The Real Leader

1) Did Beaumont set too high a bar for the team to reach? Yes.

Did he have a choice? No. The product had gone from (Alan Gerson's) idea through R&D and market testing over the past two years, and now had the approval of the board. Beaumont is only allowed one year to get this rolling. It seems unrealistic to expect him to form a cohesive team in that time.

2) Were Beaumont's goals clearly established at the outset? No. It seemed important to him to build a team and to implement his new formalized process for product development. There was no overarching or compelling goal, or at least none that he is transparent about.

3) Did Beaumont provide enough resources? No. One example of poor allocation of resources, was giving Merz the responsibility of marketing as well as the profit and loss report. She must now act as senior management without the formal authority to get her other team members to deliver.

4) Was Beaumont the right person to choose the Intense Care team? Maybe. Again, he didn't have much of a choice. He was hired to counter threats from competitors by sharpening strategic focus. Other possibilities would have been one of the Senior VP's.

5) Who was the real leader of the IntensCare team?

The problem is that there was no clear leader. Each of the members of this top-management team is self-directed, which leads to them working in silos and sending each other mixed and inconsistent signals. The three failures of a top management team are self-interested behavior that threatens group viability, failure to surface relevant information, and self-serving behavior. Each member of the IntensCare team demonstrated some of this behavior.