12 December 2018 Team 100

Leadership Assignment 4 – Group Orchestrators

A. Case Background

Dilemma: With 5 offices located across different states and provinces and lacking a centralized system to track
buyer contacts, the company was unable to maintain customer relationships. This problem is particularly
harmful whenever there is a personnel changes in the buyer companies, losing all the business ties and
relationship built over the years.

To tackle this, a special team was set up with an aim to implement a large-scale customer relationship
management (CRM) system. Top management saw this as an approach to manage client companies’ interactions
with past, current and potential customers. While keeping a record of all customers' history and their interaction
with the company, it helps to improve business relationships and retention and ultimately driving sales growth.
Please refer to Appendix A for background information before proceeding with the following sections.

B. Group Orchestrators framework

Group properties: In size the group consisted of 5 small teams of less than 10 people located in 5 offices,
totaling 30 personnel. Management was run by one ‘regional manager North America’ based in the New York
regional HQ and 4 office managers in different locations. Their communications patterns were limited and rigid;
weak ties between the offices (meeting twice a year) and infrequent managerial meetings (once a month in HQ
in New York).

Concerning the CRM implementation, the project was initiated by the regional manager and passed on to a CRM
project team made up from junior members of each office, with a lead member based in Toronto office. The
CRM team members were communicating remotely and each had to push forward the CRM implementation to
their senior managers in each respective office. The group was diverse in age and status, each office had 2 junior
members and 3 senior members; and in geography, half of the staff were hired from Ireland, half internationally.
This reflected in diversity of views about CRM implementation: juniors would see the value of CRM, seniors
would not. Local hirers, would not submit contacts for CRM, in order to keep their value to the organization as
they felt performance pressure compared to their Irish colleagues, who had the security of staying with the
organization regardless a potential loss of contacts to CRM system.

These conflicting views and backgrounds resulted in moderate levels of disagreement, but led to little action.
CRM team members all agreed on the mission, yet there was no consensus on the value of the CRM project
among office managers. This mismatch was further worsened by the status differences between the CRM team
in charge of the change, but junior to the senior members that would be affected by the change. The way
communication and organization were structured created a problem where a group of people in weak power
position, were tasked to lead a structural change and take it up against a group of people in strong power
position (status, experience). Initially, there was no deadline set to the project. Finally, the CRM team resolved
the problem by recommending the use of hard deadlines, imposed by top level management for all team
members.

C. Diagnosis

The level of cohesion was low as teams were working remotely and on different times, while the CRM project
was never a priority for any team. The level of conflict was too low, as managers did not fully make their
12 December 2018 Team 100

feelings clear at the initial project meeting, meaning the project went ahead with no clear implementation plan
or deadlines. In further meetings, no resolutions were reached until firmer deadlines were set.

D. Implementation Plan

All of the CRM implementation team members were either the most, or second most, junior in their respective
teams of 5-10 people. Although all were motivated individuals, none had built up the influence or social capital
within their teams, nor had the designated authority, to push other team members into taking the time out of
their busy days to work on their required tasks for CRM implementation. In addition, they were dispersed across
5 offices in North America, and their status differences meant progress was slow.

Managers were not directly involved on a regular basis barely mentioning the CRM project every other month,
which prevented their appointees to feel empowered. As the type of task is novel, which required brainstorming
and extensive creative dynamics, the appointed employees needed constant feedback for quality of their work
and to understand if they were going in the right direction. In that vein, the status difference would be reduced if
the managers were open to feedback sessions and expressed more interest on the project. This whole complex
situation created a slow group dynamic, as Office Managers met once a month with the Regional Manager, to
oversee different aspects of the company, but the CRM project. This poor communication pattern also prevented
the appointed employees to receive feedback on their findings or on new instructions to move on. Communication
is vital in this kind of implementation and more when junior personnel is involved, because otherwise they become
demotivated and lose focus. In addition, the lack of deadlines translated in an increasing lack of attention and
interest from the managers. Each of the 4 managers had different priorities which prevented the team to keep
track of a project that was important to the Regional Office, but not to the Offices itself. Clear deadlines through
short-medium-long deliverables would help them achieve concrete steps towards the goal, creating a clear path
to their lower level employees on tasks to be reported.

