Management of the IS functions assignment

Posted by Winnie Melda on October 4th, 2018

The Five dysfunction of a team Patrick Lencioni

Patrick Lencioni wrote the five dysfunctions of a team using a leadership fable on a story of Technology Company struggling to grow and to find customers. In the book, the new CEO recognizes the company has innovative products and great talent, but the executives are not working together as a team. They tend to negate the advantages of the talented people and the innovative products of the company. The team tends to be encountering problems with the situation they are in, and they are unable to get in agreement on the right solution to the issue. As a reason, the team result into naming, shaming, blaming, missed deadline, no one accepts responsibilities, and the moral is on the decline. According to the author, the failure of an organization is as a result of the poor performance of the team. When the team is functioning well, it tends to lift the entire organization, and the failure of a team will hurt the organization.

Lencioni claims that organizations tend to fail in achieving teamwork because they fall prey to five dangerous pitfalls, which are the five dysfunctions of the team. In the book, Lencioni identifies the five dysfunctions of the team that includes the absence of trust, lack of commitment, fear of conflict, and inattention to results, and the avoidance of accountability. According to Lencioni, teamwork is the ultimate competitive advantage. In the book, the author identifies the absence of trust as the first dysfunction. That involves the team member’s inability of showing their weakness, being vulnerable, and open to each other. Instead, the members feel the need of being right, competent, and strong; thus, unable to be open and vulnerable. With trust, the team members must have confidence that the intentions of other people are good; hence, they should not be protection and careful in the team. With the lack of trust, it is a waste of energy and time as the members invest their energy on defensive behavior, and they are hesitant to ask for help from other people. The second dysfunction identified is the fear of conflict. According to Lencioni, teams are dysfunctional when they are not able to deal with conflict. Productive conflict is good in teams as it helps teams to become a function and it is important that leaders should encourage debate, support it and also keep it productive.

Lack of commitment is another dysfunction identified. Commitment is the function of buy-in and clarity, and productive team tends to make clear decisions, and they are confident of the support from the other members. There should be a debate so as to allow commitment because people are not going to buy into something when their thoughts and views on the issue are not included. The author claimed that it was possible to facilitate commitment through reviewing all the key decision made and make responsibilities and deadlines clear. Avoidance of accountability was also a dysfunction identified in the book. Lack of commitment leads to lack of accountability. Lencioni states that accountability in the team means the team member is never letting down the team during meeting commitment. It is essential that the team should hold their peers responsible for achieving results and also working to high standards. The fifth dysfunction as identified in the book is the inattention to results. An effective team normally places the results of the team as an essential goal, and when the members place the results of the team first, the team will become result oriented. According to Lencioni, it is possible to overcome the dysfunction through having clear results and also rewarding behaviors contributing to the results of the team.

The book is excellent in helping understand how to work effectively in a team. It is more helpful to leaders in helping them understand the steps that can help in making the team better.  The strength of the book is that apart from identifying the dysfunctions in teams, the author also provides leaders with strategies that they can use so as to ensure that the team is effective. Lencioni claims that the key role of the leader is overcoming the dysfunction by leading through example and also setting the tone for the team. In addressing the dysfunctions identified, it results in a cohesive team. The members of a cohesive team normally trust one another, engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas, focus on achievement of the collective results, commit to decisions, and also hold each other accountable for delivering the plans. Lencioni wrote an excellent book focusing on teamwork and team dynamics. Based on the fable aspect used to write the book, it provides the reader with a picture of how a healthy team interact and what it feels like being a part of a successful team. It is a simple and easy book to read with a very powerful message that works best in helping the team to improve.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

In the book, Chip Heath and Dan Health address the greatest challenge of how to change things when change is hard. The authors think that science of human behavior can provide the tools for making changes in our lives. In the book, the Chip and Dan explain the fundamental principles of psychology and provide the recommendations for bringing about change. In the book, the authors tend to convey their ideas through stories about companies, people, and organization that has undertaken successful, realignment in the face of long odds.

In the book, the authors explain how to change things when change is difficult, which can be about a job, family, or even friend. Change is usually hard when there is no motivation. Reading through the book, it provides a different way of looking at the thing and shows the benefits of change. Chip and Dan claim that we usually have two parts which are the emotional side (elephant) and the rational side (rider). The rider is out analytical, planning, thinking, and understanding mind while the elephant is the emotional, passionate, short-term, and motivational mind. The rider normally provides the direction and planning while the elephant provides the energy. Most people tend to think that the rider controls the elephant, but sometimes the elephant usually controls the rider. The book teaches how to react to certain situations, which are simple and easy to do. The authors state that successful change comes down to three tasks that include directing the rider, motivating the elephant, and shaping the path.

In directing the rider, so as to help enhance the vision of the rider, it is important to seek out situations or individuals where change was created successfully. Pointing to the destination is helpful as change is easier when a person knows where they are going and why it is worth it. The second task identified in the book is motivating the elephant. When motivating the elephant, the authors state that one should think back to a time when they tried making a major change and failed. The elephant is the first cause of failure in change since the change that a person wants involves a short-term sacrifice in the pursuit of the long-term benefit. According to the authors, the rider, and the elephant should work together so as to move in the same direction. When the rider and the elephant move together, it is possible to change. Chip and Dan state that a person cannot get anywhere with a change effort unless they decide to engage their emotional site so as to get the elephant to turn to the path of change.

