Are Five Heads Better Than One?
The team’s failure was a direct result of several detrimental factors. These included excess autonomy given to the team from Advert’s management, conformity within the team, and losing focus of the original goal. The complete autonomy that the team was given did not act as a beneficial asset, but as more of a slippery slope towards failure. Without any given guidelines or ideas of the client’s needs, they were unable to envision the right image that the client wanted to portray with their product. In addition to the lack of information, the team also lacked knowledge about the final goal of the project due to the shortage of explicit implementation and goal setting by Advert’s management. Furthermore, the team also suffered from internal problems in the early stages of forming and storming. Usually in these stages, members of a team determine their purpose, structure, and leadership; however, Conner immediately assumed that he was the leader and exerted his idea on the rest of the team without the formal consent of his colleagues. His aggressive actions made other team members reluctant to openly express their opinions or even introduce their own ideas, thus leaving them no choice but to conform to his ideas. The most glaring example of this was Derek, who had an idea that was exactly what the clients were looking for, yet he was too intimidated by Conner’s aggressive leadership style that he decided not to share it with the group. As the team started to acknowledge Conner’s concept, they were too concentrated on portraying their vision instead of focusing on selling the product and portraying its image. Though these factors seem obvious, they had a large impact on the team’s ultimate failure. Looking further into these factors, it is apparent that there were several personal biases and perceptions that served as the root of the team’s failure. For example, the anchoring bias is evident as Conner immediately presented his concept to the team and refused to