Situational Analysis: The issue with the situation at Terracog appears to stem from a lack of communication between team members since everyone is attempting to push their own agenda to the forefront. The situation emerged with the introduction of BirdsI, a handheld GPS device, introduced by Terracog’s competitor named Posthaste. When customer’s used the product and realized its salient features, the sales team headed by Ed Pryor started pressing for development of a similar product (something which the design team was not very sure of). The initial meeting consisted of Fiero, Pryor and Allen Roth – Director of Design & Development. In this meeting, Fiero was interested in introducing Aerial into the market so as to stay ahead of the competition. The key to the success of this development would be solely dependent on the product pricing as outlined by Roth. However, the product development team was not happy with this development for multiple reasons. As a team, they were not sure that a redesign of the platform would be possible (both from a time and budgetary perspective). Additionally, Allen Roth had his agenda of developing his independent product line (within the Terracog Group) and he perceived the Aerial Project to be an obstacle for his aims.
In the pre launch meeting of the Ariel project, the first topic that came up was the costing. When Richardson raised this point, production director Tony Barren immediately retorted by stating bluntly that the Ariel product was an expensive one. He stated very clearly that he was absolutely unable to decrease the price of the product beyond this minimum threshold level. The first reaction to this development was from Pryor who openly challenged the validity of the pricing from a sales viewpoint. Similarly, Cory (software and firmware) was not entirely convinced by Barren’s production estimates. Alice Gorga (hardware) was concerned also about the positioning of the product to which Pryor immediately defended this point as positioning belonging to the sales and strategy function. Both Barren and Roth ganged up on Pryor when they said that neither the production nor the design teams could help in bringing down the product costs. At this point, Richardson brought the noisy meeting to a stop by suggesting that Barren and the design team must look at cost cutting measures. The meeting ended with no clear solution and with Pryor declaring to the audience that he would not be in a position to sell the product given the current costing. Since nothing concrete was achieved the group agreed to meet again at Richardson’s insistence the following week.
The second meeting was even more explosive than the first one. Roth and Barren ended up reworking the cost estimates and found out that they could only reduce the product cost by 8%. On presenting the figures to the group, Cory was the first to start the debate when he said that he was not convinced of this 8% cut since the competition was selling a product with deeper discount. This sentence made both Barren and Roth take a defensive stance on their calculations. Finally, the entire meeting room broke into several conversations with the whole team breaking up into two groups. On one side were Ed, Pryor and Richardson, while on the other side were Roth, Barren and Whistler. Basically, realizing that the meeting was going nowhere, Richardson asked Ed to set a price stating that the estimates were available. When Ed came up with the costs, the audience split into two groups again – one that was supporting Ed and his aggressive pricing strategies , while Barren and Roth on the other side who were not at all convinced with this approach since their calculations showed no room for more pricing cuts. Becky Timmons supported them on the pricing front with Pryor aggressively fighting all three on this point. The end result was that the second meeting also ended up with the same fate as the first one – inconclusive, and with no solution in sight. This impasse left Richardson wondering the manner in which this communication problem could be tackled.
The situation mentioned has three important points: 1. An important issue (costing) has been detected by the group, 2. The solution to this issue is not an easy one and is bringing the group to an argumentative impasse, and 3. A solution needs to be found out on an urgent basis if the issue has to be rectified. (Wilkinson, 2012, p. 67) In addition to this, there are factors such as a severe lack of mutual respect amongst the participants, a possible lack of trust since one group actually questions the other groups commitment to the issue
Assessments of the Meeting Outcomes: One clearly sees that the company should have moved on this initiative much earlier since their apathy gave PostHaste an upper hand by launching the product and gaining market share. It was the initial management decision not to develop a product with satellite imagery that was problematic. In addition, both the pre launch meetings did nothing significant for the company or the people involved in the initiative.
The possible reason for this could range from having unclear meeting outcomes to inviting the wrong set of people for the meeting. The entire purpose of the meeting was strategic in nature. It involved arriving at a correct pricing for the end product that emerged out of the Ariel Project. The company would be able to position this finished product in a particular segment that would help it to gain competitive advantage in the GPS. I think the meeting should have been extremely focused on the cost aspect so that the technical points are resolved as soon as possible and the product reaches the market. As a senior manager, Richardson should have seen through the manner in which Barren and Roth were trying to stonewall the project. These instances greatly affected the outcomes of the meeting. Emma should have ideally made it very clear to the entire team at the outset that the launch of Ariel was top priority and that no one could stonewall it by using excuses that other initiatives were in advanced stages as mentioned by Roth. In fact, the very first step the management should have done was to ensure that Ariel gets a top priority within the team so that Roth and Barren’s energies are fully focused on the cost reduction aspect. However, such signals never came from the management. This led both Roth and Barren to conclude that they could successfully hijack the meeting and get away with it. Lastly, Emma should have also ensured that she kept Pryor on a leash since he believed that certain aspects such as product positioning was solely his lookout. He would have done well taking into account the views of the technical team leaders as well since it would have been their efforts that would have contributed to the success of the Ariel Project – both in terms of quality as well as cost.
