Finger Puppet Management TV Report

Andrea Longoria Victoria Shek Ian Ie Richy Valdez Organization of Business and Management April 16, 2014

Finger Puppet Management TV Show Report

The finger puppet tv show is a parody based on real life events, in which a group of students in Ringling’s Organization of Business and Management class try to work together as a team and complete a long term assignment, which is making a puppet show that teaches business management concepts. By parodying real life, other students can better relate to the struggles of the puppets. The show is relatable and even the style of the jokes that are used in the show are typical jokes and humor that we ourselves or other people would use in our everyday lives. We believe that our audience will find this program interesting, educational and relatable.

The format of our TV show’s intro will be like a typical TV series like The Office, How I met your Mother, F.R.I.E.N.D.S, Sherlock. It is going to be a series of montages of each character’s photo or video. In this case, we are going to show the character’s name and what their personality types are. Since we are aiming to make our project like a real TV series, we thought that this approach will be appropriate. We want to make it as close to real life as possible.

Mercedes, Isaac, Stevie and Veronica are college students working on a project for their organizational and management class. Destiny brought these completely distinct strangers

together into what we call in business the “white­water rapids”. This is a metaphor which is used when an organization is seen as a small raft navigating a raging river with uninterrupted white­water rapids. In this raft people have never worked together before and they are unsure of their destination.The “white­water rapids” metaphor is a perfect example of their journey through this project because they experience a continual series of changes, not really having any particular focus or direction, how their argument shape them as a group.

The show follows four main characters: Mercedes, Veronica, Isaac, and Stevie from their first meeting. Though they are not unwilling to work with one another, tensions quickly arise due to their differences and visions. The first day of class their teacher Steve encourages them to take a personality test, so that they may better understand and work with each other.

Isaac is a computer animator he is not very outspoken, but he is creative and skilled. He is the glue of everyone’s ideas and the one that will make everything possible. He is the realist of the group and gives the group a limitation on what are they supposed to do, so that everything that they plan has a reasonable workload.

Veronica is an illustrator therefore she is in charge of all the illustration in the group. She likes clear rules and guidelines, but also enjoys being independent. She’s kind of quiet unless if she’s directly spoken to.

Merecedes, who’s a business major, is the only extrovert in the team. Her personality is very distinct to all her other teammates. She likes to voice her opinion, take charge and is very opinionated; her personality type as an ENFP (Extraversion, Intuition, Feeling,

Perception). She become the leader of the group because she feels like there is need of someone who can speaks up, and take control so that the group can functions well.

Her outspoken attitude really helps the team to move forward though sometimes her attitude can be a double edge sword as she tries to speak her views without consulting with her other team.

Stevie is the fine artist of the group. Very passive with the group as he constantly looks for order and structure to participate. Through this character’s development, he learns to be more expressive and speak his opinion out to the group; this is important for his group’s success because communication is vital, not just for him, but the group in general; his personality is an ISFJ.

Each episode follows the process and progress of how four different people learn to synchronize and become a successful team. It is focused on the concepts like the modern model of a manager, the forming of a group, the eight step thinking process and such. One of the main themes of management in the puppet show is how to manage a team. A team is a group of two or more people that come together in order to achieve specific goals. Formal groups are work groups that are defined and often assigned by the organization they work for and have specific tasks to accomplish the goals set down by the organization. Informal groups are social groups, such as people who would be friends together without ever having to work with each other in order to meet. BU Enterprise’s Team T.E.A.M. exhibits parts of the command, task, cross­functional, and self­managed teams. They report directly to a given manager (to the teacher), are made up of people brought together to complete a task and will be disbanded when they have finished it, are from different backgrounds with different work specialties, and each

person must manage themselves and others to a small degree, respectively. They are a small group, so they are forced to take on more roles compared to bigger groups that can divide the works more diversely.

Although Mercedes has the most dominant personality, she realizes towards the middle of the project that her traditional managing skills were not being as effective or organized as she had initially hoped for. Mercedes decides to become a more moderate manager and she starts by use organizational development. She makes an effort to assist her team members with a planned change in order to constructively change the attitudes and values of her team members so they could easily adapt and be more effective in achieving the new established goal.

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The most important aspect of this episode is getting the students to feel comfortable and prepared to be working together for the next couple of months. Stevie, Veronica, Mercedes and Isaac get into a group; the smallest group in their class to be specific. Whenever there is a situation in which new people will be met and introduced, individual behavior is always prominent. Here, first impressions happen, people begin to judge others as they interact with them, and last and most importantly, perception. These individual behaviors are what determine the group’s success in the long run. For example, if each character is uptight and not very cooperative, then the group will for sure have trouble communicating (especially when it comes down to separating responsibilities). Instead, of course, we led the characters towards the

positive aspect of this; straight from the start they are cooperative, compassionate, and always open to suggestions from each other which guarantees their project’s success.

The characters get together for their first meeting out of class. We subtly show examples of failed planning and bad decision making. The group veers off towards the disadvantages of group decision making; for example, they are more focused on the solution rather than the process of planning and development. Mercedes shows this by deciding on what their project is going to be without going through any other possibilities she may have had. She joins the group’s ideas together without thinking about production. This is also another bad example of planning because instead of brainstorming, they each have single ideas to pitch and do not take the time to expand on them or think of any other alternatives. The main factor in their failure to plan was time. Group decision making is time consuming, but time is all the group had, and they did not realize that.

