Chattanooga Ice Cream free essay sample

Chattanooga Ice Cream Case The Chattanooga Ice Cream case shows a decline in sales for 5 consecutive years. The Division is headed by Charles Moore. Although Charles Moore was successful in leading teams he seemed to have major issues with this team of vice presidents. According to the Harvard Business Review Chattanooga Ice Cream Case the team was very dysfunctional; they exhibited a lack of trust, high in conflict, disrespectful of each other and exhibited avoidance issues with accountability. Team members seemed to always lay blame to other member. Moore needs to be more assertive in dismissing the ways of the past and the loss of Stay Shop business needs to be put aside. Moore needs to give clear direction and assign responsibilities to each team member. Moore needs to convey that team cohesiveness is a must and this will go a long way to help ensure no further loss of business. This paper will examine how Moore’s leadership approach contributed to the teams’ dysfunction, discuss what the group of employees themselves could do to better understand the perspectives of each other and their boss as well as make recommendations about Moore should do now to help his team work together and manage conflicts more effectively. Charlie’s Leadership Style In assessing where Charlie Moore goes wrong, it’s important to look at his leadership style. According to the DiSC style, Charlie is a â€Å"Steady (S) Leader.† Specifically, this means Charlie operates at a methodical pace and likes leading in an orderly environment. He may readily view leading in a â€Å"fast-paced† environment as intimidating or stressful. His leadership style is collaborative in nature and he values group efforts. Charlie is a cautious leader that seldom leads by authority as he is comfortable working behind the consensus of the group as he doesn’t like making decisions alone. He is demotivated by competitive environments and changing direction abruptly. He enjoys leading in a harmonic environment with little or no confrontations or conflict. Leaders prepare the organizations for change; Charlie does not build trust nor align his people. Lack of Leadership As a leader Charlie needs to â€Å"prepare organizations for change and help them cope as they struggle through it† (Week 2, Lecture 2). The first evidence of Charlie’s failure as a leader is when he calls the group together to communicate the news about losing their major customer. The mood is somber as Charlie calls the group together to â€Å"mourn† (Sloane, The Chattanooga Ice Cream Division, HBR, p.1) and to figure out what needs to be done about it. As a leader he must exude a sense of â€Å"positive energy† (Jack Welch, Winning, p.84) to prepare his people to act and energize their best thinking to deal with this challenge. His style of (S) may not like change, but he needs to set a tone of optimism and decisiveness that says that they will come through this challenge successfully. First of all, Moore should master self-leadership for himself. Then encourage and model it for others on the team. Manz indicates that â€Å"Leaders facilitate employee self-set goals and reward effective self-leadership when it does occur. Overall, they create and nurture systems that allow teamwork and a holistic self-leadership culture to flourish† (Charles Manz, 2001, Leading Others to Lead Themselves, p. 221). I believe that Charlie and Charlie’s team would benefit from learning about their own leadership style by taking the Disc and TKI assessments and possibly creating smaller strategically paired teams within the group to come up with a foundation and vision for the direction in which the company should go as a whole. Lack of Candor Another example of where Charlie goes wrong is that he doesn’t develop an environment of trust where his people don’t hold back – even though he may not like conflict. As an example of this, Charlie has several meetings to ask his team what their thoughts are about how to compete. When you are an individual contributor, you try to have all the answers. Thats your job-to be an expert, the best at what you do, maybe even the smartest person in the room. When you are a leader, your job is to have all the questionsQuestioning, however, is never enough, following Rule 6: Leaders probe with curiosity that borders on skepticism, making sure your questions unleash debate and raise issues that get action (Welch, 2005, p. 74). Moore should first create an intentional communication strategy. His management team must understand and support a common vision with a common purpose. This requires clarity. Clarity begins with effective communication. He should make sure communication from his management team reaches all employees. The article by Ferrazzi (Harvard Business Review) indicates three specific techniques, developed from the authors research, which can help coworkers collaborate and interact more effectively. The techniques, which are based on creating trust that allows team members to speak candidly, are â€Å"dividing meetings into smaller groups, naming a candor advocate, and teaching how to give and receive feedback with a positive attitude† (Ferrazzi, 2012, Candor, Criticism, and Teamwork, p. 40). Team Dysfunctions The Chattanooga Ice Cream team is dysfunctional for several reasons. Some of those reasons include an absence of trust, avoidance, and not being accountable. Also, there is a lack of commitment amongst some managers. Moore is also looking for buy-in from all members for group decisions. There was no clear cut rule as to how decisions were going to be made. Simply put, Charles Moore failed to incorporate clear operating rules. Week Four 4 Lecture – Building High Performance Teams suggests that â€Å"when managers agree on ground rules in advance, the team is much more likely to run efficiently,† this is especially true with the Chattanooga Ice Cream team. According to Rick Johnson, Charlie could â€Å"Challenge is management team; ask for solutions, assigning both responsibility and empowerment accordingly to utilize individual skills. Ownership of ideas and initiatives builds commitment. Involving the team in creating direction and solutions through empowerment generat es commitment to the tasks necessary to meet objectives. A way to get over the major loss of a client and overshadow the â€Å"mourning†Ã‚  effect would be to challenge the management team to collectively bring in a new client or a few clients that could equal the departure of the one loss, in terms of volume. Also, Moore should create offsite team-building activities on a quarterly basis. The gatherings/outings should be used to build unification and trust in each other. New Direction for CICC Charles seems to want to be just another member of the team, an individual contributor, wanting to give his part instead of asking the explicit result-driven questions required of him in his leadership role. Welch, goes on to say, But thats the job. You want bigger solutions ask questions; healthy debate, decisions, and actions will get everyone there (p. 76). There is nowhere to go, if there is no one to lead. The dysfunctions of the team lie with the dysfunctions of the leader and no directions. Regardless of making the wrong or right decision, in regards to the CICC case, if no action is taken, then the company will fail for sure. As a Business Development Executive, I would tend to push the team to research and target other clients to fill the void left by the client lost, eliminating the somberness, creating motivation to accomplish a new goal, and strengthen the team by focusing efforts into one vision. He should run his team through assessments that could help him strategically pair individual weaknesses and strengths together, not only to complement each other going forward but to build credibility as a leader and start to build a foundation for candor, voice, and dignity going forward. Gaining new clients would most likely cost additional funds in the research and marketing and may cause little investment growth up front; however stabilizing the vision with a decision is making the correct effort to save this company under the current circumstances.