Insurance leadership strategies and organizational effectiveness

¶ … global leadership. Calvin's main challenge is to find a means of communication that would encourage workers to be within the same framework to perform their work with greater consistency.

Rood Causes

Among the most likely contributory factors in this case are the fact that the team members and leaders cannot communicate effectively if they cannot meet with more consistency. The time differences among team members make such consistency difficult. Another root cause is that there is a lack of reporting among those actually selling the insurance and those who are expected to manage the venture.

Possible Solutions

One possible solution is to create a more consistent platform for meetings. Leaders and team members could, for example, choose a host country for every quarter or every month's meeting. In this way, there will not be difficulty to find a specific time that would suit everyone across the globe. To mitigate costs, such meetings should perhaps be held only every quarter, supplemented by virtual conferences ever other month.

Another solution is to create closer connections among management and team members. In the foreign setup, sale representatives should then report to team members, who in turn should be expected to report to Calvin. This must be thoroughly explained and encouraged at the meetings.

Advantages and Disadvantages

The advantage of the first solution is that there will be more consistency in meetings.

The advantage of the second solution is that more consistency and monitoring will be achieved among the management and team members, which would make Calvin's work eaiser.

The main disadvantage of the first solution is expense. Significant expenses will have to be covered to arrange flights and accommodation for every team member to attend arranged meetings.

A disadvantage of the second solution is that team members may not be able or willing to understand the reasons behind changing the status quo of how the company works.

Final Recommendations

I recommend that comprehensive meetings be set up at least twice per year, during which expenses are invested to include all team members for a meeting in the same location. These can then be supplemented by virtual meetings that are held throughout the year.

Questions from the book

1. The main teamwork problem Calvin is facing is a basic disconnect in communication. Team members are not communicating with top management, while sales reps are not communicating with their team leaders. This has created not only difficulty in the performance of the work itself, but also in terms of culture, where there is a divergence among cultures about they see the work to be performed.