Franklin Equipment Ltd Project Dilemma

Case Study: Franklin Equipment, Ltd. Q1. Evaluate the criteria FEL uses to assign managers to project teams. What efficiencies do these criteria create? What are the resulting problems? FEL assigns managers to project teams based on the manager’s areas of expertise and availability. Expertise is essential given that the type of work is highly differentiated on each project team and requires very specific skills.

Many of these skills are so-called “hard” rather than “soft” people skills and require years of experience, advanced degrees, and certification; they are not something that can be learned on the job (such as engineering). A manager must have a proven track record to handle a high-profile project. Managers are also assigned based upon existing commitments. This ensures that employees are not overworked and spread too thin. There is little point having a large and capable workforce if it is not used to its maximum advantage.

Many of the projects are sufficiently arduous to demand a manager’s exclusive attention. The downside is that managers often have little discretion about whom to assign to their team, which does not necessarily mean that the ideal match of personalities and skill sets can be assembled.

Although hard skills and technical qualifications may be needed to work on a project, such skills alone will not realize a project’s objectives; there is also a need for intangible characteristics, such as the ability to collaborate, not simply compromise with other team members. Finally, simply because someone recently concluded his or her most recent project does not necessarily mean he or she is optimal for the team. Scheduling alone will not build a work team. Q2.

Why is it even more important that project team members work well together on international projects such as Project Abu Dhabi? As noted by Larson & Gray (2014) on international projects, the financial risks to the organization are far more considerable than ones which are purely domestic in nature. This is due to the inevitable red tape and cultural conflicts which often arise, so finding the right personality mix is even more critical.

Time is often at a premium on such projects, and one facet of the project is often critically dependent upon the other. With an international project, political instability and other unpredictable factors can often disrupt the timetable. There cannot be any lost time due to personality conflicts and every member of the team must have the project’s agenda, not their own biases and personal preferences, at the forefront of their consciousness.

This project is located in a high-context culture, which means that astute understanding of the cultural environment is essential for its optimal functioning. “Relationships build slowly and depend on trust. Productivity depends on relationships and the group process. An individual’s identity is rooted in groups (family, culture, work). Social structure and authority are centralized” (Neese, 2016, par.3).

Currently, even the domestic project team is not working well together and the human resources coordinator appears to lack the necessary interpersonal intelligence to understand this and work to facilitate a more effective response. Once the team begins to work with an international project team, problems are likely to increase rather than decrease.

Finally, international projects are often reliant upon a great deal of virtual coordination, when members of the team are not operating on-site “When team members come from different countries and functional backgrounds and are working in different locations, communication can rapidly deteriorate, misunderstanding can ensue, and cooperation can degenerate into distrust” (Neeley, 2015, par.2). When the original project members have divisive personality types that do not mesh, this will simply exacerbate such distrust and there are fewer opportunities to orchestrate one-on-one social situations to overcome it.

Nonsynchronous email or even texting in real time lacks reinforcing body language to overcome communication barriers. Q3. Discuss the dilemma that Jobe now faces. The dilemma that Jobe faces is that design engineer and operations manager hate one another and in private are lobbing serious accusations against one another about incompetence and personal vindictiveness. The finance manager does not want to participate in the project at all.

The human resources manager has never picked up on this before and has no contingency plan on how to deal with any conflicts which arise, although both managers do not seem to anticipate an easy road to successfully putting aside their differences, based upon their past experiences working with one another. Q4. What should Jobe recommend to Gatenby? Although it might be tempting to simply fire.