Merit Corporation - Npd Team

Formal Organization – Weakness:

The division of labor within MGI was highly ambiguous. From the outset Henry and Dana were unclear about their roles in the company and what work they were responsible for. Sasha and Alex viewed the two HBS students primarily as business-plan writers whereas Igor saw them as critical team-members that would assist with vision and strategy. Out of this ambiguity, Henry and Dana took it upon themselves to fill the leadership void in MGI, viewing their own roles as a hybrid of a ‘CEO, facilitator, moderator, task manager and strategic thinker’ (p 12). This served to create animosity within the team, resulting in conflict between Dana and Sasha, as well as a ‘clash of civilizations’ between the business and creative people. In particular, Dana didn’t grasp the value behind the long brainstorming sessions that ended without concrete steps forward, whereas the founders viewed the sessions as a necessary input in their creative process.

Instead of uniting under a common goal like the NPD team in the Merit Corporation case, the MGI team became segregated as team members gravitated towards allegiances and roles based on ethnicity and experiences. This served to weaken information systems within MGI as people sometimes withheld timey information from others. In such an environment, conflated with a lack of a structured hierarchy and clear leader, each person on the MGI team had a different vision of the company and differing philosophies on how the company should position itself, leading to indecision and a halting of progress.

Task design – what are we doing

Division of labor – who is doing what

reporting relationships were ambiguous. Without a leader to provide concrete direction, each person on the MGI team had a different vision of the company and

 (p11) - Sasha and Igor want entertainment industry, Henry and Dana education

 Instead of uniting under a common goal like the NPD team in the Merit Corporation, the MGI team became segregated as team members gravitated towards allegiances and roles based on ethnicity and experiences (notably HBS vs. Russians). Consequently, information systems within MGI were obscure, and people would withhold information from others. For instance, Sasha hired Dav without communicating his decision with Henry and Dana.

This highlights another pertinent issue regarding the highly ambiguous division of labor within MGI. In particular, Henry and Dana were unclear about their roles in the company; Sasha and Alex viewed them primarily as business plan writers whereas Igor saw them as critical team members that assisted with vision and strategy. Consequently, Henry and Dana viewed their own roles as ‘CEO's, facilitators, moderators, task managers and strategic thinkers’ (p12) and took it upon themselves to fill the leadership void in MGI. This served to create animosity that trickled down within the team; for instance, there was conflict between Dana and Sasha, and a ‘clash of civilizations’ between the business and creative people. In particular, Dana became frustrated in brainstorming sessions and didn’t grasp the value behind ‘wasting time’, whereas the founders viewed it as a necessary input in their creative process.