Case Analysis of Henry Tam and the MGI Team

Primary issue The inability to decide on the target segment of the business plan,
which is due submission in less than three weeks for the HBS Business Plan contest due to
lack of common consensus, adaptability and agreeability amongst members. Amongst the
team of seven members, which comprised of three founders: Alexander (Sasha) Gimpelson,
Igor Tkachenko and Roman Yakub, Dana Soiman and Henry Tam Jr. of HBS MBA class
students, Dav Clark from MIT and Alex Jan Sartakov from Boston Berklee College, few (i.e.
founders) wanted to target the entertainment industry, while Henry and Dana saw scope in
the education industry.

Problem Statement How to put together a coherent business plan by leveraging the
teams strength and integrating the creative and strategic parts and avoiding further
conflicts in the decision-making process.

Reasons The team is an amalgamation of experts from diverse backgrounds. Roman and
Igor are accomplished musicians, Sasha has a keen business and finance in-depth
knowledge, Alex has substantial experience in music and business, DAV is a software
developer and an MBA student from MIT, Dana has finance and banking knowledge and is in
second year of HBS while Henry, also an HBS student, is an investment banker with prior
experience in business development. The first product of the company- Tchaikovskys
Nutcracker: The Music Game which was the result of creativity, innovation and business
knowledge put together, was a critical success but a commercial failure. But the team of
seven formed to overcome their previous failure had little success working together due to
several reasons: individual conflicts, cultural differences, stereotyping, dysfunctional team
processes, improper task-allocation, improper working culture, lack of a formal leader. This
acted as a hindrance to submit their business plan in the HBS business plan contest.

Contextual and Cultural Analysis:

The team can be seen as a Virtuoso team, with every member being an expertise in their
field. While Dana believes in doing the tasks methodically, most of the rest, especially the
founders spend most of their time brainstorming about different creative ideas. Even the
first commercial product The Nutcracker, was the output of a brilliantly crafted innovative
idea to mix both entertainment and education in a childs life. Most of the time is devoted
to thinking. When virtuoso teams begin their work, individuals are in and group consensus is
out- the same which is the case with team MGI. But sooner later, the team members
celebrate their ego and work together towards a commonality this is yet-to-be achieved
phase in this team. The members would meet frequently to have intense face-to-face
conversations. The SWOT analysis is shown below:

Strengths:
Multi-talented team composition
individual expertise- blend of
creativity and business knowledge
Initial team of 3 founders acted as
each others strength and
compensated for the weakness of
the other person
Commonality in Ethnic background
Founders knew each other before
Sasha and Igor were friends
Commitment to business
Team spirit despite several conflicts
they formed a Virtuoso team, each
master in their own field.

Weakness:
Personality clash
Improper task allocation
Lack of cohesion, adaptability
Lack of a leader
Perception of personalities
Too much of brainstorming, each
trying to prove their level of
creativity and not thinking from
business perspective
Lack of norms, values, a single vision

Opportunities:
Individual talents can be leveraged
fruitfully
Dedicated, motivated students
Henry, Dana, who comes prepared
with all the research work every
time in power-point

Threats:
Dedicated people leaving project
Lack of time-management can make
other competitors enter into market

Areas of Concern:
The main areas of concern were:
Inability to fruitfully leverage the teams strengths- despite individual talent in multivarious fields of creativity, music and business, the mutual tiffs laid back the entire process
of penning down the business plan for the contest. This led to personality clash and lack of
compromise from amongst members. Lack of adaptability and agreeability were prime
reasons behind this effect.
Improper task-division- Henry and Dana used to remain confused initially as to their actual
task in the business model. Henry and Dana would put in extra efforts in preparing the
power-point of their updated task and research work. Also, there were no proper rules,
agenda or objectives of the discussions.
Lack of a leader The team due to lack of a formal leader, lacked proper guidance and
direction. This, in addition to the never-ending inter-personal conflicts led the discussions to
nowhere and hence they were not even ready with the draft version of their business plan
with just three weeks remaining for submission in the contest.

Evaluation:
There were seven members in the team consisting of the three founders Sasha, Igor,
Roman, Henry, Dana, Dav and Alex. We can evaluate the teams process from the five stages
of group development: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning.
Forming The first step of the forming stage was when Sasha mailed to HBS students to
help MGI write a business plan. Later on with direct conversation with Igor, Dana and Henry
was introduced in the team. Roman was not present in the first business plan meeting with
members- Igor, Sasha, Henry and Dana. Alex was introduced in the second meeting and Dav
in the third meeting.
Storming In this stage, we saw conflicting expectations (Sasha saw Henry and Dana as only
business plan writers, while Igor felt their need in strategizing), pre-conceived notions,
perceptions about personalities (Henry and Dana assumed Sasha to be a difficult person to
deal with, considering his unusual background and almost ignoring his experience). The
approach of Sasha to ask them to contact HBS alumni, without even formulating a coherent
strategy was considered immature by Dana. Furthermore, the sudden introduction of Dav of
MIT, created a confusion as to Sashas real intentions of including the students was just to
ploy them to get into business contests.
Norming There was a complete chaos in this stage. The team had not sat down to discuss
the norms and values to be followed in order to achieve their goal. In fact, even after
repeated discussions, everyone had separate vision. Lack of cohesion and agreeability was
quite apparent. There was conflict between short term and long-term goals; conflict
between Russian and American thought-process, Roman was disagreeing with the Russians,
Henry and Dana disagreeing with Sasha and so on. Everyone was leader for certain period of
time. And whenever they met, there would be lengthy, not-so-effective brainstorming
sessions, each wanting to prove their creativity, but lagging behind from business
perspective.
Performing The problem in norming stage led to the problem in performing stage. With
high-conflicts and improper task-allocation, there was no decision making and different
vision and choice of target-segment for everyone. The draft version was also not ready with
just few days in hand for business plan submission.

Recommendations:
Identifying a leader and proper task-allocation The team did not have a leader and no
specific roles were assigned to the team members. Henry and Dana would come up with
power-point presentations, but at every meet they would be brainstorming about different
creative ideas. Based on the case, Henry was a team leader. From all the inter-personal
conflicts and diversity, he drew motivation to work under unforeseen circumstances. He
viewed both people and tasks as equally important
Adaptability The team was a blend of different cultures, backgrounds and experiences.
Successful management of diverse groups requires knowledge of group dynamics, conflict

management and acceptance of differences among people. In the case, we see Dana to be a
strict person; so a little adaptability of Dana to Sashas style would have smoothened in
many conflicts. Apart from that, a level of compromise would have resulted them in
choosing a single target segment.
Identifying norms and values There were no proper objectives set prior to any meeting
and no proper time-management. The brainstorming sessions, which were sometimes notso-effective would continue for hours. Due to lack of norms and values, every-time Henry
and Dana would converge to some decision, but would be objected by some or the other
and the whole process would be started again.
Conflict management The conflict between team members was an issue that needed early
attention. Major conflict between Sasha and Dana was due to them stereotyping and
opposing each other. The major ways to deal with such conflicts are to avoid it, pretend it is
not there or ignore it, compromise it yourself, collaborating and focus more on working
together.