HPT – Final Report
HPT – Final Report
2012
Arvind Padmanabhan
1253177

2012
Arvind Padmanabhan
1253177

Contents

Introduction 2 About the company 3 Policies and practices 3 HPT Characteristics 4 Selection 4 Trust 5 Constructive Conflict 6 Compelling Purpose 7 Reward 7 Coaching 8 Conclusion 9 Bibliography 10

Introduction
I will be discussing about my previous company where in they did succeed in creating a high performance team. This was done because we had acquired a company and it was in period where there was a demand for a particular formulation of medicine which could be only made in the newly acquired plant.
The plant which was acquired had many problems. For starters did was not in function for almost a year and the machinery was outdated. There was problem of getting manpower since the plant was situated outside the city. The period in which this was acquired was the vacation period and most of the employees had planned to take long holidays.
The chairman of the company had given a public statement that she will be getting the plant operational within 6 months and she expected a 30% increase in profits by doing so. During the same time there was a Bird flu epidemic in India and we were one of those companies which had the formulation to treat such flu. The government of India had sent orders to the company to start producing these medicines because they expected many people to suffer this disease.
It was then decided to make a team which was cross functional and could get the operations started in the acquired plant so that they could quickly start producing the required medicines. Under the guidance of the CEO we had made up a team of 30 . This team included members from production, RND and Quality. In the later part of the team formation I was included in the team to give HR support.
It was planned to start the operation in 2 months and everyone in the team started to work for this goal. There was a compiling purpose of getting these medicines to the market to save a million lives.
About the company

Biocon is an Integrated Biopharmaceutical company. Its main focus is to use Biotechnology in creating affordable medicine. The company has 3 major subsidiaries’ they are Syngene , Clinigene and BRL.
Biocon was founded in 1975 by Dr. Krian Mazumdar. She formed this company when India was still in age where women were not considered as entrepreneurs. Ever since she started she had to face many problems from recruiting men folk to work under her. Within a year of founding the company Biocon started to export enzymes to the US and Europe.
In 2004 Biocon became public and this is the first Indian company to cross the $1 billion mark on the 1st day of the listing. The chairman is a role model for people in the area of biotechnology. In 2005 Biocon decided to move from enzyme based products to Biophrma based products.
In 2005 it launched the human insulin product using Pichia expression system. During the last 7 years it been growing by 15 % and it has acquired 3 companies to increase its product line.
Policies and practices

Once the team was created the CEO through my VP –HR wanted me to create few polices and General practice which will be followed in the newly acquired plant. In a weeks’ time in consultation with the head of the projects I had outlaid few guidelines which we also used in our HPT activity.
Conflict resolution The work culture in my company was during a meeting conflict was encouraged and the leadership believed because of conflict new ideas generate. This policy was not changed during this period and during this period there was constructive conflict at every team meeting. If there is a conflict which was not been able to solve then there would arbitrated by the CEO directly.
Goals
The goals of each team were created and communicated to the team leaders effectively. They were also asked to create team goals keeping in mind the department goals.
Quality process
Every team and department were told to make sure all the process were as per FDI norms and internal audits needs to be done periodically.
Reward
It was also communicated that if the project was completed in time all the team members will be rewarded. They also communicated that teams who perform well will get cash rewards and there will be a team party in a five start resort.
HPT Characteristics

Selection

Selection is a process of choosing a person for a team or for a particular job. In this company we have a selection policy which based on technical and behavioural skill. For the team which had to go to the acquired plant we had 3 broad categories in which internal selection was made. * Technical Problem solving: the person has to be very good technically and will be able to solve technical problem in his area of expertise. He or she had to have a Phd in the area of process sciences and should understand protein based molecules. * Language: Should understand the local language as it will be very important to communicate with people in the shop floor.
Strength: This selection process had all the right points for selecting the best technical team member. We had to choose Phds because we knew they were technically competent to handle high technical problems.
Weakness: The main weakness was in the selection process was it emphasised on technical aspects but gave very little room for leadership or team players. Other than having skills like people management as main criteria we choose team members with other personal aspects which could hamper the team as a whole ( Wageman, Nunes, Burruss, & Hackman, 2008).
In our rowing class in a short time we had to choose 10 team members and in that situation we decided to choose people who we thought had the best skills to win the contest. As criteria we decided to go for team members who were male as we had presumed that he would add actual power in rowing since we required power in this game. We took people who looked strong and fit in our team we made sure we had maximum men because it is natural instinct that men always were better in a game of mussel and power. At the end we were proved wrong.
Trust
If team members trust each other then they won’t double check on what each other has done. They in the long term will reduce cost (Whipple, 2008). Most the team members were working in the company for more than 5 years. They had worked in different projects as cross functional teams and hence they had built the trust factors. They were all well aware of each other’s strengths and weakness.
In our rowing experience we did trust our team members and when we had to select the final 8, everyone was comfortable with it. The people who did not get selected were actually cheering us during the process.
Strength: Since most of the team members knew each other and worked in teams before, it was a good selection of these team members. They were part of successful team in the past.
Weakness: There were few issues with few team members and there was just an artificial trust layer which was formed. In the past we had seen few of the team members disinterested in new projects. Few of them had a trust deficit with others in the team which could have hampered in the process.
Constructive Conflict

