CommunicationM8D1.pdf

C A S E S T U D Y

With a group of talented, hard-
working people, why isn’t this
team working^

The Team That Wasn’t

by Suzy Wetlaufer

The last thing Eric Holt had ex-
pected to miss about New York City
was its sunrises. Seeing one usu-
ally meant he had pulled another
all nighter at the consulting firm
where, as a vice president, he had
managed three teams of manufactur-
ing specialists. But as he stood on
the balcony of his new apartment in
the small Indiana city that was now
his home, Eric suddenly felt a pang
of nostalgia for the way the dawn
plays off the skyscrapers of Manhat-
tan. In the next moment, though, he
let out a sardonic laugh. The dawn
light was not what he missed about
New York, he realized. What he
missed was the feeling of accom-
plishment that usually accompanied
those sunrises.

An all-nighter in New York had
meant hours of intense work with a
cadre of committed, enthusiastic
colleagues. Give and take. Humor.
Progress. Here, so far anyway, that
was unthinkable. As the director of
strategy at FireArt, Inc., a regional
glass manufacturer, Eric spent all his
time trying to get his new team to
make it through a meeting without

the tension level becoming unbear-
able. Six of the top-level managers
involved seemed determined to turn
the company around, but the sev-
enth seemed equally determined to
sabotage the process. Forget cama-
raderie. There had been three meet-
ings so far, and Eric hadn’t even been
able to get everyone on the same side
of an issue.

Eric stepped inside his apartment
and checked the clock: (inly three
more hours before he had to watch
as Randy Louderbaek, FireArt’s
charismatic director of sales and
marketing, either dominated the
group’s diseussion or withdrew en-
tirely, tapping his pen on the table to
indicate his boredom. Sometimes he
withheld information vital to the
group’s debate; other times he coolly
denigrated people’s comments. Still,
Eric realized. Randy held the group
in such thrall because of his dynam-
ic personality, his almost legendary
past, and his close relationship with
FireArt’s CEO that he could not be
ignored. And at least once during
each meeting, he offered an insight
about the industry or the company

22 DRAWINGS BY DAVID CROLAND

C A S E S T U D Y

that was so perceptive that Erie
knew he shouldn’t he ignored.

As be prepared to leave for the of-
fice, Eric felt the familiar frustration
that had started building during the
team’s first meeting a month earlier.
It was then that Randy had first in-
sinuated, with what sounded like a
joke, tbat he wasn’t cut out to be
a team player. “Leaders lead, follow-
ers…please pipe down!” had heen
his exact words, although he had
smiled winningly as he spoke, and
the rest of the group had laughed
heartily in response. No one in the
group was laughing now, though,
least of all Eric.

FireArt, Inc., was in trouble-not
deep trouble, but enough for its
CEO, Jack Derry, to make strategic
repositioning Eric’s top and only
task. Tbe company, a family-owned
maker of wine goblets, beer steins,
asbtrays, and other glass novelties
had succeeded for nearly 80 years as
a high-quality, high-price producer,
catering to hundreds of Midwestern
clients. It traditionally did big busi-
ness every foothall season, selling
commemorative knickknacks to the
fans of teams such as the Fighting
Irish, the Wolverines, and the Gold-
en Gophers. In the spring, tbere was
always a rush of demand for senior
prom items-champagne gohlets em-
blazoned with a school’s name or
beer mugs witb a school’s crest, for
example. Fraternities and sororities
were steady customers. Year after
year, FireArt showed respectahle in-
creases at the top and bottom lines,
posting $86 million in revenues and
$3 million in earnings three years
before Eric arrived.

In tbe last 18 months, tbough,
sales and earnings had flattened.
Jack, a grandnephew of tbe compa-
ny’s founder, tbought be knew wbat
was happening. Until recently, large
national glass companies had heen
able to make money only through
mass production. Now, however,
thanks to new technologies in tbe
glassmaking industry, tbose compa-
nies could execute short runs prof-
itably. They had hegun to enter
FireArt’s niche. Jack had told Eric,
and, witb their superior resources, it
was just a matter of time before they
would own it.

“You bave (me responsibility as
FireArt’s new director of strategy,”
Jack had said to Eric on his first day.
“That’s to put together a team of our
top people, one person from each di-
vision, and bave a comprehensive
plan for the company’s strategic re-
alignment up, running, and winning
witbin six months.”

