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Managing Group Dynamics-Case Study

Rajeev joined Spectra with 3 years of experience but struggled in his first project team. He was aloof, his work was below standards, and he was often late, took long breaks, and left early. His poor performance negatively impacted the project timeline. The manager moved Rajeev to a new wireless technologies team where he joined as a core member. In this egalitarian team, Rajeev's performance improved as he was enthusiastic about feedback and his listening skills grew.

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RichaBhartiya
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2K views

Managing Group Dynamics-Case Study

Rajeev joined Spectra with 3 years of experience but struggled in his first project team. He was aloof, his work was below standards, and he was often late, took long breaks, and left early. His poor performance negatively impacted the project timeline. The manager moved Rajeev to a new wireless technologies team where he joined as a core member. In this egalitarian team, Rajeev's performance improved as he was enthusiastic about feedback and his listening skills grew.

Uploaded by

RichaBhartiya
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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MANAGING GROUP DYNAMICS- CASE STUDY

Handling Rajeev at Spectra


Spectra, a leading IT Company, started its operations in India a few years ago. It is now
aggressively looking to scale up its workforce.

As part of its effort to increase headcount, the firm is looking for the right mix of people.
On the one hand, it needs a high number of entry-level software engineers, and on the
other hand, it needs employees with significant work experience to manage them. It has,
thus, started an employee referral programme to recruit lateral-entry candidates with
work experience of more than 3 years.

Rajeev Saxena joined the company in January 2006 with more than 3 years of software
development experience behind him. Rajeev was an engineer from prestigious
engineering institute in Delhi and had been the institute topper. He was also the recipient
of the best employee award from his previous employer. He had previous experience
experience in Java programming for mobile devices.

At, Spectra, he joined a small project team, headed by Rajesh, which also included an
entry-level resource, Vikram, who had four months experience in working on the project.
The project was on testing and fixing bugs in a module developed in Java for a new data
transfer algorithm for internal protocol.

Rajeev seemed aloof from the work he was assigned to right from his first day at work.
He was hesitant about asking Vikram questions and clarifications about the project.
Interaction with Vikram would have enabled him to come up to speed with the project;
Rajeev would often interrupt him, citing that he already knew the details. Both Vikram
and Rajesh were MCA graduates from a private college in Andhra Pradesh. Hence, both
of them had developed an inferiority complex and had great belief in the capabilities of
Rajeev.

The time Rajeev was putting into the job was also not adequate. He would invariably turn
up late to office, go for long coffee breaks, and leave early. He would often be seen by
colleagues continuously talking on his cell phone while working. There were speculations
that these conversations were unrelated to his work at Spectra. All this was going
unnoticed by the manager charge, since Vikram compensated for Rajeevs work by
putting in extra hours.

A month into the project, Rajeevs work was found to be much below satisfactory level,
with elementary mistakes committed in the work that he delivered. He would often miss a
lot of the components or details in the documents and the code that he delivered. The
client was extremely disappointed with the careless errors that had been delaying the
project and stretching the timelines. A lot of work also had to be redone because of the
fundamental errors in the design documents prepared by Rajeev. Moreover, Vikram was
having a tough time doing most of Rajeevs work apart from his own. The onus to do the
rework had also been put on him by the manager, who now disturbed Rajeevs ability to
work effectively and efficiently.

The head of the department, Ms Kirti Mukherji, on being notified of the progress of the
project and on the complaints from the client, organized a meeting to find a solution to
the problem. During the meeting, Rajesh, in order to prevent creating a negative image of
the team, stated that the project required more people with the requisite skill sets and that
the current skill sets of the team members did not match the project.

After analyzing the situation, Kirti decided to shuffle team members. She moved some
senior programmers into the project and decided to move Rajeev to a new project. Kirti
had to make the difficult decision of moving Rajeev to another project because there were
no other projects that focused on mobile devices. A close competitor of Spectra was a
pioneer in mobile devices and Spectra did not want to venture into mobile devices
because of the high competition in the field. The company wanted to maintain its
leadership position in Internet technologies. Kirti decided to call a meeting with all the
department heads and the HR manager to discuss the issue and find a suitable project for
Rajeev.

The management decided to move Rajeev to a team that was working on wireless
technologies. The team wanted to expand and was on the lookout for new members from
NIT, IIT, and BITS, and the team was working on the latest wireless technologies.

Rajeev was not given a membership role in the new team. He joined as a core member of
the team and was happy with the egalitarian culture of the team. He could interact with
all members of the team and participate as well as offer suggestions and advice. Rajeevs
work required strict adherence to deadlines. Here, Rajeev reported better performance,
though his performance relative to the team was low. However, he was recognized as an
individual with a high potential. He seemed enthusiastic about taking suggestions from
other team members and there was a marked improvement in his listening skills.

For Discussions
1. How do the two groups differ from each other?
2. Comment on the impact of the first group on Rajeevs performance. Why was his
performance and motivation so low in the group?
3. Highlight the influence of the second group on Rajeevs performance. Why was
there a significant improvement in his performance?

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