SECTION A $[40$ MARKS$]$

Read the case study below and answer ALL the questions that follow.

LEGO Mindstorms

The LEGO Company, established in $1932,$ for a long time had been one of the most successful and well$-$known toy

companies in the world. It functioned in a traditional hierarchical fashion that focused on efficiency, encouraged incremental

improvement, and counted on predictable product life cycles. In the mid$-1990$s$,$ LEGO began experiencing struggles as

increased competition, internet$-$based games and changing customer preferences led to reduced profits and concerns

about long$-$term viability. In response, LEGO launched the Mindstorms product development team, lead by Ben Smith and

Thomas Atkinson. Smith was a recent addition to the company with experience managing an information technology

company, and Atkinson was a long$-$time product manager. Essentially, they were to create a robotic LEGO toy. Working with

a limited budget, they had the following charge: Take some partially developed programmable LEGO brick technology,

develop an original product based on this technology, and bring it to market.

The team was placed in the low$-$profile educational division and allowed to create a novel product development process in

which they could experiment more freely and act like a new business working collaboratively and acting with agility. $$We

threw away most of the rulebook, and operated like a small, entrepreneurial business,$$ said Atkinson.

Given that it had only limited funding, the Mindstorms team had to borrow people from within the existing organisational

structure, which contributed to a great deal of conflict because the borrowed team members were expected to maintain their

current jobs while contributing to the Mindstorms project. Beginning with only two members, facing a challenging charge,

and getting help on borrowed time, the Mindstorms team intentionally engaged customers and embarked on cultivating an

internet community that would help shape the product$$s design and features. The team developed a large network of

partnerships and alliances $$ a computer manufacturer, a museum, a software company, and a children$$s learning

organisation. In contrast to the typical LEGO way, they set out to work with these partners as equals. Atkinson noted, $$It is

not like we can just say, $$This is the way it is going to work$$ this is the way to do it$...$the partner would just say, $$stop$.$

In the storming stage, the new way of working and the extended partnerships led to conflict, or in some cases a lack of

conflict. Smith said, $$People weren$$t confronting each other with their differences of opinion. We had to make people talk

directly to each other about this.$$ Team members seemed to be looking for more clarity about working relationships, so

Smith devised an organisational chart and talked to a few people about it$.$ Ultimately, however, he ended up throwing the

organisational chart out. He realised that the Mindstorms process would suffer if it was formalised. Instead, he increased his

communication, making it a point to chat with team members and ask questions $$ sometimes about work, many times not.

He also encouraged the same behaviour from other team members, saying, $$Employees are like bank accounts: If you just

deposit money regularly, they grow like crazy!$$

Collaborative norms emerged as the team adopted a form of parallel processing in which development and implementation

of ideas occurred at the same time. Often implementation issues surfaced that resulted in real time adjustments in the

design, saving time and resources. The benefits were numerous, but so were the challenges. It was an exhausting, fastpaced

environment in which feedback was almost immediate. At one point, a marketing consultant concluded that the

Mindstorms product was too complex for kids and would not sell. Smith called a two$-$week $$time$-$out$$ that excluded partners

and even people from the parent company from discussions with the core team. Instead of making knee$-$jerk adjustments

during this time, the team reaffirmed a vision for itself to $$establish the LEGO Company as the leading supplier of childcentred

robotics in the mass consumer market$$ and redoubled its efforts to position its emerging product as unique and

distinct from existing LEGO products.

QUESTION $1(20$ Marks$)$

Critically analyse the extent to which Tuckman$$s five stage model of team development is evident in the case study.