Eric had immediately compiled a
list of the senior managers from bu-
man resources, manufacturing, fi-
nance, distribution, design, and mar-
keting, and had set a date for the first
meeting. Then, drawing on his years
as a consultant who bad worked al-
most solely in team environments,
Eric had carefully prepared a struc-
ture and guidelines for the group’s
discussions, disagreements, and de-
cisions, which he planned to propose
to tbe members for their input he-
fore tbey began working together.

Successful groups are part art, part
science, Eric knew, but be also be-
lieved that witb every memher’s full
c o m m i t m e n t , a team proved tbe
adage that the whole is greater tban
tbe sum of its parts. Knowing tbat
managers at FireArt were unaccus-
tomed to tbe team process, however,
Eric imagined he might get some re-
sistance from one or two members.

For one, he had heen worried
ahout Ray LaPierre of manufactur-
ing. Ray was a giant of a man who
bad run tbe furnaces for some 35
years, following in his father’s foot-
steps. Altbough he was a former
high school foothall star who was
known among workers in the facto-
ry for his hearty laugh and his love of
practical jokes, Ray usually didn’t
say much around FireArt’s execu-
tives, citing his lack of higher educa-
tion as the reason. Eric bad thought
the team atmosphere might intimi-
date him.

Eric had also anticipated a bit of a
fight from Maureen Turner of the de-
sign division, who was known to
complain that FireArt didn’t appre-
ciate its six artists. Eric had expected
that Maureen migbt have a chip on

Suzy Wetlaufer is a Boston-based
writer. Formerly, she was with Bain
&) Company, where she worked
with manufacturing clients on
strategy formulation.

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW Novt-mbtT-December 1994 23

E 5 T U D Y

her shoulder about eollaborating
with people who didn’t understand
the design process.

Ironically, both those fears had
proved groundless, but another,
more difficult problem had arisen.
The wild card had turned out to be
Randy. Eric had met Randy once be-
fore the team started its work and
had found him to be enormously in-
telligent, energetic, and good-hu-
mored. What’s more. Jack Derry had
confirmed his impressions, telling
him that Randy “had the best mind”
at FireArt. It was also from Jack that
Eric had first learned of Randy’s
hardscrabble yet inspirational per-
sonal history.

Poor as a child, he had worked as a
security guard and short-order cook
to put himself through the state col-
lege, from whieh he graduated with
top honors. Soon after, he started
his own advertising and market re-
search firm in Indianapolis, and
within the decade, he had built it
into a company employing 50 people
to service some of the region’s most
prestigious accounts. His success
brought with it a measure of fame:
articles in the local media, invita-
tions to the statehouse, even an hon-
orary degree from an Indiana busi-
ness college. But in the late 1980s,
Randy’s firm suffered the same fate
as many other advertising shops, and

If Randy can’t help you,
no one can,” CEO Jack

Derry had told Eric.

he was forced to declare bankruptcy.
FireArt considered it a coup when it
landed him as director of marketing,
since he had let it be known that he
was offered at least two dozen other
jobs. “Randy is the future of this
company,” Jack Derry had told Eric.
“If he can’t help you, no one can. I
look forward to hearing what a team
with his kind of horsepower can
come up with to steer us away from
the mess we’re in.”

Those words eehoed in Erie’s
mind as he sat, with increasing anxi-
ety, through the team’s first and sec-
ond m e e t i n g s . Though Eric had

planned an agenda for each meeting
and tried to keep the discussions on
track, Randy always seemed to find
a way to disrupt the process. Time
and time again, he shot down other
people’s ideas, or he simply didn’t
pay a t t e n t i o n . He also answered
most questions put to him with
maddening vagueness. “I’ll have my
assistant look into it when he gets
a moment,” he replied when one
team member asked him to list
FireArt’s five largest customers.
“Some days you eat the
bear, and other days
the bear eats you,” he
joked another time,
when asked why sales
to fraternities had re-
cently nose-dived.

Randy’s negativism,
however, was coun-
tered by occasional
comments so insightful that they
stopped the conversation eold or
turned it around entirely – com-
ments that demonstrated extraordi-
nary knowledge about competitors
or glass technology or customers’
buying patterns. The help wouldn’t
last, though; Randy would quickly
revert to his role as team renegade.

