Henry Tam and the MGI Team

Jeffrey T. Polzer; Ingrid  Vargas; Hillary Anger  Elfenbein

Case | HBS Case Collection | October 2003

Henry Tam and the MGI Team

by Jeffrey T. Polzer, Ingrid Vargas and Hillary Anger Elfenbein

Abstract

Within a short time frame, seven diverse team members assemble to write a business plan for a new company and struggle to define their roles, make decisions together, and resolve conflict. Henry Tam, a second-year Harvard MBA student, who joins an aspiring start-up company and a fellow classmate to enter the school's business plan contest. The founders of the company are two internationally accomplished musicians and a 1987 Harvard MBA, all Russian, who are trying to create, produce, and sell a unique computer-based music game. Conflict builds as the team generates a range of ideas about how to market their product, but has trouble agreeing on which ideas to pursue. Henry Tam wrestles with how to fix the problems that have hindered the team's progress.

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Business Plan; Groups and Teams; Decision Making; Jobs and Positions; Leadership Style; Human Resources; Management Teams; Conflict and Resolution; Diversity;

Format: Print

17 pages

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Citation:

Polzer, Jeffrey T., Ingrid Vargas, and Hillary Anger Elfenbein. "Henry Tam and the MGI Team." Harvard Business School Case 404-068, October 2003.

A private equity-backed fast food chain has hired McKinsey’s new People Analytics group to help it improve performance. As the final client workshop approaches, Associate Partner Alex DiLeonardo ponders the best way to present the team’s findings, especially those that conflict with the client executives’ long-held intuitions. If successful, the project would help People Analytics build its reputation both internally and with clients. But to be successful, DiLeonardo knows his team must convince the client that their results are credible and actionable.
In addition to discussing the specifics of the fast food project, the case also provides an overview of the people analytics field more broadly through the lens of McKinsey’s client portfolio.

In this paper, we explore whether perceivers can accurately assess the effectiveness of groups, how perceivers use group properties to inform their judgment, and the contextual and individual differences that allow some perceivers to be more accurate. Across seven studies, we present consistent evidence that perceivers can judge workgroup effectiveness in videos of different lengths—60, 30, and 10 seconds—and in 10-second silent videos and 10-second audio clips. We find that perceptions of collective properties of groups, including cohesion, affective trust, and cognitive trust partially mediate perceivers’ ability to accurately judge groups. Furthermore, increased attentional focus improves perceivers’ ability to judge group effectiveness. Finally, we find that perceivers with higher levels of social sensitivity are more accurate at judging group effectiveness. We discuss the implications of these findings for the groups literature and social perception literature.

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Henry Tam and the MGI Team

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