Two Vice-Presidents of the Company ask Michelle, a promising new MBA, to “examine sales forecast issues.” One of the largest producers of commercial and industrial precious metal alloys, the company has experienced losses due to lower prices, and its warehouse has excessively expensive stock.
The VPS will provide Michel with a list of seven task force members selected from the Marketing, Corporate Planning and Economic Analysis departments. They say it's pointless to include one of the four marketing leaders because they're busy and historically resistant to change. Michelle and the team will have eight weeks to deliver the report. It's a clear opportunity to impress the company's management team.
When teaching a course on a large, high-performing team, I usually open in this business case. Regardless of the participants' experience level, it causes lively discussion and provides many topics for discussion. For one, there is the issue of VPS instructions. Many participants begin to say they think the instructions are completely clear. luck One attendee at 500 companies said, “It's clear what executives want.” However, once the debate begins, it quickly becomes clear that the interpretation of “examining sales forecasting issues” is very different. Some participants believe that teams need to provide new ways to estimate sales forecasts, while others think that they need to look into how other organizations make sales forecasts, and more.
The actual discussion begins when I ask: What do you think about the task force membership process? Participants with limited experience are OK with team makeup. This is very diverse and includes a marketing product manager who can speak for marketing leaders. Participants in these classrooms tend to focus primarily on team functions, claiming that Michel's first job is to build strong, cohesive groups.
Certainly, team building is an important part of Michelle's role. However, my experienced workshop leaders are aware of the real problems. To make it successful, the task force must understand the concerns and expertise of various players other than the task force. You need to use these players' knowledge to gain their buy-in. Experienced participants will take up the fact that the task force excludes marketing leaders. Marketing leaders provide their forecast expertise and the potential to monitor the company's forecasting process, as well as influential in the organization, providing deep knowledge and important empowerment.
They say that Michelle should return to the VPS and ask politely to include marketing leaders, or create a clear plan to speak with the marketing leaders as soon as possible.
Their insights are supported. In this case, the marketing leader will never be consulted. Therefore, when Michelle and the team present the final report to the VPS, the marketing leader taking part in the presentation will reject the report entirely.
The forecasting cases provide essential lessons for team leaders who believe that their only role is to build a strong, hardworking and productive team. The team is not an island. Unless you manage the stakeholders of your team, whether inside or outside the team, you've failed yourself, unless you manage people and groups that are beyond the team.
Stakeholder Codes for Two Textiles
Applies to behavior that focuses on the outside of a high-performing team two A norm that involves listening and engaging stakeholders on a daily basis. Norm 1: IS Understand the context of your teamand norm 2: Build external relationships. Understanding the broader organizational context of your team makes it easier to interact with stakeholders. Building these relationships makes it much easier to get “internal” information about stakeholders and political needs and priorities within and outside the organization that impact your team. It is very important to take the time to build both norms. Doing the other without the other does not lead to high performance.
Define Understand the context of your team We take action to learn and understand the needs and concerns of relevant stakeholders, and work to understand how team efforts contribute to the stakeholders and the organization's goals. This norm requires awareness, questions and listening carefully to what is in the minds of relevant stakeholders.
Building external relationships It consists of proactively and strategically forgerying relationships with stakeholders and resources that can provide them and influence the performance of their teams. This norm requires time to be spent with relevant stakeholders both inside and outside the organization. Decades of research by Sandy Pentland at MIT shows that building performance value adds performance value as ideas are shared in the siloed realm of the company. Social scientists studying decision-making warn that most poor decisions are not the result of errors in logic or reasoning. They emerge from their inability to capture the complete complexity of the situation before us. This changes rapidly in a fast-paced competitive environment. The best strategy for good decision making is to gather relevant information from a wide range of people and make this a habit.
Stakeholder-focused norms provide opportunities to gain new perspectives, support and resources. Understanding the needs of stakeholders and building good relationships with them provides opportunities to increase learning, improve decision-making, and leverage knowledge and insights that can inspire new, innovative ideas. Ideas from stakeholders can be important in the early stages of innovation due to the different perspectives in which stakeholders see the problem.
Reprinted with permission from Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpt from Emotionally intelligent teams: Build a collaborative group that surpasses the rest By Vanessa Druskat. Copyright 2025 Vanessa Druskat. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.