In their next class, Steve identifies the stages of group development: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. The characters are a formal task group due to the project they are assigned to complete and because of their formal meetings; not very social and always getting their work done. In this episode the group experiences two stages of group development forming and storming. The team is in a crossroads with tasks, indirection, and no leader, so there is no management in the group. The group is unsure of a power structure, still not used to being a group, and has yet to build trust with one another which has resulted in their unwillingness to speak­out. When there is a group or a team with task­based objectives, there has to be a leader in order for these tasks to be completed proficiently, Mercedes being the only extrovert in the group was quick to take the leader role. Groupthink begins to take place as

Mercedes assigns task work to each individual in the group. As Mercedes immediately assigned tasks to her teammates, she has established herself as the unofficial leader, one that has not been unanimously and clearly agreed upon by the others; another factor of groupthink. The group is now in the storming stage of group development and because of their inefficient way of communicating in their forming stage they are run into a lot of complications.

As a result of their lack of communication ­ no one has spoken with one another and is confused in terms of what needs to be done. Isaac is a computer animator. Mercedes put him in charge of doing all the animation workload. Mercedes didn't realize that the work that work she gave Isaac was like taking a plane to the moon. Veronica is confused as to what’s going on as she hasn't asked or no one has clarified her exact job. Stevie task was to create backgrounds for the different scenes that the group had talked about in their previous meeting but he also is confused. Mercedes job was to work on coming up with characters, she is also struggling with this tasks as she realizes things are a bit unorganized. Little has been accomplished. Group tension are high. The characters realize that they are a dysfunctional group and that there was no way that anything would be accomplished since they’re unable to stick to their individual tasks that was assigned to them by Mercedes. As the group has now built enough trust to speak out and voice their opinions they start to mention how confused, unorganized and dysfunctional their group and ideas are, Mercedes couldn’t agree more. The group gets together again to use what Steve has taught them in class to actively brainstorm in an efficient manner. This is vital to their progress and group connection because it allows each group member to present an idea, have it talked about deliberately, and solve any problems that may arise. Using the eight step thinking process, the group forms a simple, new, and relatable idea. Only after this process can the group move on to the next step of norming; they will have communicated properly and when satisfied, they can adjourn their meeting. Their new idea consists of making a parody based off

of their learning experience working together as a team. Once they establish a clear idea, direction, goal, and individual focus their thinking becomes synchronic, their work becomes easier to complete, and their ideas easier to communicate and execute. Episode 5 is distinct from all the rest, it consists of the group working on a new task spontaneously given in class; a challenge. Their success with this challenge is based on their team effectiveness that can be achieved by following the team effectiveness model. This model consists of: context, composition, work design, and process. After they complete the challenge they realize that they have worked together for a month now, so they understand one another’s personality type and they have learned how to work and learn together, which is an example of norming. They show how their personalities have changed from the beginning until now; Mercedes has learned not to be so overbearing, Isaac has learned to voice his opinion, Stevie has learned to be less passive and more proactive, and Veronica has learned to support the team’s decisions instead of saying no. In this episode the characters deal with innovation. They go through this by incorporating each other’s creativity to help have the best idea they can possibly formulate. Each group member sits on their own idea, put their ideas together by talking about each of them, scrutinize each one, choose the best aspects, and mold them all together to make the most elaborate marshmallow tower that they can; this is called incubation. Although they did not build the best or highest tower, they did learn very important aspects through the process. Aspects in which they will definitely incorporate into their next meeting: Production.

This episode will be a montage of the team producing their project. Immediately, Mercedes leads the group into the production stage. Henry Mintzberg has pointed out before that in an experiment, people tend to more productive in certain conditions than others; Motivation is the key to being successful in their meeting and Mercedes knows she can demonstrate this by

allowing the group to listen to music that they enjoy while working. This allows the group to be comfortable and prepared to work. Mercedes makes sure to keep the team motivated, focused, organized, and also makes sure the right things are getting done; playing music, sticking to the work, and keeping a checklist. Even through any distractions, Mercedes keeps the group focused and they continue to work efficiently. The team is comfortable working with one another, and work together relatively smoothly without conflict. The performance stage of their group’s development plays its biggest role here. Mercedes has become a more effective leader, a modern manager that anticipates the needs and wellbeing of her coworkers and teammates in order to perform to the top of their abilities. The team finally reaches their goal in completing their production. Mercedes congratulates the team on their success to show the trust she put into them before and after achieving their goals; a reference to One Minute Manager­ is that a manager should compliment a coworker for something he or she has done right (and conversely, reprimand them if they do something wrong, and then consoling them by telling that it was not the person they think is bad, but the wrong action that is). In this episode, we show how the group can work like a flat structure; the group can be flexible as they are working through their project and how quickly they can adapt to change.

This is an episode of the presentation day, so team TEAM is finally presenting their project; They review the different business aspects of our project and what they learned, from what is a team, to how to work as a team, to Henry Mintzberg’s idea of the modern manager and One Minute Manager concepts. They specifically concentrate on appearance and how first impressions and continued good appearance in the business world is important. They show the finger puppet show. There’s a montage of how Steve, and how the other students react to the show. At the end, people are clapping. Steve is impressed with the work. Steve comments on

the projects. We ask him how we did. He replies, “Well, I think from what I can see here, you deserve...” and this is a wrap no one will ever know what we got! This episode is an overview of strategic management it shows all the planning that went into the project. It reviews the uncertainty at the beginning then it shows how they get together and evaluate the situation realizing that the problem was internal. From there they gathered and formulated a new idea that they all could agree on to ultimately implement it and create a unique, entertaining, educational and innovative puppet show.