MediSys Case

1. Art Beaumont, the new president hired in 2008, created an IntensCare product
development team, along with his executive team. This team included: Karen Baio of
Regulatory Affairs, Aaron Gerson who was the Research and Development researcher
who formulated the idea, Bret O’Brien who was the manager in Product Engineering,
Jack Fogel who was the Senior Production manager, Dipesh Mukerjee who was the
Software & Design manager, and Valerie Merz who was Marketing manager. Beaumont,
along with his executive team, created this cross-functional team in order to create and
implement a strategy for growing the business swiftly. A cross-functional team is one in
which employees from about the same hierarchical level, but from different work areas,
come together to accomplish a task. This team represented a new approach to product
development at MediSys since it used a cross-functional team to speed up product
development by working together continuously to move a product from its conceptual
stage to final production, known as parallel development.

2. Positive synergy is the ability of a group to outperform even its best individual
member. In other words, teams are often used in research laboratories because they can
draw on the diverse skills of various individuals to produce more meaningful research
than could be generated by all the researchers working independently. This team did not
seem to have positive synergy since its members had different drivers, which made it
difficult to make good decisions together as a team. For example, as O’Brien described it,
marketing’s role was revenue-driven, production’s was to manage a supply chain,
software and design’s was to integrate the software into the design, engineering’s was to
deliver at cost and on time, and regulatory’s was to throw roadblocks in front of everyone
else.

3. Three concepts that lead to team effectiveness include context, composition, and
process. For the context section for determining team effectiveness, adequate resources,
leadership and structure, climate of trust, and performance evaluation & reward systems
are necessary. In this case, the MediSys IntensCare product development team seemed to
lack a good leadership and structure because Jack Fogel, the team leader, seemed to be
too concerned with the product, and too little concerned with the business issues and
impending launch. Climate of trust seemed to be an issue that was lacking between the
team members since the members were worried about the time line and aggressive goals
and did not trust or were not confident with each other in meeting those goals. For the
composition section of team effectiveness, abilities of the members, personality,
allocating roles, size of the teams, etc. are included. In this case, personality of the team
members seemed to impend on the team’s success. For instance, Karen Baio described
her other team members to be childish and they looked at the project as a game. She also
described Valerie Merz to be very self-centered, focused on marketing, and very
aggressive in the meetings. In addition, the process section of team effectiveness includes
common purpose, conflict levels, team efficacy, etc. In this case, conflict levels seemed
to be an issue in the manner that the team could not decide if a modular design was a
good idea or not. Therefore, with factors that arose such as these, the team’s success was
impended upon.

4. Merz’s options at the end of the case included going into the office she overheard
conversation from and try to resolve issues with O’Brien and Fogel about the modular
design or go into Beaumont’s office and resign from the team. In order to get the
IntensCare team back in order, I think Valerie Merz should have gone to talk to O’Brien
and Fogel and the rest of the team members first and attempt to resolve this issue with
them. If the conversation with them was not what she expected, she should then go into
Beaumont’s office and tell him what has been going on. In turn, Beaumont could help in
solving the situation and perhaps relieve some of her stress.

I think MediSys could do certain things to improve the performance of future teams. One
of those things involve making sure the team leader is effective, is doing his job well by
communicating with the whole team, and liked by all the team members. Another thing
they can do is put members that have similar personalities and motives on the same team,
instead of people that do not display similar personality traits or motives. One other thing
they could have done is if they cannot decide on a certain design to use, this case being
the modular design, they can perhaps bring in other people, such as Beaumont to help
them solve their issue and relieve some stress from their shoulders.