The third meeting, last week, had
ended in chaos. Ray LaPicrre, Mau-
reen Turner, and the distribution
director, Carl Simmons, had each

planned to present cost-
cutting proposals, and at
first it looked as though
the group were making
good progress.

Ray opened the meet-
ing, proposing a plan for
FireArt to cut through-

put time by 3% and raw-materials
costs by 2%, thereby positioning the
company to compete better on price.
It was obvious from his detailed
presentation that he had put a lot of
thoLigbt into his comments, and it
was evident that he was fighting a
certain amount of nervousness as he
made them.

“I know I don’t have the book
smarts of most of you in this room,”
he had begun, “but here goes any-
way.” During his presentation, Ray
stopped several times to answer
questions from the team, and as he
went on, his nervousness trans-

formed into his usual ebullience.
“That wasn’t so bad!” he laughed to
himself as he sat down at the end,
flashing a grin at Eric. “Maybe we
can turn this old ship around.”

Maureen Turner had followed
Ray. While not disagreeing with
him – she praised his comments, in
fact – she argued that FireArt also
needed to invest in new a r t i s t s ,
pitching its competitive advantage
in better design and wider variety.
Unlike Ray, Maureen had made this

Ironically, the people
Eric thought would be
problems v^eren’t.
Randy vŝ as the problem.

case to FireArt’s top executives
many times, only to be rebuffed, and
some of her frustration seeped
through as she explained her reason-
ing yet again. At one point, her voice
almost broke as she described how
hard she had worked in her first ten
years at FireArt, hoping that some-
one in management would recognize
the creativity of her designs. “But no
one did,” she recalled with a sad
shake of her head. “That’s why when
I was made director of the depart-
ment, I made sure all the artists were
respected for what they are – artists,
not worker ants. There’s a differ-
ence, you know.” However, just as
with Ray LaPierre, Maureen’s com-
ments lost their defensiveness as the
group members, with the exception
of Randy, wbo remained impassive,
greeted her words with nods of en-
couragement.

By the time Carl Simmons of dis-
tribution started to speak, the mood
in the room was approaching buoy-
ant. Carl, a quiet and meticulous
man, jumped from his seat and prac-
tically paced the room as he de-
scribed his ideas. FireArt, he said,
should play to its strength as a ser-
vice-oriented company and restruc-
ture its trucking system to increase
the speed of delivery. He described
how a similar strategy had been
adopted with excellent results at his
last job at a ceramics plant. Carl had

24 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW NovcmbcT December 1994

joined FireArt just six months earli-
er. It was when Carl hegan to de-
scribe those results in detail that
Randy brought the meeting to an un-
pleasant halt hy letting out a loud
groan. “Let’s just do everything, why
don’t we, including redesign the
kitchen sink!” be cried with mock
enthusiasm. That remark sent Carl
back quickly to his seat, where be
halfheartedly summed up his com-
ments. A few minutes later, he ex-
cused himself, saying he had another
meeting. Soon the others made ex-
cuses to leave, too, and the room be-
came empty.

No wonder Eric was apprehensive
about the fourtb meeting. He was
therefore surprised wben he entered
tbe room and found tbe whole group,
save Randy, already assemhled.

Ten minutes passed in awkward
small talk, and, looking from face to
face, Eric could see bis own frustra-
tion reflected. He also detected an
edge of panic – just what he had
hoped to avoid. He decided he had to
raise tbe topic of Randy’s attitude
openly, but just as he started. Randy
ambled into the room, smiling. “Sor-
ry, folks,” he said lightly, holding up
a cup of coffee as if it were explana-
tion enough for his tardiness.

“Randy, I’m glad you’re here,” Er-
ic hegan, “hecause I think today we
should hegin hy talking ahout the
group itself-”

Randy cut Eric off with a small,
sarcastic laugh. “Uh-oh, I knew this
was going to happen,” he said.

Before Eric could answer, Ray
LaPierre stood up and walked over to
Randy, bending over to look him in
the eye.

“You just don’t care, do you:” he
began, his voice so angry it startled
everyone in the room.

