Successful Team

In the past summer, I worked with a team of six individuals for my marketing internship with Red Bull. The 5 other interns and I were a team that was lead by a district manager, covering most of the northern suburbs. The distribution company I worked for is in charge of distributing Red Bull to all stores, markets, etc. to all of the suburbs on the North Shore of Chicago. Our boss would contact us every morning with the project for the day and we would communicate with each other who would get what part of the project done. The district manager that acted as my boss (the only higher up employee that I communicated with) is in complete charge of all distribution in his district and does not take orders from others, just reports results. At the beginning of the summer, our boss asserted a very structured, excellence-oriented plan to achieve our goal for the summer.

Many of the methods that he used resembled many of the features that a high functioning team holds very similar to Katzenbach and Smith’s. Having a simple hierarchy structure that was lead by the most experienced, knowledgeable employee of the company was our key to success. I would say that my team was highly successful because of the structure and goals that were established at the beginning of my team’s work term. My team understood our boss’s expectations and his leadership and communication abilities allowed for everything to go smoothly. Whenever there were issues our boss would reach out to us and we would go to the area to take care of the problem. I do believe that one of the greatest reasons for success is because the company I worked for was more worried about quality than timeliness. My company was not interested in just fixing problems but they want to make sure everything is done right. Red Bull is a company that prides itself on its clean image and consistency, and my team made sure that we held that standard. Companies that are more worried about fixing problems fast often have less success in the long run. Our goal was to keep all costumers happy and do our best to maintain any issues that stores had with their Red Bull coolers and displays. Our boss never gave us deadlines, all that he asked was that we get as much done within the work day as possible while making sure that the quality of our work meets the quality of the Red Bull brand and Power Distributing, the company in charge of distribution for Red Bull in the states of Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana.

One thing I want to emphasize is the importance of having a higher figure to direct the team in the right direction. Our district manager did an incredible job of staying on top of his tasks as well as letting us know what we need to get down in order for everything to run smoothly. When you look at different parts of a high performing team, you have to make sure all is working well in order for things to go the way that you want them to. One weak member in a group can cause the entire project to crash since everybody is not in sync. Our group was grateful to have a manager that not only cared about the betterment of the company, but also making sure each part of our team was doing their job the right way to ensure that the distribution of our product ran smoothly and we did our jobs to the best of our abilities.