In the second meeting, Emma should have kept the same team present, but, instead, she allowed the CFO (Timmons) to participate in the meeting. This had two major effects – 1. Her stand of keeping the retail prices at $500 lay in conjunction with the stand taken by Roth and Barren, and 2. The whole meeting broke down subsequently due to the involvement of a person who had no role to play in the entire costing, sales and manufacturing aspect. Ideally, Emma could have communicated the salient points of this meeting to Becky Timmons later and got her views independent of the group. It is possible that Timmons got prejudiced after reviewing the cost sheet, and without fully understanding the competitive scenario in the market. In the ideal scenario, therefore, Emma should have let the following people attend: Ed Pryor, Allen Roth, Tony Barren and Alice Gorga. The role of Cory Wu (software) comes nowhere in the picture at this very initial level. In the second meeting, she should have invited only the four people mentioned and should have excluded Becky Timmons from the meeting. By doing this, she would have ensured that the meeting would have been free from unnecessary opinions and consequent disruptions.
Despite these changes, I would still anticipate issues arising from Barren and Roth’s significant tirade against the Ariel Project. In addition, I would also have to take into account Ed Pryor’s extreme reactions against his colleagues that were also responsible for disrupting the meetings thus far. Lastly, I would also anticipate the technical team (Barren, Roth, and Gorga) playing up a united front against the costing aspect of the Ariel project so that at least some of them would then be left free to pursue their own agendas.
Process: We would only be covering the steps that would lead to a fruitful facilitation.
The first step would be to determine if this situation requires facilitation. As per the checklist provided by Wilkinson (2012), one can see that this situation answers affirmatively for all the six questions from the checklist. (Wilkinson, 2012, p. 73) One thing is certain that there could be no better situation where facilitation is actually justified.
The second step would be to define the purpose or the actual result to be achieved from the facilitation. In this case, it would be break the impasse created in the meeting by the refusal of Roth and Barren to yield to the management demand of reducing the costs on the Ariel project. It would also be to rein in Pryor, to an extent so that he doesn’t antagonize the Production and Design teams. However, the actual purpose would be to put Project Ariel back on track by cutting costs. This facilitation should aim at regulating the meeting in a manner that would achieve the purpose of stabilizing Project Ariel.
The third step would involve an accurate and honest situation assessment. In this step, the facilitator would apprise the entire team of the exact situation that they are all facing due to this impasse. This would involve a complete update on the existing competition scenario and the manner in which these would affect the prospects of TerraCog and all the employees including those sitting in that meeting. Such a situational assessment is probably the most important part since it brings everyone to speed on the situation. At the moment, only a few employees are aware of the threat that BirdsI poses to the prospects of TerraCog.
After everyone is duly informed of the situation it becomes imperative that the next step would be goal setting since such a goal would have to be set taking into consideration the situational problems. The fourth part of this process, therefore, is Vision or Goal Setting. Every department head in the meeting should present their vision statements and Richardson should set a broad vision statement for TerraCog as a whole. The vision statements set by the individual team members must be in agreement with the one set by Richardson. Therefore, the facilitator must ensure that these conformations of vision statements exist.
Once the goals are set, the next important step is the strategy to achieve those goals. In case of the design and production departments, these could mean getting back to the drawing table and reworking a more cost efficient design while keeping quality as a key parameter. For sales, this could mean the correct positioning and continuous market feedback to the product development and design team so that all these teams work seamlessly for ensuring that TerraCog achieves the position of an undisputed market leader by beating Posthaste.
The ultimate step in the process would be setting up an outline for monitoring progress. After having put all the steps into place, it is essential to monitor if the facilitation is working. This could be in form of weekly reviews, department updates and such other forms of inter-departmental communications on Project Ariel. This would also help reduce trust deficit issues that exist presently within the team.
Reference
Beer, M & Yong, S. (2008). TerraCog Global Positioning Systems:
Conflict and Communication on Project Aerial. Harvard Business Review, 2184, 1 – 10. Retrieved from http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu
Wilkinson, M. (2012). Secrets of Facilitation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.
