Lumen and Absorb Team

Organization structure wise, the lumen team and absorb team are quite similar. Each team has a team leader, a team focused on marketing and commercialization, and a team of technical experts. The members of these two teams all seem to have substantial amount of industrial experience and technical competency. However, the two teams differ greatly with regards to the motivation level of the individual team member, efficiency and productivity, and teamwork environment. These differences are mostly caused by the different leadership capacities that the team leaders possess.

From the exhibit 5, we can see that whereas the lumen team is leading among all the CCE teams, Absorb team is clearly lagging behind. Exhibit 6 further confirmed that motivation of Absorb team is lower than that of Lumen at multiple fronts. This gap is however can not be explained by individual personal traits as demonstrated in the exhibit 7, in which we can see that the average trait intrinsic motivation indexes are similar between these two teams. This low level of the motivation in Absorb team certainly contributes to the lack of productivity and efficiency of the team, albeit having more headcounts than the Lumen team.

One of the contributing reasons is that the performance management in Absorb team is dysfunctional. A good performance management has to have a number of features such as common understanding, clear expectation, help improve capability and increase commitment. Chip, as the team leader, does not seem to have a plan. This is quite evident from Diary of Day 7 and 8, While Chip is away from his office, other team members are clueless about what the future direction is and what expectations are placed upon them. It seems that a few team members also noticed that at times, Chip is standoffish and unwilling to provide constructive insight. The encouragement and meaningful rewards were not provided. For example, Chip did not show any appreciation about Hector’s going out on a limb to try new things, but instead discourage him. The team environment of Absorb team is also fragmented. There was lack of communication between Chip and his team members. Certain member of team such as Hector is unclear about his role and future responsibility. Dave, who communicated with Chip about his career direction, did not get any feedback or help from Chip.

B)

As previously alluded, one of the major contributing reasons for the apparent discrepancies is the lack of leadership capacity of Chip. Chip has demonstrated that he is not a leader, but merely a manger. He is certainly at fault in compromising the critical links in the expectancy theory model. Looking at the front of pulling vs pushing the followers , we can see that Chip is doing mostly pushing motion. At the effect-Performance linkage, Chip’s micromanagement of people’s work plan and presentation conveys the message of distrust and lack of confidence in his team members. This certainly contributes to the lack of motivation. He does not have careful consideration of the ability of some of his team members. He also is also pretty stingy about giving out encouragement to his team members. Chip certainly does not try to make his team member feel productive, involved and competent. At the performance-Outcome linkage, Chip is also missing the mark. Chip does not seem to be able to provide fair treatment to some of his team members. For example, Hector was unfairly tasked with extra responsibility of the departing team member. In addition, Chip does not uphold integrity on certain aspect of the work. For example, even after the marketing team provide concrete evidence that the current marketing direction is at fault, he demands the team to change their conclusion. For the Valence, Chip does not seem to be willing to ask the question of whether the certain outcome for its team member worth the expenditure of the time and effort. This is evident from Ying’s comment about spinning the wheel and not making