E. Risk Mitigation (Alternative CRM Implementation Plan)

1. Problem: Status Difference Alternative: Office Managers should appoint medium tier employees to support
their Juniors in their progress. CRM lead can also encourage CRM member of lower status to speak up and
leverage on informal network to push for change.
2. Problem: Power Imbalance Alternative: The problem however is the recognition and the legitimacy of this
CRM group without a clear strong support from top management. In order for the CRM lead to keep
pushing, they need to have more power or rely on someone who is powerful. Re-grouping is helpful to
enhance the diversity and legitimacy of the CRM group.
3. Problem: High Level of Disagreement Alternative: As a company-wide project, all stakeholders’ participation
and comments should be taken into consideration. A friendly discussion environment should be cultivated
and promoted. The strong resistance of CRM implementation also came from fear of loss of value to the
company. It would’ve been useful to conduct a survey to understand people’s view on the system
4. Problem: Slow Group Dynamic Alternative: Setting specific deadlines and deliverables on a short-medium-
long term basis to help speed things up. By incorporating CRM implementation into the KPI system (of the
regional manager) also put stress on the performance.
5. Problem: Poor Communication Pattern Under-socialized resulting in too little conflicts. Increasing the
amount and ways of communication on the issues, such as having it as an agenda on the monthly manager
meetings. Feedback mechanisms have to be formed to ensure the smoothness of implementation.
12 December 2018 Team 100

Appendix A

CRM Team:
All of the CRM members were either the most, or second most, junior in their respective teams of 5-10 people.
Although all were motivated individuals, none had built up the influence or social capital within their teams, nor
had the designated authority, to push other team members into taking the time out of their busy days to work
on their required tasks for CRM implementation.

Profiles of Top Management:

Joe A; Regional Director, North America
Joe was a classic ideas guy, but was less involved on the implementation and following through of the grand
strategies. He was able to get people on board with his ideas, but generally did not outline how these plans
would be achieved, or give enough direction to subordinates, which often led to frustration on his side and
conflict during managerial meetings as to why his strategies were not being implemented in practice. His
distance from the day-to-day operations of each team meant that he was not really in a position to push
through the implementation. His delegation of the implementation to junior team members was most likely a
mistake as we lacked the clout of more senior figures in the overseas team. Joe was a mixture between a turtle
and a teddy bear and could often not back up decisions made.

Coleen M & Patrick G - Boston & San Francisco Managers

Coleen and Patrick were classic public service lifers, who throughout their time at the Trade Commission had
employed the same methods to keep track of high-level contacts they made on their various postings. They
grudgingly used LinkedIn, but their main way of tracking senior executives was through infrequent email or
phone contact from their details on business cards. When these executives moved position or geography, often
they were un-contactable via this method. They were apathetic toward the introduction of a CRM and were not
motivated to push their own teams to put in the required effort to get the CRM database up and running. Both
were shark-type conflict people.

Niall R & David P - Toronto & Austin, TX Managers

Niall & David both had less than ten years in the overseas teams and thus were not as set in their ways as the
other team managers. They were more open to new methods and championed new business development
tools, such as subscriptions to LinkedIn Sales Navigator premium function for their team members. However,
they were more conciliatory in their negotiation and conflict style and were often argued down by the other two
team managers. Their support for the CRM introduction was warmer but they also had higher priorities and
were not as personally invested in its success. Therefore, they did not argue strongly for faster implementation
at the monthly managerial meetings and did not put much effort into motivating their own teams toward the
arduous manual data inputting that was required to get a CRM up and running. Both were more owl/fox type
conflict styles and sought compromise and conciliation over firm decisions.