case study

S O C I E T Y F O R H U M A N RESOURCE MANAGEMENI

CASE OVERVIEW/SYNOPSIS

This casc follows a projcct tcam as theywork to implcmcnt a safcty daabasc uacking system within a major intcmationd phannaccutical comlrany. Thc companynras 6rmcd Srouglr the merger oftrro organizations. Tcam members arc located in the Unitcd Satcs and in Francc, and conduct much of their work virtudly. In spitc of their technical skills and abilitics, the tcam strugglcs to collaboratq after morc than a year ofwork, kcyconflicts r9:n?rn unrcsolvcd*many ofwhich arc not apFrcnt to all team membcrs. Thc casc concludcs with scnioi.rianCgcmtpt appointing proccss advisors and implcmenting a conflict escalation proccss. Whcthcr thcsc interveftidns arc cffictive or cvcn appropriatc rcmains an opcn question fur srudents to orplorc.

I . . ' . ' ; : '

Revicw this cirsc iut ifyou arc a consulEnt hircd by thc company to improve thc tearn's dynamics, or as ifyou are tlrc senior manager for the division in which tlre projcct is taking placc. As you read, kcqr in mind that thc casc is unitten primarily from the pcrqpcctive of the Americans on thc tcam. Look br thc mcrits in thcir points ofvicw, but considcr how thc samc fact miSht b" intcrprcrcd diftrcndy.

Vig ilance Project Case Description

PharMed International Headquartcred in Francc, PharMed Intemational is one of thc world's largcst pharmaccutical companies. It was cstablished rwo years ago when two formidable pharmaceutical companies, ValMed and PharmCO, combined. Although officially termed a mergcr, in practice, it might better havc been describcd as an acquisition of ValMed, a Swiss-based company with cxtensive U.S. operations, by PharmCO, a French-based company.

Likc all pharmaceutical companies, PharMed is obligated to keep detailcd records of how its drugs perfbrm. 'fo

do so, PharMed relies on sophisticated database syst€ms that track and record adverse events associated with the use of its products under development and already in the market. The Drug Safcty DMsion of PharMed is charged with fulfilling this obligation. The division is headed by Lance Paulson, M.D. Paulson is bascd in thc United Statcs, but the division has managers and employccs in numerons countrics. Paulson's depury director, Francine D'Aubigne, M.D., is locatcd in France.

The Drug Safety Division is in the process of implementing a new adverse event database system called Vigilance, which will be used by division employees around the globe. The data entered into the system will be used to generate reports the company is obligated to provide to various regulatory agencies around the world (in the United States, for example, that agenry is the Food and Drug Administration). The two-year project began about one year after the merger.

Projcct Team Structure The core team responsible for designing and implementing Vigilance has three membcrs in the United States and four members based in France. They include employees from the Drug Safety Division, as well as employees from the company's Information Systems (IS) Division who are dedicated resources for the Drug Safery Division.

From the United States: . The communication lead for thc project, Frank Lanigan, is liom the Drug Safety Division. Lanigan is charged with

keeping all managers in the Drug Safety Division updated on the status of the project. o 'fhe validation lcad, Carol Reynolds, is also from the Drug Safery Division. Hcr role is to ensurc that the system is

fully tested and that all test resuls are documented before releasing the system for use. . The training lcad, Mikc Powell, is &om the Drug Safety Division. He is charged with making sure users are trained on

how to use the system.

From France: r The project managcr, Didier Amrani, is from the IS Division and works at corporatc headquartcrs. . The global user lead, Karine Bareaut, is part of the Drug Safety Division. F{er role is to ensure that thc system meets

the tracking and reporting needs of the Drug Safety Division. . The global information systems (IS) lcad, Merline Bucquct, is fiom the IS Division. Her rolc on thc team is to ensurc

that the system (including software and hardware ) is appropriately integrated and compatible with other company systems and applications.

. Thc quality and compliance lead, Fabrice Lcmaire, is part of the IS Division. His job is to ensure that the system meets all the regulatory requirements of government agencies worldwide.

