1-What were the mistakes made by Ryan and Keene during the whole process?
The mistakes made by Ryan and Keen during the whole progress are fourfold:
1. Formation
Baker is enlisted by commissioning executive Ryan and Keen to do an impossible job, both time and resource wise. Following an initial insight from Acton, the company’s chairman, Baker takes the lead to a newly created, cross functional task force. The idea is cascaded from top to down to him, across two layers of hierarchy. Very little is as well said about Acton’ and Herd’ ideas, except that they ‘feel’ that forecasting is an issue following significant loses in Q1 1975.
Subsequently, Ryan and Keen appoint a task force on behalf of Baker. That Baker had no influence on…show more content… This results from Baker not having been responsible from the selection of the team and uneasiness with forming group dynamics. To me, he fails to (i) engage with the entire group (ii) reach a common understanding of the task & goals (iii) define the work procedures and timing (iv) assess his authority and (v) set ground rules for dealing with sensitive information.
The mistakes from Baker above have led the group to lack cohesion, and to not share mutual values and goals. Ultimately, Baker let his group members decide to splinter into non communicating subgroups and let Eldredge to work independently on tasks out of scope.
3. The leadership of a taskforce
Baker fails to ensure a strong sense of leadership within his team. He allows a more senior member to set the agenda of the first meeting and fails to address the difference of opinions regarding the forecasting model, the approaches towards the forecasting issue. Baker therefore fails to align his team on the goals and fail to direct the tasks accordingly. He also does not deliver the objectives he was given clearly and concisely.
Specifically, Baker does not hold meetings frequently enough to keep all members informed on the progress and finding of each sub teams. There are no periodic meetings, only brief catch ups- some brief and strained. It would have
