Effective and Ineffective Team

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EFFECTIVE GROUP

“When team works together, miracles happen and results are just a by-product”.

In my previous stint at Jabong (Now Flipkart), the role involved round the clock support to the Logistics Team in timely fulfillment of orders. During the Big Billion day Sale 2015, the daily orders clocked 5X the mean demand and team didn’t anticipate such surge in the volumes. The subsequent meetings were very intense and frustrating. The team was under intense pressure given the high cancellation rate in the last few weeks. The leadership had questioned team’s competency on multiple platforms. Given the high marketing costs per order (almost Rs. 1200 per order), the onus was on the Supply Chain Department to fulfill the orders timely.

Under such trying situation, the Head of Department convened several meetings to plan the fulfillment of the surge in orders. The team decided to take the challenge head-on. In the next 12 hours, team had multiple rounds of discussions internally. It was then that the team Group truly lived onto the mission statement at Flipkart- “One Team, One Goal”. The Goal was set up-front – Filling 95% of requests within “Two” business days. Despite differences amongst members, high level of cohesiveness was displayed. The same members reached middle grounds on conflicting thoughts to leverage internal synergies. The members were open to new suggestions even if that meant changing their preferred style of working. Each Member effectively contributed to solve and participated in discussions leading to the solutions. Every Milestone achieved was acknowledged by the Management. The team displayed high levels of commitments, even stretching beyond work hours. The most innovative solutions in-fact came from the most reclusive team members, some of whom preferred to be silent in most meetings earlier. The team size also played a significant role given it had only 7 core members.

The results were phenomenal. The targets were met at a 30% lower cost and 25% improved Turnaround times. Customers reported higher satisfaction scores on survey indexes. The same team was later acknowledged as the Top Performing Department during the campaign. I truly realized the Management Concept –As a Management student, the experience shall set precedence for future leadership roles.

INFFECTIVE GROUP

The significance of a “Good & a Cohesive” team is realized even more when the team operates in silos and is not close-knit. During my stint with Trident Energy, a leading Towel manufacturing production unit, the electrical division of which I was a part of had faced significant downtime for some weeks. The team was under intense pressure to make amends to ensure seamless production process. The team size was large and had 15-20 members.

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