The Planning Events Committee of TeeZays Limited.

Mr. Richard Lumpkin, Senior Human Resource Manager, of TeeZays Limited, a General Insurance company with one thousand workers. He had been assigned 20 workers employed in different departments of the organization, to work on an employee appreciation ceremony. The team had six (6) months to prepare for the event, since it was scheduled to coincide with the company’s end of year Christmas celebrations. The team held its first meeting on June 30th, however at its fourth meeting on September 30th they still had not developed any plans for the event. There were a number of areas on which the team members could not agree, such as, (1) who would be the team leader, (2) how many recipients should be selected for the awards, and (3) the appropriate award for the recipients. Mr. Lumpkin, tried on various occasions to include all members of the team in the discussions. At every meeting, fifty percent of the team were talking on their phones, while another six (6) would be conducting informal meetings among themselves. However, at the meeting of October 30th Ms. Jan Bascombe, a Human Resource Adviser, decided to provide recommendations for the event. After speaking for three minutes, her secretary came in and informed her that she was urgently needed at the office. Jan exited the meeting and Richard requested that someone continue reading Jane’s recommendations in her absence, but no one volunteered. Mr. Lumpkin became very frustrated. After voicing his disappointment with the team, he decided to find out why they were not participating. Ten workers indicated that they did not understand why they were chosen to be members of the committee, since they were not interested in selecting anyone for the award. Another five employees informed the Senior Human Resource Manager that they preferred to be at their jobs since they had deadlines for submitting their work assignments. Richard then decided that he should write a report to the CEO with suggestions for cancelling the employee recognition ceremony.

Identify and discuss the major problems in the team, that prevented the members from working with each other. 

What would you recommend to future teams so they avoid the problems identified in this case?