Henry Tam Case Analysis

Introduction

Leading teams with both design and management-led visionaries can pose significant problems for achieving desired results. Where artists are loyal to their passion and value relationships over tangible results, task oriented and deadline driven team members get frustrated. Cultural clashes combined with bad leadership result often in inefficiency and disputes. Operating in creative teams can be extremely challenging but one supported by good leadership can exceed in their co-operation together. The case of the People’s Light and Theatre company (Austin, R. D., 2000) is a good example of how a team of members from both business and creative backgrounds are able to work together in harmony without stepping on each other’s toes. Balancing between providing the actors with time and space for them to get synchronizes with their roles and pushing for the upcoming performance deadline is not an easy task but the leaders sum it up into three most important concerns, that guide them in their management: 1) relationships between art-making creatives and administration, 2) how the ideas of the creatives can be put into final products, and 3) relationships with the audience and the larger community (Austin, R. D., 2000). Directing the play and managing the team often overlap but also enable a broader overview of their individuals’ characteristics, talents and personalities. Guiding a team of such diversity like as in this case is comparable to directing an orchestra where each individual is just as important for the overall outcome and must be treated accordingly to make the team achieve continuously higher accomplishments.  They provide their actors with a sufficient amount of time to develop into the plays in peace not conflicting with their creative endeavours (Austin, R. D., 2000). The saying “time is money” can in this sense be seen from quite the opposite perspective. Quick execution in creative teams doesn’t often result in the best outcomes as concentrating on giving space for slower processes may be more successful and produce higher quality. The key is to find a balance with risky opportunities and having a plan on how to achieve them. Good business planning and managing creative can be as much about recognising this and leaving space for it (Kempadoo-Millar, 2015).

In this capstone paper, we develop an argument on how a dysfunctional team with both communicational and cultural clashes can become more effective through well designed leadership. Our learning experience was an iterative process of the reflection and the executed simulation our team made of the Harvard Business School case called the Henry Tam and the MGI Team (Polzer et al., 2003).

In this paper you will in part A firstly be introduced to our case analysis where we reflect on the theories and cases presented in both courses Leading Venture and the Art of Innovation. The analysis goes through the venture itself, the problems in the group dynamics, the clash of civilizations and cultures and finally the battle over the strategic direction of the entire project. Based on this analysis and the insights gained we will introduce our hypothesis and recommendation on how the tensions of the poorly functioning MGI team of highly professional experts could be solved. To test the functionality of our recommendations, we designed a simulation, a staged meeting of the real life situation in the case. The simulation will be introduced in part B followed by an analysis and explanation in the shift of our final results. There is no one correct way to manage culturally diverse creative teams thus methods require always real life testing. A poorly managed team lacking leadership disrupts the progress and builds tensions between team members that come from diverse perspectives. Hence not always does the theoretically best approach work in the team as planned. As the outcome of our case simulation drastically altered the outcome of our recommendations for the case, we therefore reflect upon our learnings throughout this paper. As in this case leadership models should always be tested out, resulting as a continuous prototype cycle of simulations, measurements and learnings which then can be customized and tested again to reach more productive results.