Name Syed Mehdi

Student Id: 3263353------Group: K1 1

Team Effectiveness
RMIT University- Oct 2010

Effectiveness of Harvey’s Sweet Factory Teams and Work Group

Abstract:

Teams of people working together for common purpose have been a centrepiece of
human social organization ever since our ancient ancestors first lined up together to hunt, raise
families, and support their communities. People work together in groups to explore, achieve
and conquer while the concept of working in large organizations worldwide to restructure work
around teams and to enable more rapid, flexible and adaptive responses. Teams touch our
lives everyday and their effectiveness is important to well-being across a wide range of
personal life, social and organisation to function properly.

Introduction:

This report is based upon the history, working procedure that describes the team culture,
behaviour of Harvey’s Sweet Factory. This determines the relationship among the team
members for achieving set of goals appointed as individual or later sorted and established
those individual within a sense of recognized autonomous effective teams, are delegated and
assigned with a particular roles and responsibility. They have power of decision making and
even delegation, engaged with some task oriented and some people oriented activities that will
have a specific result, where they will be accountable for it. Communication, sharing information
and ways of measuring performance are the key points that are implemented during the new
approach by the new manager, also strategy for team development, monitoring strength and
weaknesses of each team member, analysing problems and collecting feedback from clients
and other group members plays a vital role in the new approach for company progress. In order
to understand more this, case study of Harvey's Sweet Factory must be revised in detail.

The Nature of Teams and Team Effectiveness:

A work team can be defined as a special form of a group which is a well-organised,

interdependent collection of individuals who share responsibility for specific outcomes for the
organisation. Generally groups are formed for a special type of purposes with a proper
organisational structure being together, the combination of knowledge and skills required for
carrying out activities and to achieve goals that could not be worked out as effectively by an
individual. Generally teams are characterised in many ways, but one of the most important
factor that influence the working order and the outcome of the team is the structure of the team.
Where team is established with a managed hierarchal organisational structure with a
designated roles and responsibility that has authority and can use authorized power to change
the behaviour, having impact on the outcome of the team will be accountable for their actions.
Name Syed Mehdi
Student Id: 3263353------Group: K1 2
Team Effectiveness
RMIT University- Oct 2010

The procedure of working team members mainly depends on the interdependence

between team members and a recognizable team identity to develop and implement a
particular values and recognizable responsibilities and norms. This leads the team members
towards the acknowledged set of common goals and tasks with established and effective
patterns of communication and team behaviour. To focus on the tasks, relationships and the
attitudes of team members, this factor mainly points to the effectiveness of team, and an extra
consideration is needed for the following,
• Mode of operating
• Goal setting
• Working atmosphere
• Leadership
• Communication and sharing information and collecting feedback
Mainly the effectiveness of the team directly depends on the influence of the culture
on working team behaviour. It is broadly accepted that the structure and system of every
organization have different culture. Culture can be defined as set of values norms and beliefs.
In an organisation team must have the knowledge of underlying culture. Important factors that
influence culture are historical development, size, technology, goals and objectives, the
environment and the people. To determine the strengths and weaknesses the number of role
behaviour are necessary to adept for a team. These roles are task roles or maintenance roles.
It should be noted that some time heavily task- oriented team may no accomplish because of
the poor inter personal relations or vice versa. Therefore the relationship between them is much
more important. In a team the strengths and weaknesses must be figured out to ensure the
balance of task and maintenance roles in the team.
Correctly integrating goals of individual with the goals of organization improves
performance. Although building supportive atmosphere decision making and developing skills
such as managing conflict and negotiation can facilitate the improvement of group while
developing trust, time management and stress management are strategies for motivating team
member and team building.
Delegation is type of agreement between the delegator and the delegatee,
responsibility of task is assigned and accepts accountability for the assigned task. It is one of
the essential steps for building strategies of team building. Developing a plan for team
performance and going to the process like, first recognizing the problem, gathering the data
then analysing problem, after that building an effective plan then implementing the plan and at
last evaluating the performance and progress made will be a proven and wise approach.
Generally, when a team is formed the first step is Forming where team member will
get to know each other. The second step is Storming where the conflicts arise. The third step is
Norming where every thing gets beck to its normal stage and start to grow. The fourth step is
Performing; it is here the team begin to produce a positive outcome. While seeking feedback is
essential to maintain team effectiveness. There are many ways for seeking feedback like,
regarding feedback as an opportunity to collect data. Being like more receptive and not
interrupting others and respect the others person's efforts.
Name Syed Mehdi
Student Id: 3263353------Group: K1 3
Team Effectiveness
RMIT University- Oct 2010

According to the case study, Harvey's, is a small factory of 112 employees making
wrapped chocolates. It has had a fairly stable existence with steady, though no large, profits.
Management is concerned because of profit margin declined. Hance Company appointed new
personnel manager, Ken Minton. Ken proposes a number of semi-autonomous work teams
among plant to increase the productivity. At this point ken set a new goal for building a team
and takes the responsibly for his action where he will be accountable for it.
Management soon accepts to implement ken's idea. Traditional team routine was
workers had specified tasks while supervisor set objectives, gave instructions and listened to
problems and acted on their behalf with management. At first before ken implement the new
approach, the each member has a specific task and was more tasks oriented. Every individual
could only do his task and could not swap the task with other member.

