Team Marketplace Simulation

Coursework for:
How effective was your simulation team? (I was on Team 4 like th post at the bottom of this) Why?

Give an example of how the team worked together to overcome a problem using the following:
Weekly readings, other resources you have researched and personal experiences
The team development information from the Unit 2 Seminar
The 6-step problem-solving workshop (Unit 2)
The information from your Traitify evaluation from the Career Center (Unit 2)
Looking back to look forward, what would you have changed or done differently to have made the team more effective?
How will your team be planning for the Adjourning stage in Tuckman’s model?

Using these sources:

Little, L. (2005). Leadership communication and the Johari Window. Administrator, 24(3), 4.

Williams, K. (2020, October 30). Tuckman’s stages of group development. West Chester University. https://www.wcupa.edu/coral/tuckmanStagesGroupDelvelopment.aspx

Martin, R. L. (2007). The opposable mind: How successful leaders win through integrative thinking. Harvard Business School Press.
Chapter 7: “A Leap of the Mind”
Chapter 8: “A Wealth of Experience”
Rowe, Sandra F. (2015). Project management for small projects (2nd ed.) [Skillsoft version].
Chapter 10: “Closing”

Something like this:

Team 4 was very efficient in the marketplace simulation, coming in second place.  We had great communication and were able to stick to a meeting schedule that did not hinder our ability to keep up with class and simulation play simultaneously. Team discussions were extremely important to our success, Little (2005), points out that “communication enhances interpersonal effectiveness and that when information is mutually held and freely exchanged, organizational productivity will increase (pg. 4).” This was the case for our team, we learned each other’s strengths and leaned on them necessary.

Like most teams we did have our strengths and weaknesses. Our strengths were in communication, marketing, accounting, market research. Our weakness were calculating demand for our sales staff and human resource management.  In relation to demand we underestimated salesperson demand in the second quarter.  This led to stock outs from our quarter 2 decisions.  Our overall demand was 1,846 units resulting in 1,586 stock outs.  However, our quarter 3 decisions led to overall demand of 3,087 and stock outs of 1,072, a significant drop in stock outs from 85.92% to 34.73%. While the goal was no stock outs we significantly improved our production.

We used the 6-steps to problem solving by Edge Training (2007) to help us overcome this problem. First. we defined the problem, which was stock outs. Second, we analyzed the problem using a gap-analysis identifying where we were and where we wanted to be.  Thirdly, we did several calculations to see how the demand would affect manufacturing and operating capacity. Fourth we discussed the solutions and evaluated which ones made the most since for the simulation.  We then chose our best solution and made changes as needed to the areas that were affected downstream. Step six is evaluating progress, when the decision results were available it gave us an evaluation of our decisions, which vastly improved during the quarter.

Looking back at the progress we made as a team and what I would have done differently, I would have spent more time in the early meetings getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of the team.  We eventually learned these things, but it was until the 3rd week.  Had we known early who had the best understanding of manufacturing and how those operations work in tandem with salesperson demand then we could have avoided the level of stock outs we had in the results from our Q2 decisions.

The adjourning stage of the Tuchman model is in full swing. We have finished the simulation and are working on our final deliverables.  We will have our last group meeting this Sunday to make any necessary changes to the presentation before it is turned in. As William’s (2020) says, “planned conclusion usually includes recognition for participation and achievement and an opportunity for members to say personal goodbyes”.  We will have a time of reflection at the end of our meeting and seeing how everyone felt it went and congratulate everyone on a job well done. This group always had a set end date so it isn’t a surprise, there will be no signs of grief that long term teams may show.  We are simply moving forward with our MBA journey, most of us will be in additional classes together throughout the program.

References

Edge Training Systems. (2007). Problem solving and decision making: Achieving desired results [Video]. Skillsoft.

Little, L. (2005). Leadership communication and the Johari Window. Administrator, 24(3), 4.

Williams, K. (2020, October 30). Tuckman’s stages of group development. West Chester University. https://www.wcupa.edu/coral/tuckmanStagesGroupDelvelopment.aspx