Six Secrets of Powerful Teams: A Practical Guide to the Magic of Motivating and Influencing Teams by Michael Nir Page B

scenarios are based on the next two chapters in this book.

Case Study #1 The Team Leader - Manager
    Ashley is a team leader in a pharmaceutical company. She manages the introduction and integration of new products into operations. She reports to the portfolio manager of new products. Her background is engineering; in the past she worked in supply chain and product marketing.
    Her current team is co-located in a factory situated in Northern California. Her team consists of eight members from: manufacturing engineering, research and development, finance, operations, quality, supply chain, customer support, configuration management, and planning. The development projects duration is 6 to 9 months. Integrating the product into operations is most often difficult, time-consuming and full of errors.
    The team which Ashley leads is ad hoc. They have been working together for only one month.  There is lot of friction concerning responsibilities. There are many action-items too, and the workload is staggering.
    Let’s join a project review meeting, the fifth so far. Ashley starts the meeting; it is seven minutes late and only half of the participants are seated around the table. They commence with reviewing the action item list on which half of the action items are late.
    John from quality assurance mentions he cannot continue his work unless he receives the configuration details from research and development.
    As no member from the research and development team is present, the task is postponed for another week.
    Julie from supply chain presents the department’s analysis for required inventory levels; Peter from operations looking at the projector screen remarks: “but your estimates are all wrong! we have another analysis showing that actually these levels are too low”. Alejandro from customer support interjects saying: “Peter we know that your calculations are always off the mark”. At this point Jennifer from finance cracks a joke about how customer support is not really about customer support but more about the customer nightmare.
    Tina from planning, who has been around the company for more than eight years, is now taking control of the meeting and projects her rolling three-month forecast for production levels of the new product. Ashley tries to gain control back and asks Tina: “why do you think this is now relevant for our meeting? Let’s try to get back on our planned agenda!”  Tina answers: “we should focus on production levels as this is what is driving the transfer to production, trust me I’ve been here and have seen these projects many times”.
    Jennifer mentions cynically that it is true that Tina has been around for quite some time but going through the rolling plan has never actually helped in making a smooth transfer from development to operation. Tina replies: “I think we should try to keep to our areas of expertise, which is why I’m not sure what finance is doing in the meeting”. Jennifer retorts: “Don’t be naïve, we all know what I am doing here, since we’ve missed all our previous product quota calculations I was required to join this meeting so there won’t be any more screw ups”.
    To the other team members the discord between Tina and Jennifer is upsetting and they shuffle uncomfortably in their seats. Alejandro from customer support is working on his laptop, and when Tina asks him to confirm the forecast planning quotas, he answers: “but I thought this is not my role, and therefore I am unsure concerning the calculations and I would like Ashley to confirm the numbers later and commit to them”. Ashley answers: “but I thought that we discussed this before the meeting and you said you’ll try to provide estimates – I am not sure why you didn’t”.
    And so it continues for ten more minutes when Ashley says: “I think that the team can use a break now”.
    The meeting is almost over, most of the time was dedicated to going over Tina’s plan, and the action item list