Interdepartmental communication failures in a product launch project

Cliff assumed that Pat will prove to be a boon to our place in the market. He thought that a new venture will be launched by the end of the year and made these deadlines without consensus with other departments. He also assumed Pat and Chris will work together to recapture position as a market leader with the help of technology. He also assumed that every department (except Sales and Marketing, our key revenue generators) will find ways to reduce budgets by 15% in the coming quarter.

Pat passed a judgment that there are certain factions within the company that do not see a path to the product launch. Pat also made unrealistic assumptions about expenditure and considered it a reasonable capital outlay with a substantial ROI. Pat also assumed that programmers are the best and they will continue to work to refine the features a little.

Cliff on the other hand showed his reservations regarding the budget. He also considered the progress report good, but the budget problematic.

Kelly the engineer had reservations regarding the product development how can they maintain existing service with already short staff, and find time to make up something new. Kelly also complained that programming is tough task and those who do not know it cannot make such decisions. Pat also boasted about his previous experience that there is a process to follow to make sure whatever we develop will meet our QC standards and the customers' needs.

Initial assessment of the project turned out to be completely wrong as they assumed extra features for the new product which later on were reduced to only a few. Not only this but the series of email exchanges among different members became nasty and turned into personal assaults and business purpose became lost in between. Members also made fallacious statements that also aggravated the problem and situation became out of control requiring serious attention.

Conclusions

Problems and its Reasons:

Interdepartmental Conflicts: For every organization there are external as well as internal clients. Internal clients are departments within the company, for example, product development is the client of marketing department and vice versa. If these do not function in a normal manner then organization will eventually suffer. The main problem with the company seems to be interdepartmental conflicts.

Organizational Communication: Previously too many meetings taking place was considered a concern for the organization but in the current age of email communication too much of email communication is considered a problem for the company. In this company in particular the communication seems to be the problem because of which complications have been created.

Clarity of Goals: An organization flourishes when its members have clarity of goals and they own the missions and work towards achieving their goals. The organization in the case study suffers from the confusion among its organizational members. They do not seem to be on same level when it comes to understanding and owning the goals and mission of the organization. The organization seems to be in the state of flux due to different pressures to cut costs and expenditures and lay offs etc.

Underlying Problem

Underlying problem with the company seems to be a management problem because of which the project for the new product seems to be suffering. Management must be a support to the overall health of the organization which in this case was conspicuous by its absence. Discussion through emails show that the management function was absent.

Proposed Solution

The proposed solution to management would be to make cross functional teams that should actually sit together and work to resolve the problems regarding the project. The role of senior management and that of CEO in particular would be of utmost importance. The CEO must be the part of cross functional teams for its successful implementation.

Executive Summary

The organization is going through a crunch time and in this time of crunch and budgetary crunch, organization decide to launch a project. The survival and success of the organization depends upon the timely completion of the project and its launch in the market. Even though organization must have been proactive in the realm of product development but it was actually the crunch time that made management look into the matter of product development. The organization finally started work on the new product but the project suffered very badly due to inter-departmental conflicts, unrealistic deadlines and assumptions regarding the project. In such a situation leadership of top management plays a pivotal role. However, in reality the organization members could not even sit together to work on the project, instead the communication among the members resulted in the development of conflicts rather than consensus on the project. The lack of team presence seems to be a grave management problem. In this grim scenario, it is suggested that organization members be introduced to concepts of team building and the role of CEO in this regard should have been of utmost importance. The cross functional teams should comprise all the key members, that is, engineering, marketing, finance, top management, product development etc. The goals of the project and its importance for the survival of the organization must be clearly communicated to its members. In the long run, training on modern management concepts like open book management, cross functional teams etc. should be provided to members. Management must try to instill in members a new zeal by sharing candidly the goals of the organization.