Medisys Corp - Summary of Case and Problems

Summary of Case and Problems

MediSys Corp is a medical device manufacturer founded in 2002. The company established an entrepreneurial culture, which fostered innovative thinking amongst the employees. As a result, the company had numerous promising initiatives at various stages of development. IntensCare was one of those initiatives; pioneered in much the same way as many of MediSys's products. An idea developed from an employee, and allowed by management to make the idea a reality. This culture proved to generate cutting edge ideas ahead of their competition. It wasn't until recently that management noticed signs of slowing growth. It appeared that this entrepreneurial spirit was causing the company to be slow to market with some of their products.

The board of MediSys felt pressure from competitors who had moved into the industry; they decided to make some changes. A new president, Art Beaumont, was hired to preserve the innovative culture and to re-stimulate the rapid growth. He attempted to accomplish this by reorganizing the company's management structure. Beaumont formed a core-team of top managers from each functional department to achieve final production. Team members were required to accomplish work in their respective departments in addition to being on this core team. This move created a narrower span of control within the company. This narrow span of control was intended to speed up decision-making within the company; however, it encouraged overly tight supervision and discouraged employee autonomy.

Beaumont continued to have the company organized functionally, however he created a formalized process for product development. He thought cross-functional teams would allow MediSys to outmaneuver competitors by speeding up the product development process. He took the core teams and assigned a project leader to each to keep an eye on their respective departments and serve as a liaison to senior management. While this new structure seems good in theory, it created tension amongst the employees.

The new system did not alter the way that reporting and evaluation occurred; all employees continued reporting to their functional managers who continued to supervise and evaluate them. Employees were now being forced away from their functional expertise areas to work on this new project; however, they still carried the responsibility and were being evaluated based on their performance in their functional area. They felt little motivation to cooperate with the new core team; their primary concern was for their functional area because that was where their evaluation was based. This created tension between individuals on the team, as each team member had expectations of what the other should be doing in relation to IntesCare.

In summary, there are multiple problems that I will address throughout the case analysis. These include: