Understanding Teamwork & Management: A Report on Fire Art's Challenges

This report examines the teamwork challenges faced by Fire Art, a family-owned business experiencing declining sales due to internal conflicts and a lack of collaboration among its managers. The report highlights the importance of teamwork for organizational success, emphasizing its role in boosting employee morale, capitalizing on collective knowledge, and fostering flexibility. It identifies the director of sales and marketing's negative attitude as a major obstacle to effective teamwork and proposes solutions such as team-building activities, personnel counseling, anonymous feedback systems, clear division of work, and the implementation of Tuckman's stages of group development. The report concludes by emphasizing the benefits of strong teams in achieving organizational goals and providing strategies for improved communication and cohesion, ultimately aiming to improve team performance and organizational outcomes at Fire Art.

Running Head: Understanding groups & Managing teams
Understanding groups and managing teams
Why doesn’t this team work?

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Table of Content:
Table of Content:...................................................................................................................................1
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Importance of work groups/teams:.......................................................................................................2
Problem at Hand: Failure of team work................................................................................................3
Possible solution to the problem...........................................................................................................3
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................4
References:............................................................................................................................................6
Reflection on Teamwork........................................................................................................................7

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Introduction: In the case study, it is been pointed out that the team at Fire art is not able to
collaborate and develop positive synergies amongst the team mates. A new director of strategy has
been appointed just now and he has a sole task of building and managing the team. Teamwork being
essential to an organisation’s success, the onus is on Eric for the same.
In the process, there are certain difficulties as some of the mangers at fire art are not able to
contribute much to the team as their views and opinions are suppressed by director of sales and
marketing, who in himself is a magnanimous personality with bundles of energy exuberating out of
his personality. The problem with him is, difference in ideology in comparison to other team
members, due to which tension prevails due to team meeting.
In the report it will be discuss as to what are the problems faced by the organisation due to lack of
team work, what are the challenges hurdling the process , and using some organisational theories ,
how the problems can be turned over. Also, would analyse possible solution for the problems in
order to create an atmosphere of great team work and cohesion in the system, where everyone is
working towards one collective goal of company’s success. The reason for emphasis on team work is,
because, great teams form the pillar of successful companies.
Importance of work groups/teams:
 It empowers team members with good accountability towards their job, a sense of
ownership, higher decision making power, and thus boosts the morale of an employee(Lynn,
Plat & Reilly, 2016)
 Helps organisations to capitalize on the knowledge and the motivation of the team members
(Goetsch & Davis, 2014)
 Helps the organisation in loosing of its bureaucracy and promotes greater flexibility and
responsiveness.
 Serves as a pool of multiple free lowing ideas, which further leads to better strategic
decision making (Hu & Liden, 2015)
 Develops a sense of responsibility amongst individual team members and they make it a
personal mission to achieve organisational goals.

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Problem at Hand: Failure of team work
The company in the case study is Fire art, a family owned business, successfully running for last 80
years and serving the Midwestern clients, and has positioned itself in the mind-set of consumer as
high quality and high pricing company. With the advent of globalization and changes in the
technologies, cheaper machinery and many players, the sales of the companies are falling rapidly.
Hence, the burden is on the managers to come up with the strategies to buckle up and increase the
sales, the same can be achieved only with contribution of everyone and all of them coming together
as a team.
Major challenge at hand is, the director of sales and marketing, Mar. Randy’s attitude towards the
fellow team mates and other divisional managers, it comes as the biggest hurdle in the creation of
positive synergies towards a common goal. Mr Randy believes that, groups in companies are
absolutely useless and consensus is a mediocre concept. He also has another belief, in which he
believes strongly that, in a company it’s only efforts of meticulous people who comes up with a
brilliant plan and strategy, and rest everyone just follow the leader, disbeliever of team work and
team efforts. This burning issue is leading to a lot of friction among the fellow team mates, due to
which, not even one team meeting has been successfully conducted, leaving Eric in absolute distress.
Possible solution to the problem:
 Team building activities helps the team members get out of their zones and break the
cultural barriers, which could possibly cause friction among the team members. The team
building activity will help them open up to each other and create an atmosphere of
friendliness despite the individual positions (Levi, 2015)
 Personnel counselling of Mr Randy with the HR head or a person of higher experience than
him, and make him understand the importance of team work and the possible benefits for
the organisation. Also, it is important to make him understand; team work will not make him
loose his individuality, but, would increase his respect in the eyes of his team mates (Brand,
2014)
 Inculcate a habit of posting anonymous feedback after every team meeting or in general
business operations, this will help the management in analysing problems with certain
employees, which then could be tackled with the help of counselling (Tucker & Abbasi, 2015)
 It is must and should that division of work should be clear, no one can interfere in the work
of other person, until and unless required. This division of work would keep all the

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employees in the limits of their task and prevent any poking from other team
members(Chimel, Fraccaroli & Sverke, 2017)
 Another important aspect of successful team meeting is presence of a strong influential
meeting coordinator. His role is to ensure everyone participates and contributes towards the
objectives of meeting .He should ensure the decorum and timelines of the meeting and also
make it really fruitful, with clear identified goals to focus in meetings, the participation
would increase. The meeting coordinator should also take care of any miscreant, whose only
purpose is to waste the time of other team members by disrupting the meeting, such person
should be dealt with authority and harshness even after repeated warning (Li & Lam, 2013)
 Tuchman teamwork theory should be put to use in the organisation. The theory has 4
components attached to it, starting from forming, storming, norming which ultimately leads
to performing. This framework, if adopted would drastically improve the team meeting at
fire art and lead to developing of positive synergies.(Betts & Healey, 2015)
Conclusion: Fire Art Company is in the business of making wine goblets, beer steins, ashtrays
and other glass novelty since last 80 years. It’s a family owned business which has earned its
reputation in the market because of its high quality. It is considered to be one of the best in the
market. The company in the recent times is not able to live up to its potential and the sales are going
down. The management wants to rework on the strategy and it requires cooperation from every
individual members. Some miscreant is not allowing this to happen. Certain techniques can work in
the favour of company which would help them in conducting successful team meetings, some of the
strategies as discussed are counselling, team building activities, feedback sessions, division of work.
Truman’s revolutionary theory on team work is of great advantage for any company who wants to
have constructive team meetings, using all the above would help Eric in getting desired outcome
from the team meetings.
References:

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Lynn, G.S. Polat, V. and Reilly, R.R 2016, Team Trust and Team Learning in New Product
Development Projects. In Let’s Get Engaged! Crossing the Threshold of Marketing’s Engagement
Era(pp. 639-640). Springer, Cham.
Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Hu, J. and Liden, R.C., 2015. Making a difference in the teamwork: Linking team prosocial motivation
to team processes and effectiveness. Academy of Management Journal, 58(4), pp.1102-1127.
Levi, D., 2015. Group dynamics for teams. Sage Publications
Brand, T., 2014. Basic counselling skills. SAMJ: South African Medical Journal, 104(7), pp.510-511.
Tucker, R. and Abbasi, N., 2015. The architecture of teamwork: examining relationships between
teaching, assessment, student learning and satisfaction with creative design outcomes. Architectural
Engineering and Design Management, 11(6), pp.405-422.
Chmiel, N., Fraccaroli, F. and Sverke, M. eds., 2017. An Introduction to Work and Organizational
Psychology: An International Perspective. John Wiley & Sons.
Betts, S. and Healy, W., 2015. Having a Ball Catching on to Teamwork: An Experiential Learning
Approach to Teaching the Phases of Group Development. Academy of Educational Leadership
Journal, 19(2), p.1..
Li, M.P. and Lam, B.H., 2013. Cooperative learning. The Active Classroom, The Hong Kong Institude
of Education.

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Reflection on Teamwork: I strongly believe that successful organisation tend to believe in
team efforts rather than an individual’s effort, team work helps in creating positive synergies ,which
can then move the mountains, if need be. Team efforts are always greater than the individual
efforts. Team work helps in keeping all the employees work towards a common goal and achieve
organisations objectives. Teamwork helps in understanding viewpoints of other individuals which
further enhances the way they communicate amongst themselves. It also creates an atmosphere of
amazing workplace with focussed energies towards organisations goals and objectives.
Communication is a key for great team work. A team that works together understands the weakness
and strength of its team mates and help each other in filling on the weaknesses with their
contribution and multiplying the individual strength towards a bigger goal.
Teamwork helps to build a bond amongst the team members which improves their individual
relationship and enhances cohesion. A successful and strong team is one, which is able to
communicate freely, walk over any cultural barriers and brainstorm in a tension free environment
adding onto their productivity which would lead to organisation benefitting immensely. Listening,
respecting, persuading, helping, sharing & participating are some of the relevant skills required for
teamwork. Any organisation which knows how to manage its teams and have the ability to form
strong teams will be successful in any of its deliverables. I am of the opinion that teams are
responsible for helping corporates to do mammoth tasks with much ease and make them attain the
heights envisioned by the management. Teamwork helps in reducing the time it takes to do a task, it
reduces it to less than half, because of the reason that every mind is working towards the problem
solving and positive synergies among them are leading them to solve the problems at the earliest.

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