In addition to the core team, five subteams were fbrmed. Thesc subteams each have a user lead from thc Drug Safety

Division and an IS lead, and report direcdy to the user lead (Karine Bareaut) and IS lead (Merline Bucquet) respectively.

Each team also has two to fow additional members, most of whom are involved with the project on an intermittent basis.

Overall, half of the subteams'members are located in the United States and half are based in France. The organization

chart on page 8 provides an overview ofthe Vigilance project team structure.

An administration subteam, located in the U.S., is responsible for ensuring that Vigilance maintains separate databases

for each product in all it strengths. For example, if a particular medicine was sold as a l0 milligram pill and also as a 20

milligram pill, Vigilance must separately track any adverse events for both size pill dosages.

A U.S.-bascd data entry subtcam is charged with identifying all of the fields that would appcar on the svstem's scrccns. A

workflow subteam, with members evenly divided between the U.S. and France, is responsible for determining the ways in

which the system automatically passes work from one user to the next. For example, a case entered into the system would

rypically first bc handled by a data-cntry clerk before being transfcrrcd to a mcdical evaluation expcrt and finally t<-r a

reporting officer who would submit the case to regulatory authorities.

A French-based migration subteam is responsible for mapping all the data from the legacy (existing) systems to Vigilance.

FinallS a French-based report subteam is charged with designing the reports that will be generated from Vigilance. While

each ofthese subteams has a diflerent focus, they are interdependent. For instance, ifthe data entry subteam failed to

includc a particular data ficld, the migration subteam would not be able to move rclated lcgacy data into thc ncw systcm.

Most of the U.S. core and subteam members were previously cmployees of ValMed. At the project's start, they were

looking fbrward to working on this initiative. Before the merger, several of them, including all of those on the core team,

played key roles in efforts to develop a similar system called Perspective. The work had been intense and time-consuming,

but the team members were stimulated by that project. They put in long but collaborative hours and were nearly finished

whe n thc mcrgcr occurrcd and implcmcntation of Pcrspective was put on hold.

Several montls later, the newly merged organization decided to scrap Perspective in livor of Vigilancc. There werc two

main reasons. First, having been dcsigned before the merger, Perspective's capacity was too small to accommodate thc

needs of the larger organization created through the merger. In addition, it was not clear that Perspective's design could

support thc new business processes (e.g., workflow procedures) that were implcmented post-merger. 'fhe

Perspcctive team

members were disappointed, but understood the rationale for the change in direction. As work on Vigilance began, those

who had been a part of the previous project looked forward to sharing the benefit of their experiences. Not long after work

on Vigilance began, however, their enthusiasm waned.

Core Team Dynamics

The Vigilance core team, some of whom had worked together before, started the project by holding a one-day face-to-face

kick-off meeting in Paris at the corporatc headcluarters. Meeting as one large group, all pruject team members attended,

including those on the subteams. There were formal introductions to ensure everyone knew each other. The roles of the various subteams were articulated and the project timeline established. "At the timc," recalls Frank Lanigan, "the proposed

schedule seemed reasonable and the subteam structure made sense to us all. Looking back, however, there was no

opportunity to really get past formalities. It would have been good for the core team to have also met separately for more in-clcpth discussions about how wc would work togcthcr. Nonc of that cvcr happcncd." Aftcr the initial mccring, most of

the core team's subsequent interactions were conducted via weekly teleconferences. These teleconfbrences were liequend.v

cancelled by Didier Amrani, the project manager, without notice and without him having sought input from the rest of the tearn as to whether there were issues they wanted to discuss.

Didier strongly controlled the way meetings were run by restricting the kinds of infbrmation that was exchanged and the ways in which it was exchanged. In and of itself, this would not have been a problem for many of the team members. As

Carol Reynolds, the corc team validati<ln lead, explained when she was intcrviewed fcrr this case, "ft's a project manager's job to monitor what occurs during team meetings. The problem with Didier's approach, though, was that he was too autocratic to be practical." For instance, he flequently put together an agenda for meetings without input fiom other team members. Further, he would allot only l0 minutes for other issues not on the agenda and only if time permitted.