The chocolate-wrapping team consists of Max, the supervisor, and Spiro, Sue, Marita
and Raelene, before they always considered themselves as a team but had quite specific tasks.
Ken informs Max the new approach for team that allows more flexibility in tasks and
responsibility for quality of work also suggests launch time meetings and reaches to agreement
to start the project and implement the idea. Ken use like consoling technique to arrange
meeting and set ways of communication and arranging the atmosphere of trust and motivation
among the team member by suggesting Max to manage a lunch time meeting.

Max makes decision and is more anxious in change that his role is more facilitator then
supervisor. In first meeting the main objectives are explained that team member must be
familiar with guidelines, sampling and quality but also be familiar with the roles and
responsibility. The supervisor will be a channel of communication and more facilitator rather
then leader. Ken ask Max to be more facilitator like working more with group members and
motivating, improving communication, to perform well and makes decision.

Further meeting held and Sue suggest new idea, she wasn't happy to give her launch
time that she used to socialize not to pass in group meeting while others supported the idea.
There was a set time that machines could be turned off Sue suggested the time spent at
meetings could be counted as work time and counts their rostered day off. Max was bit dubious
and prepared to test their team autonomy. Sue puts new plan and it was for the first time where
they will test the autonomy of the team and it worked out fine.
Team worked in outlining the importance of the meeting that not to be penalized. Max present
the idea to the manager and received positive answer then found out team is a semi-
autonomous that can make this type of discission. This made the team member more confident
and powered by this feedback. The team gets positive answer form management start thinking
being as more confident and getting feedback like this effect the performance and development
of the team and team member.
One of the major tasks of the team was to be familiarized with each others roles and
responsibility in order to be more effective with in the team. At the second meeting ken
Name Syed Mehdi
Student Id: 3263353------Group: K1 4
Team Effectiveness
RMIT University- Oct 2010

describes roles, also recorded and asked team member to try all other roles. At this state each
member swaps their task to be familiar with each others task in order to improve performance.
An informal roster was written to share information and emotions to get more
harmonized within the team. Ken puts an idea, team member to look at the strengths and
weaknesses of each member and devise a ways of working on the weaknesses. They find it
difficult to be serious about it. At this stage way of communication sharing information with other
team members was implemented and it makes the team member more confident.
Because they were all good friends and couldn’t express opinions on other members
weaknesses without fear of offending also a couple volunteered to deal with management on
behalf of Max. They all suggested that there strengths ware friendliness and hard working while
Max decided to do the task of observing. Max takes the responsibility to monitor team strength
and weaknesses and finds many, where implement to improve those weaknesses among the
team members.
After some set of observation Max realized that Raelene had literacy problem and
confronted her to see the training officer. He noted Marita’s weakness; she is quite chatty when
working hardly talked in meetings. He was not figuring out on how to encourage her to
contribute more. Spiro had attitude problem, where he worked, never tidied and cleaned
properly. He was used to specialised job, not prepared to accept lesser roles therefore Max
used his power and asked him to change his attitude. Four months later group was comfortable
with changes and was growing. Sue suggested new initiative that the packers sat either side of
the conveyor belt rather then next to each other to improve the production. After a few weeks
the group stated to think about measuring the improvement that have made. They decided to
set the performance indicator to measure the improvement. New ways of feedback is
implemented and also it show team is in its performing stage and devising new strategies for
measuring improvement and team development,
In the concluding section, they agreed in list of performance indicator and started to
record the data on chart and book. At this point they felt they would know if changes were
productive. They had communication problems. Marita shares information that she liked to have
records of the week made by lunch time and received feedback from other team members. Max
gives his power to other team members to monitor work levels and stated that he is still
responsible with dealing with management and took the responsibility. Ken suggested to share
information about there plan with other team member and groups. At first they took it as a joke
and later they got serious on sharing information with other workers about their goals and
achievements. They overlooked in consulting with clients for the feedback. Bulk packing store
had expectation on occasions which were no meet by team members. Couple of pallets had
been a few boxes short and on several occasions the pallets had been on the other side the
conveyor belt. After six month ken the manager meet with the group they agreed that they were
happy with the process and wanted to continue.