Post-mortem of a Group Project

One of the classes that I was looking forward to this session was Marketing Strategies. Second-year students, now alumni, were raving about this class when I started my program last year. The professor has spent most of his career working with P&G and Nestle, so I was excited to see how the corporate world does marketing. The class itself was very good, although taught in a different manner than what I am used to. But I knew that going into it and I was ready for a challenge.

The real challenge though, and one that I did not expect, came from my group. Because the class had a larger number of students than the usual, we had to form groups of seven. I did not think much of it at first, I mean what’s an extra person or two, right?

My teammates and I are all very strong individuals: some analytical, some creative, some very good presenters. Those were all reasons why we all got together in the first place. As a team though, we were dysfunctional. We discussed rules and expectations in our first meeting, but the reality of our schedules and the different priorities and interests led to an average performance in the class. That combined with some unexpected roadblocks made for a very frustrating experience in a class where perfection is the standard.

Some of my team members and I discussed our performance in our last class. It was very frustrating that we put in a lot of work and yet the result was not what we expected. My take on it is that although I like the concept of team work in business school, I do not think it is as effective as it is intended to be. Why? For one, the constraints of school make team work different from real life. Because in real life you would have a team leader, each person has certain responsibilities, and the team’s focus is just on that particular project. And most times, the stakes are higher than just an evaluation or a grade. Sometimes, their financial rewards or future with the company is at stake. In business school, each person has different priorities. Some care about grades, some just take that class because they have to, some take too many classes and are spent, some work and take classes, and some just do not care. And no one can make anyone care more than they are willing to. And how do you motivate someone who does not care? Maybe by dangling the prospect of a lower grade in class, resulting from an unfavorable evaluation at the end of class? It is not going to work, because the grade does not rely solely on peer evaluation. What about choosing a team leader, just like in real life? Most teams are against that because they are not invested in the projects. Projects are annoying, one more thing on the to-do list, and they do not have the time for that. More often than not, team work means you meet once at the beginning of the project, divide the work, one person compiles the information for the paper, another person puts together the slides for the presentation, and then everybody comes together for a run through of the presentation.

So in our case, we did just that. And when that failed, we all took the hit and vowed to learn from it. The point is to not repeat the same mistake twice. And to learn to be comfortable with ambiguity, trust your team members, think on your feet and come up with a solution when all else fails, and continue to find ways to motivate our team members.