Early in the project's life cycle, Frank Lanigan, the communication lead, presented a communication plan to the core tcam during one of their confcrence calls. Didier remained quiet during the presentation and offered littlc in the way of comments on the plan presented; however, following the meeting he called Frank, stating that nothing was to be presented

at core team meetings without his prior knowledge. Frustrated and angry, Frank became more withdrawn; he f'elt that as a part of the core tearrl, his discrction and expertise were being undermined.

When there was discussion, many of the U.S. core team members tblt their ideas were given litde or no consideration. lls Mike Powell, the core team's lead fbr training, once quipped to his American colleagues, the norm here is "don't provide your opinion until asked-at which point they'll tell you what your opinion is." At various points throughout the ;rrojec, thc U.S. tcatn mcrnbcrs tried to raisc issucs and suggestions bascd on thcir cxpcricnces widr Perspcctivc. Howcvcr, thcir France-based core team colleagues (all of whom had bcen part of PharmCO prior to the merger), especially Didier, consistently responded negatively to any input based upon the previous project. In fact, it had gotten ro rhe point wherc it sccrned that any mention of Pcrspcctivc was considcrcd taboo.

Communication across subteams u'as a kcy point thc American memt-rcrs of the corc team wantcd to sfrcss to thcir Frcnch collcagucs. From thcir work on Perspcctivc thcy had lcarned how important ir was to keep peoplc infbrrncd of wl'rat otlrcr subteams were doing. "S)'stem devclopment is dynamic," explained Carol Reynolds. "We had learned how quickly any rwo subteams could head down different paths if the communication and coordination was not as dynamic as the work itself." She went on to stress that too liequendy the result would be one or both teams having to rework their design-creating tin'rc delays that rippled tJrroughout the project schedule and leading to bad feelings within the team.

"It's not that our colleagues in France wanted poor communication," Mike Powcll added, "but thcy wcrc comnrittcd to dealing with this challenge through a chain of command. Karine, the global user lead, and Merline the global IS lead, wantcd to ['re the fbcal points fbr passing information across subtcams. That may work fine in thcory but not in pracricc. Instructing the subteams to communicate through rhe user and IS leads slowed things down. Anyone who has ever played

the grapevine game knows how much gets lost when layers are added between the start and end of a communication chain." Referring to the physical distance that separated some of the subteams, he stressed, 'It's not like we could even rcly on infbrmal comnrunication in the halls to fill in thc gaps."

The Core-Core Team

In many instances, decisions which could have been made collaboratively by the core team were not made that way.

Instead, Didier, acting unilaterally or at best in consultation with French team members, made decisions that were then

communicated lrack to U.S. team members as being finalized. Increasingly, U.S. team members felt as though their input

was not valued and that their perspectives were not being given due consideration.

In one telling example, during a core team teleconfbrence, the team was discussing important data cntry fields that would

need to be included in the system. Among other things, these unanticipated additions were going to affect system report

generation as well as eventual training. As the team was exploring the implications of the changes, Didier stopped their

discussion by declaring that the team as a whole need not be concerned. Referring to himself and his French colleagues,

he said it was an issue that could be taken up by the 'core-core team.' To the Americans on the team, the remark only

reinforced their sense of alienation.

In May, roughly l0 months after the project had begun, the core team as a whole had agrced to includc a bricf cross-

cultural awareness workshop as part of an upcoming face-to-face status-update meeting that again would include members

of both the core team and the subteams. The Americans had hoped to use the workshop as an opportunity to discuss and

irnprove tcam processes. Only later did thc U.S. tcam mcmbers learn that this portion of thc program had been cancelled,

When Didier was asked about the change of plans, he said that top management made the decision. In subsequent

discussions with some of those senior managers, however, it was discovered that they were not involved in the decision and

that it had been made bv Didier.

The U.S. team members were disappointed that the workshop had been cancelled, but their biggest concerns had to do

with thc unilateral way the dccision was made. Morcover, tl'rc lcss-than-truthful reason givcn for cancelling thc workshop

severely undermined what litde trust and rapport remained. As the project moved past the midpoint in its life cycle, the

Americans on the core team were increasingly reluctant to raise issues and participate fully in conversations. Enthusiasm for

the project had all but ceased to exist, and U.S. team members even began thinking wice about providing their European

colleagues with information.

