The New and More Diverse Team

Case Study I: The New and More Diverse Team

Betsy J. Campbell

Baker College Online

Summary/Key Facts

This case study looks at what happens when a company that has been focused on acquisition based growth has to change it’s focus to a slower, more organic method of growth.  This particular company has been experiencing rapid growth over a long span of time, and consequently has an employee base that is large and disorganized.  To combat this, the COO created an operating committee that involved people from every department, from every level, providing the committee with a diverse team that will be able to communicate effectively across all levels.

Key Issues/ Problem

        The key issues that I can see in this case study are 1.) with the rush to acquire their competitors, they spent little to no time fully integrating them into the main company, and 2.) now that they are forced to turn their attention inwards to spur further growth, they have to address the fact that the company has poor lines of communication.  This second issue is where I believe the main problem from this company comes from.  Instead of having a committee from the start and building on to it as more companies were acquired, they created a single, large taskforce that is supposed to be able to handle issues from every department.

Recommended Solutions/Strategies

A good solution to the issues that this is to create smaller teams within each division that do a more intensive look at the problems that each department is facing.  As our textbook states, “As change progresses throughout large organizations, additional groups are formed at lower levels” (Cohen & Kotter, 2002 pg. 47).  This would allow for each “head” within the bigger taskforce to have a more well thought out solution before presenting it, since it would have been vetted once already.  There would also be an added value have having the problem being viewed from more perspectives, just within the department that is being directly affected.

Analyze Solutions/Strategies

Breaking down the taskforce and creating subcommittees based on each department will give newer employees a chance to voice their opinions on how issues should be handled, and gives the department a chance to work together in order to solve the problem in a way that works for them.  After they have come to an agreement, the “head” of the department would be able to bring their solution to the main taskforce.  This solution will be more well thought out than the taskforce member would have been able to come up with on their own, and will allow them to give a much more comprehensive reasoning behind why this solution would work better.  The final result, after the taskforce has been able to go over the problem with their solutions or arguments, should be much easier to come to and much better for the company as a whole as it takes more of the company into consideration.

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