Henry Tam and the MGI Team
Henry Tam and the MGI Team
Overview
MGI is a small music software start-up company founded by three immigrants from Russia. The founders comprised of two composers, Igor Tkachenko and Roman Yakub, and a business person, Sasha Gimpelson. The three founders made up their entire business and when they ended up losing money, they realized they needed outside help. To find help, they entered the Harvard Business School Business Plan Contest with seven members. The three founders of MGI were joined by Henry Tam and Dana Soiman from HBS MBA program, Alex Sartakov from Boston Berklee College, and Dav Clark from MIT. Given only three weeks left to create a business plan, the team did not have much done. According to the case, the team had a history of not getting along well with outsiders. The team endured a great deal of conflict and tension throughout each meeting. The most dire issue overall was a lack of team building, leadership, and delegating.
Assessment
After evaluating the MGI’s team process, it is clear that they suffer from a severe disorganization. From the first meeting this was a predominate theme, in fact the full team of seven was not formed before the initial meeting. Henry and Dana from HBS were the first to join the team. Alex became part of the team in the second meeting and Dav joined the team in the third meeting. These added team members came at a shock to Henry and Dana. No one communicated with them that more people will be joining. The meetings were a disaster as there were no agenda or tasks provided for each team member. The work load as a consequence became unevenly distributed. As a result, some team members were overwhelmed by the task of doing more work than others. The meetings became unproductive and the majority of the time was spent disagreeing about what is best for the company.
The root causes for this team’s lack of cohesiveness would be the lack of a team leader as well as no effort in delegating tasks. Without a role
Overview
MGI is a small music software start-up company founded by three immigrants from Russia. The founders comprised of two composers, Igor Tkachenko and Roman Yakub, and a business person, Sasha Gimpelson. The three founders made up their entire business and when they ended up losing money, they realized they needed outside help. To find help, they entered the Harvard Business School Business Plan Contest with seven members. The three founders of MGI were joined by Henry Tam and Dana Soiman from HBS MBA program, Alex Sartakov from Boston Berklee College, and Dav Clark from MIT. Given only three weeks left to create a business plan, the team did not have much done. According to the case, the team had a history of not getting along well with outsiders. The team endured a great deal of conflict and tension throughout each meeting. The most dire issue overall was a lack of team building, leadership, and delegating.
Assessment
After evaluating the MGI’s team process, it is clear that they suffer from a severe disorganization. From the first meeting this was a predominate theme, in fact the full team of seven was not formed before the initial meeting. Henry and Dana from HBS were the first to join the team. Alex became part of the team in the second meeting and Dav joined the team in the third meeting. These added team members came at a shock to Henry and Dana. No one communicated with them that more people will be joining. The meetings were a disaster as there were no agenda or tasks provided for each team member. The work load as a consequence became unevenly distributed. As a result, some team members were overwhelmed by the task of doing more work than others. The meetings became unproductive and the majority of the time was spent disagreeing about what is best for the company.
The root causes for this team’s lack of cohesiveness would be the lack of a team leader as well as no effort in delegating tasks. Without a role