Journal No 5

How effective was your team during the Marketplace Live simulation?  What could you and your team have done better?

During the Marketplace Live simulation, team 5 (Tryton) did quite well in terms of performance in the simulation itself, ending it with highest market share out of all of the teams. Team had well defined role for each member, although the decisions were made jointly in order to make overall performance better.

And while team was performing well overall, some individual decisions were not necessarily consistent with overall plan, thus in few quarters the “Tryton” company had lower market share, due to lower production, advertising and other reasons.

Looking back at moves that Team 5 made, it few changes could have been suggested. Thus, better branding could have been made from the start, as the brands Tryton promoted were either not well recognized or they were recognized as part of segments that were not targeted.

Further more, team could have opened the offices within some regions like US and obtain higher market share initially, and support its products on all of the markets with better advertising as competition, such as “Romansoft” invested heavily into their adds and thus gained advantage.

What did you learn about teamwork and team dynamics during the course?  Describe any ways you think you can improve your teamwork and leadership skills.

Regarding the teamwork, one lesson that I have drawn from the Marketplace simulation is that coordination of team is of the essence, especially when decisions have to be made within short period of time.

In general, Team 5 is not well organized when it comes to final decisions and very often there are long debates without specific results. While such functioning of the team gives results in terms of creativity, it becomes an obstacle for the tight deadlines. This could have been prevented if norms were set when the team met for the first time, and would make the team work under certain rules,...