Dawn Riley Essay

CEO of America True, Dawn Riley, faces several issues of various criticalities that require careful decision making. The preeminent decision that Dawn Riley faces is whether or not to spend limited funds and resources on upgrading Tag, their training boat. Concurrent with that decision, Dawn is facing several other issues and challenges that need to be addressed. In order to address each of the challenges, a standard issues matrix used below highlights the severity of an issue and the likelihood of it requiring immediate or drastic action. Red: Critical and require immediate management action or decisions Yellow: Lesser critical nature, requiring monitoring of controls to ensure that controls stay in place and does not lead to a more critical ranking. Orange: Lesser critical nature, requiring monitoring of controls and process improvement. Maroon: Issue of a least critical nature – more related to Operational Housekeeping then control concerns. Issue Analysis The issues are divided into two primary areas, leadership and technical. The technical issues include design changes and costs, determining the A-Team, how to manage constructability reviews between the sailing team and the design team, and funding challenges. Each of these issues has a technical solution that can be managed through a process or controls change. The former area, leadership, deals with Dawn Riley’s role in the team and how she shepherds the America True team through these challenges and are solved through adjusting leadership styles. Technical Issues: Funding: Part of Dawn Riley’s role is to prioritize the available budget and to seek new sources of funding. This is a constant source of strain as re-design efforts take additional funding as â€Å"there was a common perception that syndicates with unlimited resources could â€Å"outgrunt† other syndicates by making limitless adjustments. This issue is critical and requires constant management oversight and controls. The action here would be making â€Å"judicious decisions† on how to spend the funds. Tag Upgrade: America True was a smaller syndicate than normal, and their designer Kaiko could not be performing two tasks at once, designing a new part for Tag, or designing a new raceboat keel. This issue would also have implications on funding. This was a critical issue and required executive action to solve. Constructability Reviews: Fostering communication between the designers and the sailors was listed as a potential problem area given that â€Å"sailors ca n get the feeling that designers are too far removed from the problem.† However, in the same token, the sailors also felt that they could contribute more than previous experiences. This is an important issue that probably requires more monitoring than corrective action. A-Team members & Sexism: There was a limited amount of tension between A team and B team members compared to other syndicates. However, â€Å"some of the men who were afraid there would be a â€Å"quota† of women on the raceboat.† For this reason Picking A-Team members and Sexism were identified as a joint issue. Dawn faced the challenge of picking a team that was best qualified and not perceived to have favoritism or quota’s determining who would be on the boat. This is a delicate issue as lack of confidence in your team members and the selection process could lead to a breakdown of trust, one of the first symptoms of Dysfunction in a team. This is a particularly sensitive issue given that the entire issue rests entirely on personality dynamics which take leadership to successfully navigate. Leadership Issues Consensus Style of leadership: Since the outset of the project, Dawn Riley and her management team â€Å"had grown accustomed to making consensus-based decisions.† There are different times when Consensus style of leadership work well and there are times when it does not. The flaws inherent in it are obvious: time consuming, people can be hurt if their choice is not selected, etc. Tag Upgrade: This issue shows up also in the Leadership side of our issues ledger. Dawn is approaching this upgrade as though it is a singular event, however in reality it is a process that has been unfolding over time. â€Å"An â€Å"event† leader would mull in solitude, ask for advice, read reports, mull some more, then say yea or nay and send the organization off to make it happen.† In reality this decision is a process that has been unfolding over the 18 months that Dawn has been leading the team, and would have implications towards group dynamics, and affect the personal and professional relationships within the group. Riley’s leadership role in the pit: As the only Syndicate head who sailed with the crew, there is a certain amount of tension regarding her role on the boat. Even though Dawn recognized that her subordinate Cutler might have a certain amount of discomfort with Dawn in that position since she might step in to take over at any given time she chose to disregard that. Dawn’s role in the pit was to function as the â€Å"integrator† and was at a central position within the boat to react and direct as required. This suggests that Dawn likes to have a strong role on the boat similar to her role off the boat, in the middle of everything and in the know. Muddled Organizational Structure: Throughout the text, there are indications that the organizational structure is unclear or not scrupulously followed. There is no hierarchy to the organizational chart and while Dawn may make it believe it is clear on what her roles and responsibilities are, it appears that she muddles the roles herself given that there was a perception that people were â€Å"working for two masters.† Recommendations and Resolutions Were this in an earlier stage, then there would be a recommendation to solicit additional funding, however given the criticalities of the schedule and the need for the management team to focus on resolving other technical and management issues, it would be recommended that the Dawn and Chris Coffin make the decision to stay within their existing financial plan structure and field the best team they can. It is likely, given Dawn’s many responsibilities, that she could successfully attract additional sponsors unless she gave away other responsibilities regarding the team, which is unlikely to occur.