Tensions Spread to the Subteams

The subteams continued to frll behind schedule, but the delivery date remained fum. The timeline slippages were obvious,

but almost no one was willing to discuss them openly-least of all the Americans on the core team. 'It was easy for us to

see how the slippages were related to subteam communication breakdowns, but we'd been down that road so many times

rve didn't know how to raise it anymore," explained Frank Lanigan.

"By late August," Carol Reynolds added, *we could see how fiustrated our colleagues on the subtcams were ...some

infbrmal communication was possible among U.S.-based subteams-we could only assume the samc kinds of things might

be occurring in France-but even that was less than ideal." According to Mike Powell, there was nothing subtlc about the

mounting stress and confusion: "Tensions had gonen to the point where people were actually storming out of meetings

because they were frustrated by what they were being asked to do on short notice or without sufficient information."

In September, the U.S. core team members felt thcy needed to escalate their concerns. After consulting with Carol and

Mike, Frank approached Lance Paulson, the head of the Drug Safety Division. According to Frank, Lance, who was also

based in the U.S., took his concerns seriously and promised to act. 4I assumed,' said Frank, "that meant Lance would

work through Didier, perhaps coaching and counseling him on how to open up dialogue and communication within the

core team and throughout the project overall.'

Instead, Lance chose another approach. Hc sent an e-mail mcssagc to the entire division, not just those working on thc

Vigilance project. Thc message was sent under his name and that of his deputy director, Francine D'Aubigne, who was

located in France.

Colleagaes,

When we laanched. the Vigilonce project byforming the clre tea.rn a.nd. sabtearlts, we ercpected. that a.ll tealn. members would. colloborate to dnelnp best proctices fr a nrro safety dotnbose system. We onticipoted. thnt this

would meon baild.ing on lessons leornedfiom post proiects q.nd. processes nnd tnhing into accoant ewbing regulatory requirements and. thoughtful conideration of other best prnctices.

We appreciate the chnllenges th* project poses nnd und.erstand. the time pressures this project reqaires. Our success d.epend.s nlt jnst on whq.t we hnow bat bow we worh tlgether. '* team members, everyone must remain professionnl flnd. open to d.ffirent proposals and. opinions. It is tuciol thot we consider ideas fairly and. ultimately d.ct in the cornpany" best interea. We d.o not expect totol a.greement btut do etcpect tha,t a,fter condid. but respectful d.iscassion, eoch team. member will altirnntely sapport the teau deciion nen if they would. hape preferre d d.no t h er a.p pro ec h.

With thesegooh in mind, we are appointing Halina Dutet nnd. Teo Reynord os subteam sponsors. ,4s you hnow, both of thre indipid.uals belong to the senior m.a.nngement teamfor the dipision and, report d.irectly to us.

When teomt reach an impasse, these sponsors will provifu od.d,itional conJlict menaBerncTrt med.iotion orud. decision-mahing authority. We expect their inpolpement to be the exception rothw thon the rule. Tearn members should. altimntely abid.e fo mnjority opinion. Howmer, for those times when team opinion is cvenly split 0r wben the disagreement pertnins to hE stategic objectioes, the teq.m sponsors sltoald. be contncted so they con worh with team members ntd. otber nppropriote tto.ff to fnalize o course of action.

Best regard.s, Lance (r Francine

The e-mail message was a surprise to Vigilance team mcmbers, and to others throughout the Drug Safety Division who had not bccn awarc of thc problems within dre Vigilancc team. "I had pcople coming into rny office and asking me what was rwong with thc project," explained Carol. 'I ruas concerned holv this might affect confidence in what we finally deliver." Frank, who had contacted l,ance, was also surprised. "I'm glad that senior management was willing to get involved, but I'm not sure this was the solution I was looking for. I had expected that they try to work these issues from within the team. I know none of us in the U.S. were consulted on the approach oudined in the message, and as far as I know no one talked to Didier or the other core team members in France ."

@ 2008 SHRM. Peler G. Dominick, Ph.D