Description and analyze of a real teamwork - Patrick St-Pierre

The team that I chose to analyze is composed of 5 members and it was formed for a big and important teamwork in the beginning of my MBA. In general, the work in this team went well, but, like other things, it sure that there were some elements to improve. To start, for all the members, we didn’t really have the same purpose and vision of the work to do. Indeed, we didn’t take the time, at the beginning of the teamwork, to sit together and to only talk about that, because we thought that it was not really necessarily. So, we started with a too general purpose of work and we realised later that our work was not efficiency.  At that time, we were obligated to have a meeting only about that and the meeting was very long. We should have done this before starting to work.

Also, at the beginning, we didn’t know well the other members of the group and we didn’t give enough importance to the strengths and the weaknesses of all the members. But, a better understanding of that is very useful, because it facilitated the separations of the different tasks and, when a member have a problem in his/her tasks, that understanding could help him/her to know which other member could help him/her. So before the separation of the tasks, I think that the best thing to do is to take time for each member to present themselves and to talk about his/her strengths, his/her past realization, his/her current or past job and field of studies. Indeed, a lot of different information could be useful.

 To finish, the deadlines of the teamwork were very short and we underestimate the necessarily of coordination in a teamwork. We didn’t plan the work very well and the result was that each member of the group did a part of the work. So, there was a lack in the coordination and, for the result, we obtain more like some pieces of individual works than a teamwork. To improve that, we should have done a better planning of the teamwork and give more importance to the coordination by establishing some measures in the work. Like an example, a subject of the teamwork need to be covered by two people and not just one. Also, after that a part of the work is done, each other members that didn’t work in that part need to read it and to add some information and commentaries.