1. Why does the Varsity team lose to the JV team?

As we look into the case, we will see that the Varsity Team and the JV Team was chosen by
Coach P. by following a series of steps during the Atlanta Trip. He performed a variety of
permutations and combinations to find out about the individual strengths of each team
members and then assigned ranks to them as per his methodology and then he put the top 8
rowers in the Varsity Team and the last eight rowers in the JV Team. Now, as the sport of
rowing goes, individuals do not make any team to lose or win. It all depends upon the whole
team on how they coordinate or set their path for winning of the team. It is not about
individual strengths but coming collectively as a team and then winning the race. In this case,
the JV Team which has team members which were marked as losers by the coach as per his
methodology were coming together as a team without their own individual egos and working
towards winning the race as compared to the Varsity Team which had a number of members
who were considering themselves as winners and then were competing against each other as
to who is better or who is worst. This becomes quite evident from the fact with their tussle in
the emails which have been mentioned in the case and how they have been fighting against
each other and not coming towards each other to form a team and they were more organized
in a group and they shared almost no bond with each other to win. So, thats why the Varsity
Team lost to the JV Team as they were not working as a team as compared to the JV Team
which had weak individual members but they were working towards bringing the strength as a
team.

2. What should Coach P. have done earlier in the season to resolve this problem? At exactly what
point should he have intervened differently?

Coach P should have talked to the Team members of the Varsity before the outset of the
season. He should have met them and told them that despite being with great individual
strengths, they should work as a team. He should have talked to the members to give
respect to the other individuals in the team and should complement one another in the
team. As in the rowing team, individual performance means less as compared to the
complete performance combined as the team and thus, it would have been better. Also, it

would have been also the case here that the members of the Varsity team might be thinking
that they were superior than the members of the JV Team and thus there was this case of
superiority complex which had been breeding in the minds of the team members of the
varsity, which led to disastrous results in this case. He should have talked to the members to
shed all the various forms of egos which they had acquired during the Atlanta trip and then
concentrate on forming a close team without any onset of ego in between the team
members.

The coach almost immediately should have intervened at the time, when the Varsity Team
lost their Ist or 2nd Match. This is because it was the start of the season and he could have
talked to this people about why they are losing and analyzed the situation as a whole and
he might have sorted out the ego issues and other problems which were not allowing the
Varsity Team to come together. This should have removed a whole lot of issues at the very
beginning and helped the Varsity Team to perform better and win over the JV Team.

3. At the end of the case what action should Coach P. take on Tuesday? How should he implement his
action. Please be specific.

Coach P. should switch the Teams as JV Team despite being with weak stakeholders has
been working as a strong team as compared to the Varsity Team with stronger
stakeholders. This has been discussed earlier as to why the Varsity Team was losing against
the JV Team as the JV Team was working in harmony and they were acting more like a team
as compared to a group which was the varsity. Thus, the Coach should switch the team as
switching players from different teams is not a good ideas as the coach had already seen
this in his failed experiment. Also, even if the coach wants to motivate the varsity team to
take on other opponents, I think the Varsity Team has reached such a point that they are
not ready to be embraced in the form of a team and this would lead to even more failed
exercise for coach and it would lead to further embarrassment to the coach. He must
encourage the JV Team to perform even better and look for strengths within their weakness
and never let the bond of strength of unity which they had formed not to go apart.

4. How would you compare the Army Crew Team to other kinds of organizational teams? What are
the key similarities and differences? What lessons can we learn from the Army Crew Team?

The Army Crew Team is similar to other kinds of organizational teams in several respects. In
organizations too, take the example of a company in which if a particular department
falters, then other departments which are related to that department falter as well. Also, if
we look into the people in the departments, if there is an ego issue between different
stakeholders in the department, this leads to negative result for the department. It is more
or less leads to the kind of Dominos effect which leads all the organization to fail, if such
kind of practices becomes too rampant.

In the case of the Army Crew Team, since it was small and consisted only of 8 members, the
main distinction which might come to mind is of scale. But, crew team which was
performing as a team and not as a group was winning. In the same way, if there are ego
clashes between different departments of the company, it is definitely going to the hamper
the goals of an organization as such. Also, in the case of a company, some of the time, one
of the people falters, so another person does his work and thus helps him out of the
situation. In the case of the crew team, it is left to the crew member alone who was out of
sync with the other crew members to come in sync. Thus, it is the most important point of
distinction.

The lesson which we can learn from the crew teams in this case is that ego clashes have the
ability to mar the efficiency of the entire organization. In order to do better when we work
in teams is to put out the ego issues aside and then work as a team under harmony and
work towards the common goal. It reminds us of the family of ants who do massive projects
together and they work in complete harmony with each other. The best lesson which we
can take away from this case is that, one cannot be perfect alone in this world, where we
have to work with people. In order to perform better and excel, so that the entire performs
well is to keep our ego issues aside and work together and towards common goal.