Task Force Team Formation Requirements and Its Composition

TASK FORCE TEAM FORMATION REQUIREMENTS AND ITS COMPOSITION:

Since the product demand forecast was becoming difficult in nature e.g. the book market was declining after the retirement of the best-selling titles author whose replacement wasn’t available. Similarly, in software market due to lack of blockbuster product in years, company wasn’t able to meet its sales forecast. Same was the case with the sales in the film industry which depended mostly upon the timing and popularity of the major new contemporary releases in the market coupled with the increasing company focus on the new titles instead of the sequels of previous films which made the sales forecast a difficult challenge. The task force was needed due to greater market competition and quicker response required since the next quarter sales were also expected to incur losses. There was a clear indication that the company’s sales forecast were inaccurately estimated due to which the company wasn’t able to gauge the actual sales target and facing losses as a result due to overstocks or shortages. The increased complexity of the forecasting process made it a difficult challenge to investigate the irregularities in the forecasting process and formation of the task force was the right choice to meet this challenge.

The composition of the task force was quite balanced, with the mixture of old timers and the young blood with the MBA degrees. The size of the group was the right size as it was not much or not less than what was required. There was no member in group who couldn’t add value to the group’s output and no representation left over whose absence could be felt missing in the group’s work. The high level of complexity of the task required the breadth and depth of the skill set required to achieve the task which came with diverse set of specialized backgrounds of group members. The task force had all essential analytical and technical skills required to analyze and fix the problem. Although the level of complexity of the task was high, the degree of interdependence was relatively moderate to low. The interdependence was more sort of a Pooled Interdependence rather than sequential or reciprocal one. However, there was a high level of interdependence among the sub group’s members. The detailed analysis is mentioned in Exhibit 1.

PROBLEMS FACED BY TASK FORCE TEAM AND THEIR EVOLUTION:

The task force members faced the problem of conflicting loyalties to their parent departments with the objectives of task force. Naturally, if they go against the loyalties of their parent department, they would be in an embarrassing situation. The reward system of the organization also didn’t seemed encouraging for the task force as it was functional performance based and had no declared incentives for the task force. The task force structure was formed with the second tier of management, all the people of the task force were reporting to their respective bosses. None of them was autonomous and had to seek permission from their bosses. This was one of the drawbacks of the team due to which it was not effective in achieving their targets. This problem was encountered by the product managers and Bodin in the latter stage with his report about the systematic biases in Sales forecast which was critical for the task force objectives but would put him in an embarrassing situation in front of his boss. On the contrary, Meir had his departmental objectives which were conflicting with the task force objectives.