flexibility to allow people freedom to operate. The company also must understand that performance management is a process that operates as a continuous cycle. The corporate strategy goals of InfoTech must provide the starting point for project goals and should be followed by a agreement on performance and development, leading to drawing up plans between Indian and US teams and project managers with continuous feedback by formal reviews of both teams.
