Reference no: EM133302951

THE TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT's ELITE TEAM

The case the Tallahassee Democrat's ELITE team evaluates on building effective team and team works. In this case study, Fred Mott, the general manager of the democrat went far beyond its original motive of plummeting error in the advertising department. The working of team affected the entire democrat and eventually influenced the development as well as the whole chain of newspaper. The lack of team management and discipline hinders the team performance. Moreover, the team got stuck in one phase of team development. The goals were there but vague which affected the performance of the team. The ELITE team did number of things that predict the high performance.

It began with the formation of team by the top management to generate profit and make money instead of the central theme of "customer service". The team moves through a series of stages of forming, norming, storming and performing. Each has a primary purpose and a common set of interpersonal dynamics among team members. The team began with the forming stage where the first step in a team's life is bringing together a group of individuals which focus on defining and assigning the task. The team establishes relationship among themselves. Since people want to be accepted by others in this stage and usually avoid conflicts and disagreements in the forming stage. However, in the democrat case it was contradictory. The team engaged in struggling in the power and pointing fingers on each other on department errors. The team did not work on issue of customer satisfaction which top management knew was not achievable. Mott as a leader could not manage to motivate the team to work in one direction. Some members of the team have difference in thoughts in regards with their senior management.

Over the time, the team got strong and more confident, put lots of efforts to build customer focus and break down the barriers. The team clarifies its strategies to achieve the target. The team focus on every stage to perform their best for their newspaper but eventually failed to achieve their set goals. Mott as a leader was lacking in team management.

The team did a numeral thing that could divine their performance. Mott's top management did not reach a high level of performance. The exclusive reason was that the team was lacking in the norming stage. As a team they lacked a clear purpose, never focus on the attribution of higher performance like performance outcomes, internal accountability, inefficiency leading to efficiency, high credibility and trust and clarity of core competence. Furthermore, the team got stuck in norming stage of development.

The formation of ELITE team focuses on the eliminating of errors. The ELITE team breaks the norming track and begin again. Mott is now having a clear vision and showing a huge positive swing

Question 1: WHAT POINTS TO THE NEED FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT?

Question 2: WHAT WAS THE EILITE TEAM'S CORE COMPETENCE? WHAT SUPPORTS YOUR CONCLUSION?