Team Locomotive Charter - Assignment Example

 Team Locomotive Charter I. Who are we? We are a group of individuals hoping to accomplish some goals from MGMT 3000. We have chosen the name “The Locomotives” because we are always moving ahead like a locomotive. Individually we are a diverse group of people with different backgrounds and different skill sets. But we are confident of our abilities to turn our group’s diversity and different backgrounds into a useful and meaningful combination so that we can contribute something new to the ever-changing business and management areas. We ended up in Denver from different parts of the world in pursuit of excellence in management. All of us have different skills and interests. But we decided to use our skills and interests in a fruitful manner so that each and every member of our team may benefit from the skills of others. II. What do we want to accomplish? As a group we have created the shared goals of inspiring each member to pursue excellence inside and outside of the classroom. We also hope to improve our ability to communicate effectively as a diverse unit. Since we are from different parts of the world our effective communication might be obstructed by the language barriers. But we know that more than 80% of the ideas are communicated through nonverbal means. So language barrier may not affect us much. In addition, we hope to broaden our cultural horizons while learning how to effectively work as a unit. Globalization has brought many changes in the business world and most of the major companies are operating internationally now in order to exploit the business potentials in other countries. Even the biggest companies like Microsoft, Apple etc are looking for every expansion opportunities in other countries. Such internationalization of business has raised the importance of a multicultural workforce in organizations at present. It is difficult for Microsoft or Apple to operate in a country like India or China with the help of the Americans alone. They need a blend of diverse workforce including the Americans, Indians and Chinese in order to sustain their business successfully in these countries. Diversity in our group will definitely help us to learn more about how to work in a multicultural team environment and these learning may help us in our future endeavors also. Without establishing expectations, our goals would be nearly impossible to accomplish. We set our expectations high. We expect each member to attend each meeting unless an emergency arises. We also expect each member to put forth 100% at all times. Honesty is always the best policy and we expect honesty from each member of our team. This means praising other members on a job well done as well as letting a member know when they are out of line or off topic. The best way to create a productive and open environment is through encouragement and criticisms. We expect all members to encourage one another in their successes and at the same time constructive criticisms will motivate our team members more towards the target or objectives of our groups. The last expectation we have is to be respectful towards all other members of the group. This means showing up to meetings on time, being prepared, being ready to work, and respecting thoughts and ideas from other members. III. Organization We plan to base our work structure in flexibility. As we are writing this, we still have not completely figured out each member’s strengths and weaknesses. Assessment of each member’s strengths and weakness is necessary for us to focus more or less while a member is engaged in a task. We have established some ground rules for the group. We expect each member to be on time to group meetings with a positive attitude. We expect each member to come prepared with research, work, or ideas. We have also planned to inform the group members the agenda of the group meeting in advance in order to give the group members, ample time in researching and developing new ideas. We have decided that each member should bring at least three ideas to the meeting even if all the three ideas may become rubbish and rejected after the discussion. We believe that sometimes an idea which seems to be rubbish in the initial analysis may become a critical one after the discussion is over. So we encourage our team members to bring ideas as much as possible to the meeting. As the need arises, we plan to revise our meeting rules. We will set up a partner system within the group so that if one person fails to complete a task, then his partner will at least have some idea of what they were doing and he can report it to the group for further discussion and assistance. This will enable us to concentrate more on the failing areas or weak links in our group. We planned to distribute work equally or evenly so that each member may get his share based on his strengths. Strict observance of deadline is enforced in our group in order to finish the task within the allotted time frame. We know that unless each member respect deadlines, it would be difficult for us to complete the project in time. In terms of leadership, we plan to have a flexible leadership policy based on each member’s strengths that will allow each member to lead at some point. This will enable us to be leaders and followers at some point of time during the group work. Leadership styles are changing day by day. Different countries and cultures may have different leadership styles. It is not necessary that the leadership styles of Americans are same as that of the Indians or the Chinese. As mentioned earlier, since we are working in a diverse or multicultural group, we will get the taste of leadership styles prevailing in different countries. Even though, this is only a management class, our group task will