Everyone except Randy. “Quite
the contrary-I care very much,” he
answered hreezily. “I just don’t he-
lieve this is how change should he
made. A hrilliant idea never came
out of a team. Brilliant ideas come
from brilliant individuals, wbo then
inspire others in the organization to
implement them.”

“That’s a lot of hull,” Kay shot
back. “You just want all the credit
for the success, and you don’t want
to share it with anyone.”

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C A S E S T U D Y

“That’s absurd,” Randy laughed
again. “I’m not trying to impress
anyone here at FircArt. I don’t need
to. I want this company to succeed
as much as you do, but I believe, and
I believe passionately, that groups
are useless. Consensus means medi-
ocrity. I’m sorry, but it docs.”

“But you haven’t even tried to
reach consensus with us,” Maureen
interjected. ‘Tt’s as if you don’t care
what we all have to say. We can’t
work alone for a solution – we need
to understand each other. Don’t you
see that?”

The room was silent as Randy
shrugged his shoulders noncommit-
tally. He stared at the tahle, a blank
expression on his face.

It was Eric who broke the silence.
“Randy, t b i s is a team. You are
part of it,” he said, trying to catch
Randy’s eye without success. “Per-
haps we should start again-”

Randy stopped him hy holding up
his cup, as if making a toast. “Okay,
look, I’ll behave from now on,” he
said. The words held promise, but
he was smirking as he spoke t h e m –
s o m c t b i n g no one at t h e table
missed. Eric took a deep breath be-
fore he answered; as much as he
wanted and needed Randy Louder-
back’s help, be was suddenly struck
by the thought that perhaps Randy’s
personality and his past experiences
simply made it impossible for him to
participate in the delicate process of

ego surrender that any kind of team-
work requires.

“Listen, everyone, I know this is a
challenge,” Eric began, but he was
cut short by Randy’s peneil-tapping
cm the table. A moment later, Ray
LaPierre was standing again.

“Forget it. This is never going to
work. It’s just a waste of time for all
of us,” he said, more resigned than
gruff. “We’re all in this together, or
there’s no point.” He headed for the
door, and before Eric eould stop him,
two others were at bis heels.

HBR’s cases are derived from the
experiences of real companies and
real people. As written, they are
hypothetical, and the names used
are fictitious.

Why Doesn’t This Team Work?

Seven experts discuss what teamwork takes.

ION R. KATZENBACH is a director
of McKinsey &) Company and co-
author, with Doughi.s K. Smith, of
The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the
High-Performanee Organization
(Harvard School Press,
1993. HarperCollins, 1994). Their
video. The Discipline of Teams, was
published by Harvard
School Management Productions.

Eric has his hands full with this
team, particularly with Randy. In
fact, a skeptic might well advise Eric
to throw in the towel now hecause it

Real teams do not have to get
along. They have to get things
accomplished.

is elear that Randy can-and might-
destroy the team for good. But there
are other factors hindering this team
besides Randy, and unless Eric rec-
ognizes and addresses them, the
team will not make progress, what-
ever its makeup.
nThere is no evidence of a common
commitment to a team purpose or
a working approach. Eric is trying
valiantly to hold the members to an
agenda based on the CEO’s charge:
“to have a comprehensive plan for
strategic realignment.” At best,
that’s a vague directive. Consequent-
ly, the members do not understand

the implications of tbose words,
draw any meaningful focus from
them, or recognize any need to work
together to make “strategic realign-
ment” a performance reality.
IThe “rules of the road” are ex-
tremely unclear. While the team has
a good mix of skills and experience,
tbe members do nut know how each
is expected to eontribute, how they
will work together, what they will
work on together, how the meetings
will be conducted, or how each per-
son’s ” n o n t e a m ” responsibilities
will be handled.

riEric’s consultant “team” experi-
ence is misleading. In the past, Erie
was really a part of a consultant
“workinggroup,” which is complete-
ly different from a team. For one
thing, consultants generally have
prior experience dealing with the
client assignments they obtain. For
another, consultant working groups
expect to have leaders,- they’re usu-
ally formed with the understanding
that one person knows best how to
accomplish the task at hand effi-
ciently with minimal risk. Finally,
most of the real work in such a

26 PORTRAITS BY CHUCK MORRIS

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