My previous company believed in constructive conflict and the CEO always believed that through constructive conflict team members come together and can create innovate solutions (Kinicki & Fugate, organizational behaviour: key concepts,skills and best practices, 2012). The CEO believed that everyone had to have an idea and every one had to fight for their idea to be accepted. This sounds to be crude but when the technical team and the marketing team came together each of them never accepted the views of the other. There was no integrative approach to handle conflict.
Strength: It was good to have conflict and it was encouraged throughout the company.
Weakness: Certain times the conflict went into personal grounds and when this happened the trust factor was lost.
Compelling Purpose

This team had a compelling purpose of getting the medicines into the market as soon as possible. There were many lives at stake. This was well understood by everyone. In my view the team selection was wrong and there was no trust factor amongst the leadership team, but there was a compelling purpose which eventually negated all the problems and we were successful at the end.
A compelling purpose is very important for a high performance team because it raises the level of challenge but also energises and inspires a team ( Wageman, Nunes, Burruss, & Hackman, 2008). In this case I see this as strength and there was no weakness. Because of this the entire team went around the project leader and gave their 120% during the project.
We eventually finished the project in less than 45 days and started production in less than 2 months which not predicted. The medicines went to the market well before they planned to reach the hospitals.
In our rowing team the compelling purpose was to promote the rowing club. We choose this because without the rowing club this course would have been a class room driven course. Due to the outdoor activity we learnt many life skills. This would have not been possible if it was a class room event.
Reward

Once the project was completed and the productions started the reward was given to the entire team. There was individual performance award and there was group performance award. This created an intrinsic feeling of pride when we received a letter of gratitude from the prime minister of India for our efforts.
In our team we could have formulate a reward system. In my view we were so engrossed in making the presentation and rowing we forgot about the reward part. In my option the leader should have got this done. I feel if this was in place we would have done better in the rowing part.
Coaching
In my previous company we had a mentor policy where the senior most staff would act as a mentor for young achievers. They would interact with younger members of the team and would guide them through technical and functional aspects of the job.
There was a leadership coach for every department wherein there was an outside consultant who would come in and coach young mangers regarding team management.
The strength was all future technical and non-technical young leaders were given direction to improve themselves. The weakness was about selecting those young leaders. This was done in a very subjective manner and most of the time thing went wrong as they were not the right people.
In the case of rowing none of the team members knew how to row. We accepted Anthony as our coach and we trusted him on his technical abilities. On the 1st day we had a group meeting and we all decided that we will go as per Anthony advice. Since Anthony was technically the best coach we would have. We also searched in the internet about rowing and we shared it amongst our team members, in this case we coached each other using the internet as a resource.
Conclusion

The project which my company took was very successful but we had learnt many lessons during the projects. Due to lack of trust between the RND folks and production folks there were many design errors. In the beginning of the project there were many inter personal conflicts. During the projects because of the compelling purpose team members had to come together forcefully to solve problems.
I would also like to add that because of proper leadership from the CEO this project became successful. He always allowed team members to work freely and believed that if the direction or goal is compelling enough there would be synergy. In the end he was right.
In the Course we were able to come as a team and did what a high performance team would do. Unfortunately we were unable to perform on that particular day. But in my view we did learn a lot on how to create or be part of a high performance team. There were other aspects which we did well example the presentation wherein we did have a better engagement with audience. I feel in my view we did very good this part .We gelled well in this process. In the end 6 weeks we were able to be like high performance team. Many of the time we thought beyond ourselves and thought for the team. In view we reached beyond our expectations.
Recommendation: My recommendations to my company would be the following
Selection: It would be good if we have a broad based selection process where in education should not be the key factor.
Trust
We should increase trust before we send the team on a project. A good outdoor exercise like rowing should have been done before the project started.
Reward
We should have not given individual l awards bit should have given more team awards since this was a team effort.
Coaching
We should have a proper performance management system to identify who has leadership qualities and then give proper training to them. I also recommend that everyone in the executive level should have a mentor so that they could be guided at a very young stage.
As a company it is imperative that they create the right high performance team and make sure this team sustains its self for a long time.

Bibliography

Wageman, R., Nunes, D., Burruss, J., & Hackman, J. (2008). Senior Leadership Teams: What It Takes to Make Them Great. Harvard Business Press Books .
Kinicki, A., & Fugate, M. (2012). organizational behaviour: key concepts,skills and best practices (5th Edition ed.). New York : McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Kinicki, A., & Kreitner, R. (2009). Organizational Behavior-key concepts,skills & best practices. McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Whipple, R. (2008). High-Trust Teams. Leadership Excellence, 25(10), 11-12.