The third task that the authors identify is shaping the path. The authors consider the environment as an important factor in change. The authors refer to the environment as the path that we need to shape so as to facilitate the journey of the elephant and the rider. During the change, it is important to consider the effect that the environment and the surrounding may have on our daily decisions and the ability to create change. Chip and Dan state that the failure of shaping the path will result to the elephant and the rider walking in circles and lost. By shaping the path, it is possible to make the change irrespective of what is happening with the elephant and the rider.  In regards to shaping the path, changing the environment can help to change the environment. Behavior tends to be contagious and surrounding yourself with others who exhibit the behavior that you want can help spread it.

The switch is an excellent book, and the authors tend to provide real-life examples of change and also research conducted to help support their ideas. The book is well-written and contains great content. Something that the reader learns from the book is that change is hard; however, before admitting defeat, it is important to consider the formula that the authors provide and see if they help to make the change. The authors claim that if we learn some fundamentals of how the mind functions, we can be able to overcome our oppositions to change. The book looks at change from the organizational, individual, and societal aspect. Every change on any level usually starts with a person deciding to take the lead. According to the authors, the environment plays a great role in the behavior of our rider and elephant. In the discussion, the authors state that the resistance to change is a lack of clarity. According to the authors, people normally resist change brought to them from elsewhere. However, they suggest that looking for the bright spots in the organization can help, which involves asking what, is working and how to do more of it. The switch is an excellent book that offers and in-depth look at change management and strategies of how to make change happen.

Drive by Daniel H. Pink

The drive is a book by Daniel that looks at the core of human nature and what makes us tick. Corporations normally look for ways to getting the most work and return out of employees, and they frequently provide incentives such as bonuses, pay, and more vacation time so as to motive the employees to perform at higher levels. In the book, Pink shows that the external rewards do not increase the employee productivity and also diminish it in certain situations. The author discusses some of the things that drive employees to greater accomplishment and how to apply the knowledge to your life.

In the book, Pink covers how the old method of carrot and sticks is not the best way of improving employee productivity and states that the use of the internal incentives is more effective in many circumstances. According to Pink, intrinsic motivation results to more creativity in the long term because people intrinsically motivated are usually more persistent. The author states that the monetary reward tends to stifle creativity. In the book, Pink considered extrinsic motivation as being wrong as it is based on the idea that if we want to increase behavior, we should reward it and to decrease behavior, we should use punishment. In the book, Pink explains that when people are motivated by external rewards, they tend to shift their focus from the experience leading to the goal to the reward that follows that goal. In this way, the pure focus on the goal can cause systematic problems for a corporation like the focus on just short-term gains and lose sight on the devastating long-term effects on the organization. Pink claims that the external motivators such as money tend to have a negative impact on reducing motivation.

In the book, Pink suggests that corporations need to implement a new method of motivating people based on three pillars that include autonomy, mastery, and purpose. The aspect of autonomy means that people have the desire to direct their lives. An autonomous behavior means that people are acting with a full sense of choice. It helps in promoting greater understanding, enchanted persistence at school, higher productivity, better grades, greater levels of psychological well-being, and less burnout. As control leads to compliance, autonomy normally leads to engagement. With autonomy, people have the opportunity of acting with the choice. In the book, Pink state that a way of establishing autonomy in the workforce is through creating result oriented work environment where the staff does not have a schedule. In such an environment, people can show up when they want, and they do not have to be in the office at a particular time. With autonomy, it stimulates intrinsic motivation, and those people with high intrinsic motivation are excellent workers. Pink states that those companies that offer autonomy tend to outperform their competitors.

In the book, the author also identifies mastery as a way of motivating people. With mastery, people usually want to be better at what they do provide it matters o them. Pink explains that smart workplaces tend to supplement the daily activities with Goldilocks task not very hard and not very easy. There are three rules of mastery that the author identified that include the mastery is a mindset, mastery is an asymptote, and mastery is a pain. Mastery involves the urge of getting better and better at something that matters to you. The author suggests that the motivation for committing to the sustained effort will come from within that from without.

The book also identifies purpose as a way of motivating people. Purpose involves the yearning to doing what we do in the service of something that is larger than ourselves. Pink identifies a human being as being purpose maximizers. He considers the three pillars of purpose as doing it well, doing something that matters, and doing it in service of a larger cause than ourselves. According to Pink, a person cannot lead a life that is excellent without the feeling that they belong to something that is bigger and more permanent that oneself. Satisfaction does not only depend on having goals, but on having the right goals, which are goals greater than your self-interest.

The drive is an excellent book for managers that explain how managers can create conditions for people to do their work better. According to the Pink, employees are likely to perform better when they have control over the work that they do when doing work that benefits others, and when they can better themselves. In the book, Pink considers the use of several studies and findings in the study and he ensures that he maintain a level that the reader can easily understand. The concepts that Pink identify in the book can be very effective in driving performance whether it is motivating yourself, children, or even your friends.  Pink establish that the concept of money in motivation tend to limit thinking, but what motivates a person is doing something because they love doing it.

Reference

Heath D & Heath C (2011). Switch: how to change things when the change is hard. Random House

Lencioni, P (2010). The Five Dysfunctions of a team. John Wiley & Sons

Pink D (2011). Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us. Penguin Publishing Group.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at Melda Research in nursing writing services if you need a similar paper you can place your order for already written essay.