Course Relevance
This caselet is designed for the following PGDM / MBA courses:
Talent Acquisition, Performance Management System, Human Resource Management (HRM), Organizational Behaviour, Talent Management.
Academic Concepts
Organizational Behavior
To Understand Group Behaviour in an organisational setup.
Helpful in examining patterns of communication, cooperation, influence of leaders, motivating employees, and organisational culture while transforming.
Edgar Schein’s Model of Organisational Culture
Understands organisational culture in terms of three elements: artefacts, espoused values, and underlying assumptions.
Helpful in understanding how artefacts, espoused values, and underlying assumptions were transformed by the team.
Small teams in many organisations face issues like missed targets, lost productivity, poor communication, low customer satisfaction, and difficulty making decisions. Many organisations struggle to see the benefits of teamwork and how to create and maintain high-performance teams. When one team underperforms, managers or HR professionals often resort to traditional team-building exercises, personality assessments, or informal workshops. While these interventions can boost morale, they often fail to impact team performance significantly.
In this situation, a structured approach focused on role clarity, communication, accountability, and measurable results can lead to lasting changes. This case illustrates how a small team’s performance improved through targeted interventions and effective team building. The case centres around Riya Rao, who joined a fast-growing tech startup with over 12 years of experience in operations, people management, and product development. She took charge of a team of six product developers. The company had built a strong reputation for innovation and had steadily grown over the past three years. However, as competition increased, the team needed to cooperate and make decisions more quickly.
Although the team was capable in development, design, QA, marketing, and customer support, their efficiency was declining. They frequently missed project deadlines, suffered from poor communication, and worked independently. In her first few weeks, Riya spoke with each team member to understand their perspectives. Everyone was confident in their contributions but noted issues with coordination, accountability, and trust within the team. Marketing set unrealistic expectations for developers, while developers felt the marketing team ignored their needs. Quality assurance team members reported excessive delays in defect reporting and felt excluded from planning discussions. Customer support shared similar concerns about not being included in planning, and QA staff noted that defects were reported too late.
Riya’s last meeting was with Priya, the HR Business Partner on the team. Priya candidly admitted that collaboration had been problematic in the past. They had tried personality assessments, team outings, and informal team-building sessions. While these efforts temporarily improved morale, they didn’t address the underlying issues of unclear responsibilities, poor communication, and conflicting priorities.
As a result, confusion, reduced productivity, and growing frustration persisted within the team. Riya realized that the root of the problem was the team culture. They needed a systematic approach that focused on common goals, communication, clarity, and accountability. Her challenge was to unite a talented group and transform them into a high-performing team that consistently delivered positive results.
Building Team Culture (Fostering inclusion and belonging)
Case Dilemma
Ananya leads a solid team of six members, but they lack cultural cohesion. Although everyone performs their tasks well, issues like trust deficits, communication breakdowns, different priorities, and siloed thinking have led to missed deadlines, decreased productivity, and interpersonal conflicts. Previous attempts to improve teamwork through team-building exercises were only briefly successful and failed to create lasting behavioural change.
With an important product launch imminent and competition on the rise, Ananya must find a way to shift the team’s culture without disrupting existing processes. She needs to shape the team into a high-performing group aligned with business goals while maintaining engagement. Successful teams have well-defined roles, shared objectives, and a focus on fostering a collaborative culture. According to Role Theory, clearly defined roles, expectations, and reporting lines lead to more effective teams. Using a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed) matrix can clarify responsibilities, reducing duplication of effort and confusion.
When roles are clear, the team can align on a common list of objectives. Goal-Setting Theory by Locke and Latham aims to motivate individuals and drive them toward collective success by setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals. When team members understand their contributions to overall success, cohesion increases and contention decreases, especially when multiple urgent priorities arise. Throughout this journey toward shared goals, the team progresses through Tuckman’s stages of development: forming, storming, norming, and performing. During storming, differences and adjustments are common, but effective management can lead to norming, a stage characterised by increased trust and cooperation. Finally, teams reach the performing stage, showing strong collaboration, flexibility, and consistent high performance.
For improvements to endure, Schein’s Organisational Culture Model must be woven into organisational practices. Leaders play a crucial role in instilling values of trust, transparency, accountability, continuous learning, and knowledge sharing. These values become integral to the team’s culture and practices, fostering an environment that encourages innovation and long-term success. Role clarity, shared goals, structured team development, and a culture of collaboration are vital for creating an environment where team members can thrive as effective contributors. This integrated approach helps teams overcome challenges, enhance teamwork, boost productivity, and evolve into a united, high-performing entity within the organisation.
Teaching Note
As a leader in an IT consulting company, Riya Rao has encountered numerous challenges in developing her team and instilling a focus on targets. In her leadership role, she has made several attempts to build trust, transparency, communication, and a strong team culture. During discussions with Priya, the HR Business Partner, it was noted that the team excels in informal gatherings and consistently delivers high-quality results. Tuckman’s theory outlines the stages of team development: forming, storming, norming, and performing. Differences and adjustments are expected during the storming stage, but effective management can help teams progress to norming, where trust and cooperation grow. The final stage, performing, involves a highly cooperative and flexible team consistently delivering results. Concepts from the Organisational Culture Model must be integrated into organisational practices. Leaders should reinforce values of trust, transparency, accountability, continuous learning, and knowledge sharing. By applying these principles, Riya addressed the problem and improved her team’s productivity while maintaining a balanced and monitored approach to achieve organisational excellence.
Discussion:
1) If small teams are more prevalent in leadership, how should control be balanced?
2) When conflict arises in the team, how can you foster cohesiveness as a manager instead of relying on exercises?
3) Are small teams effective? If so, discuss the advantages, disadvantages, and problems associated with them.
