Anja Bremmer in an attempt to establish authority and buy in from her new projec

Question

Anja Bremmer in an attempt to establish authority and buy in from her new project team should have had the Project Sponsor Alex Gordesky attend the team meeting. By doing this Anja would have shown the team how committed the project sponsor is to seeing the project through to a successful completion. One of the most difficult tasks of being a project manager is establishing authority over a team that does not report up through you and when you bring in a high-level executive this will establish their commitment to the project and give the appearance that if anything goes wrong or off schedule they will have to report that issue through them. This can also be handled through materials that are distributed to the team by inserting Alex Gordesky’s name on materials and throughout the tasks. If team members can associate deliverables with the project sponsor they are likely going to complete them on time and in an efficient manner. Anja can also continue to mention and remind members during meetings what Alex Gordesky’s vision for the project is and that she is in contact with him regarding this project. The final way to associate Alex Gordesky with the project would be to copy him on any communications that are being sent out to the team. Team members will be less likely to be confrontational and will be more responsive if he is on the communication.

Another thing that Anja Bremmer could have done differently was to hold an initial one on one meeting with each person on the team prior to the group meeting. Some of the ways this would have benefited Anja Bremmer are that during the one on one meetings, she could explain to each person the objective of the project and the reason that they were chosen as a member. People like to feel important and validated. Bremmer could let them know how their skills and experience would contribute to the project and get their opinions, suggestions and ideas on what they would like to see as best practices for standardization across the company functions. This would’ve helped her build relationships with each person on the team. They would have appreciated their insights and concerns being taken into consideration. At the group meeting, everyone was not excited about being part of the project. At the end of the meeting, she asked if anyone had questions and she was met with silence and assumed that everyone agreed with her ideas. If she held the one on one meetings, she would’ve been able to take into considerations their ideas and present them during the initial group meeting. This would have opened up opportunities for useful discussions about the project. During one on one meetings, people may feel comfortable and are more inclined to truly express how they feel in comparison to a group meeting. If Bremmer had these individual meetings, she might have been able to learn whether or not certain individuals even wanted to be a member of the project. If someone felt that they did not want to be on the project, she might’ve been able to replace them with someone who wanted to participate. She would’ve also been able to determine what role each person could have by analyzing their strengths and weaknesses. Throughout the project, Bremmer could continue to have one on ones with the team. They can be brief meetings just to check-in and address any concerns, confusion and issues that were missed during the group meetings.

Anja should also evaluate each team members and review their history of past performance. Toshi Shimano, a Japanese production engineer, has been with the manufacturing division for five years and had significant experience working on prior best practices projects. However, none of those projects succeeded. Anja should discuss Toshi’s previous performance with the Japanese department head and find out what caused Toshi’s previous best practices projects to fail. Understanding Toshi’s past performance will help Anja with her leadership role. Knowing what went wrong will prevent the same mistakes from happening again. On the other hand, if Toshi’s past performance was based on lack of interest or work ethics, Anja need to replace him with someone else that is more capable. Toshi also found it difficult to understand much of what was said in the first meeting. He will be participating from Tokyo while others will assemble in an open workspace in Germany. Anja should review Toshi’s ability to communicate with the team. Without being present in the live meeting, Toshi must be well articulated to avoid delays and confusions. In addition, Toshi also admitted that he is not sure why he was appointed to the team. If Anja were to keep Toshi, she must make him feel important, and that he is a valued member of the group.

Managers are leaders that motivate, set objectives, make decisions, organize, and execute the vision of the company business model. Aforementioned, Genizome divisions are creating a Best Practices Sharing (BPS) project that will be a system within and across departments that will set, organize, and motivate. This BPS project will soon be standard business processes. However, the team that is selected for this project are all experienced leaders from each division. Yet, this leader is not necessarily the one who does all the great things but influences others to do the greatest things. Being an effective manager in Anja’s case includes identifying your team’s weaknesses and strengths. I believe Mary Knowles and Thomas Dorfmann strengths and weaknesses can prove valuable at the end of this project.
   Mary Knowles may be the smartest person on the team, and I would use her experiences as a project leader to my advantage. Sometimes delegating power to a team member empowers that person to feel like an essential contributor to the project at hand. For that reason, I would make Mary Knowles second in command giving her critical task, so she feels invested in the project. Also, delegating power breed’s accountability and responsibility. Sometimes as a manager of people, one must know how to play on the negatives of someone and use it for the positive solutions. Mary already feels like she should be in charge so why not let it appear that she is slightly in charge. Besides, Mary may have more influence on the team than Anja.
   Thomas Dorfmann has experience working on BPS with Genizome and other companies. He may also be the most determined person on the team. He’s determined to push other projects in the queue while having the BPS project canceled. I believe that bit of information could prove valuable on this project as well as future projects. If Anja was to consider talking to Alex Gordesky about starting a project for Thomas, Anja could earn respect from Thomas which would weigh heavy on the persuasion getting Thomas to buy into this BPS project.
   With this knowledge, Anja can now efficiently motivate employees, set objectives, make decisions, organize, and execute a plan to reach their organization’s goals. While implementing their project, a manager will face managerial errors during their career. These faults present an opportunity for managers to learn from their errors, mistakes, or failures and improve in their area of competency. If a manager is willing to strive for outstanding performance and can learn from both his/her wins and failures, he/she should be able to maintain an effective profession.

would you please elucidate and elaborate in the conclusion . trhanks

Explanation / Answer

The above case deals how well managers can maintain an effective profesion and how to reduce managerial errors. Anja Bremmer is the project manager of Best Practices Sharing project which focusses on establishing standard best practices across all Genizome divisions.In order to prove herelf as an effective leader she should have involved project sponsor Alex Gordesky in the meeting so that the team feels more connect with the sponsor and all communications are updated to him also.Also she should have done one on one meetings with the team members rather than a group meeting. She could have considered the opinions of team members one by one and their recommendations and should have addressed them individually how valuable their contribution is in the team. She should assess whether individual team members are actually interested in the project and how their past performance has been. For example Toshi had good past performance in Best practice projects but still they failed. She should aseess the reasons of failure and make him feel valuable and if he is not interested in the project then some other person shall be hired.

Delegating Power is also really crucial to get smooth execution. For example she should have made Mary Knowles as second in charge of the project since she wants power. Doing this will bring more contribution from her end towards the project. Also Thomas Dorfman is keen on getting the BPS project cancelled so Anja could ask Project Sponsor for a project for Thomas. This would bring a positive influence on Thomas and he will be keen in BPS project.

Hence we can see that in implementing a project , manager faces several hurdles. Some will not feel motivated towards the project and some will not be interested in the project like Thomas. It is important to understand their views and strengths and weakness and to motivate them one needs to play on their strengths.Anja in this case made several errors like having group meeting etc but she should learn from these errors and avoid making them in future.If Anja keeps on learning from her errors she will be able to complete the project successfully and the team will work more productively thus maintaining an effective profession.

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