allow each of us to gain some “hands-on” management experience. In our group decision making, we planned to enforce democracy. In order to make decisions, we will rely on a voting system where the majority has to agree on every decision made. IV. How will we operate? We believe that attendance at meetings, completion of tasks, accountability, and decision-making are vital in ensuring our success in our group project. Attendance is so crucial at team meetings because if a person failed to attend a group meeting, he will fail to identify the important decisions taken in the meeting and subsequently our objectives will be seriously affected. We have planned to enforce some penalties for those who failed to attend the team meetings without adequate reasons. At these meetings, we will brainstorm, assign parts of assignments, help each member with questions, and make decisions. When one person fails to complete their assigned task, morale within the group can deteriorate at an alarming rate, so that the entire group functioning could be seriously affected. Group work is just like a chain and each member is a link in the chain. Any of the links (member) becomes weaker, the strength of the entire chain (group work) could be seriously affected and that is why we believe that strengthening of the weak links in a group is necessary. When one group member failed to complete a task, the tasks planned after the completion of that task could be delayed and the entire project could be delayed. In other words, failure of one person in a group can cause problems to others as well. In order to avoid the fallout from failure to complete a task, we believe that accountability will ensure that each task is completed in time. By setting up an accountability system, our hope is to create quality work. In order to keep each member accountable, we will hold group meeting before assignments are due to brainstorm, assign tasks, help each other, and go over the final product before the due date. As mentioned earlier, we decided to enforce penalties for those who failed to complete a task in the allotted time. We planned also to have a schedule of deadlines that are different and earlier than work due in class in order to make revisions before submitting the final work in the class. The decision-making process within a group plays a key role in determining the success and failures of our group project. Poor decisions may damage the entire objectives our group task while excellent decisions may bring dividends. It is not necessary that all the members may have the equal abilities in decision making. Some of them may excellent in taking quick and meaningful decision whereas some others might need more time in taking decisions. It is quite possible that the arguments in the group meetings might be contrasting. Under such circumstances, taking decision against the will of a person may affect him negatively. In order to avoid such feelings of dejection, we decided to implement voting method in place to make all decisions. In order for a decision to be made, majority of the group members must support it. No two individuals are alike. Different people have different personalities because of the differences in their heredity and the environment in which they were brought up. Understanding of personality types will help us to make changes in our dealings with others. The above facts are true in our group considering the diversity our group has. Since our group members are from different countries, they may have their own personality traits, customs and traditions. We have planned to respect all these elements while functioning as a group. We have decided that over dominance should be avoided while functioning in a group. V. How can we continually learn and improve? The learning process consists of successes and failures. Success comes from failures. It is difficult to taste the success in the first run itself. In fact failures will motivate us further to improve our hard work. In order to continually learn and improve, we will have a debriefing after assignments to focus on strengths and areas of improvement. By focusing on these, we will be able to identify and focus on areas of improvement. This process will inevitably make us a stronger and more effective team. We will also meet before assignments are due, to identify potential problems with the assignments. Before submitting the individual assignments, we decided to take the opinions of each group member in order to make it as much as perfect. By having all group members look over, edit, and approve each assignment, we will be able to submit assignments on which we can be proud of. Learning is an invisible process in which the behavior is modified in order to attain certain goals. It is a process in which an individual acquires and develops knowledge, understanding, skills, interests and attitude that are necessary to meet life’s situations. Learning can be considered as a product and also a process. Learning is a never ending process. In fact learning starts at the time of birth and ends only at the time death. Learning is the driving force behind the success of every person in his personal and professional life. Learning leads to thinking. Thinking leads us to arrive at conclusions. Those who learn lessons from their mistakes may excel whereas those who failed to learn lessons from the mistakes may fell in deep troubles. Our group accepted the above slogan as the base point in our functioning. VI. Mission Statement We are a team of individuals who strive to inspire each other to achieve excellence inside and outside the classroom while improving our abilities to effectively communicate as a unit in addition to broadening our cultural horizons while learning how to produce quality work. Read More