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Week 2



In last week's business consultancy lecture, we spoke about business problems, group problems, group dynamics, the 5 stages of group development, the 3-level question technique and stakeholder management.

As far as the definition of business problems is concerned, to be honest, I have never heard a more appropriate and versatile definition. We have assumed that a business problem is a gap between where the customer is now and where he wants to be. To tell you the truth, I've never thought about problems that way before. Personally, I've always seen problems as issues that need to be addressed because someone made a mistake or external factors changed and you didn't anticipate the development and impact on your business. Looking at problems as gaps means that you can solve any problem by finding the missing part, while my previous point of view implied that to solve a problem, a mistake must be corrected.

Another thing that made me think about previous projects I was involved in was the importance of stakeholder management. Looking back, I think I could have avoided many discussions, for example during my time at Kufstein University of Applied Sciences or during my last internships, if I had focused more on stakeholder management. When I talk about the stakeholder model, although I have always tried to meet the two quarters mentioned above, I guess I have often forgotten to focus on the lower right quarter as well, and I can certainly confirm that a lack of information can lead to strong dissatisfaction. Another point I would like to add is the importance of taking care of direct project staff, because if only one team member is dissatisfied, e.g. because he feels that he is being ignored or his contribution is not appreciated, there can be massive problems.

What I have already worked on intensively in the past is the group dynamics and the 5 stages of group development. From my point of view every single phase is indispensable and necessary to develop an advantageous and efficient group dynamic. In the past I have often observed that many project managers do not invest enough time in the first phase, which often takes revenge later. A group, especially if it consists of unequal characters, sometimes encounters disagreements, and it helps to overcome them if ground rules have been established beforehand. A project team that degenerates disagreements into disputes will never really reach the third or fourth phase, so these teams will never really be productive and efficient because they invest more time in disputes than in constructive debates, which has an extremely negative effect on the output of a project.

So this was one of the main points we focused on when working in our team in the seminar. But despite the establishment of clear principles, we also tried to apply some of the acquired methods further. For example, we tried to identify problems with the 3-step question technique, i.e. at the beginning we tried to collect as much information as possible with the help of open questions. Then we tried to question and find out details about the implications, meanings and perhaps even hidden messages and, in the end, even deeper thoughts about the previous answers. With this technique we were able to approach the real problem step by step.

As soon as we agreed on the problem the Rainbow Textile Company has, i.e. the gaps have been identified, we tried to use the three approaches to solve the problem and to start thinking about it. In this context we talked about the three approaches again in the group and each approach has positive and negative aspects that have to be considered. In my opinion, it is disadvantageous to commit to one of the approaches before really thinking about every possible way. Personally, I prefer to write down the best aspects of each approach and then look for possible similarities. Surely there won't always be matches to focus on, so another option might be to analyse every possible solution and list pros and cons to find the most appropriate missing part to fill the gap. In general, I found this week very exciting, as the practical task always helps me personally a lot to consolidate theories and what I have learned and to put them into practice. I am also happy that I now know my working group.


Picture Source: www.thecoachingtoolscompany.com/coaching-questions-
for-highly-effective-teams-by-jennifer-britton/[08/10/2019, 3 pm]

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