The Company evaluation of the team’s performances.

The 2006 edition of the Global Management Challenge has now ended for all teams which failed to qualify for the final, but despite this, some of the companies that supported participating teams, have taken the opportunity to bring the participants together for de-briefing sessions. Two such companies were Accenture and Portugal Telecom.  They, together with the participants of the teams they supported, analysed the strategies used by the teams during the Challenge, in an attempt to jointly evaluate the positive and negative aspects of their decisions, those which were successful and others with varying degrees of success and failure. Attention was then focused on identifying where they might have improved their analysis of a situation or overall strategy.

The 2006 Global Management Challenge champions were neither Accenture nor Portugal Telecom supported teams, and maybe because of that, both companies wanted to evaluate with the participants, each team’s performance during this test of strategy and management where the goals were well defined.

Accenture, rather than simply analysing the competition, used these meetings as a means of introducing the company to the student members of the teams that they supported.    Jose Galamba de Oliveira, President of Accenture, expressed his support for the opportunity provided by the Challenge thus: “This action is very important to us, especially within the Recruitment Department.  It gives us the opportunity of meeting and getting to know who we are supporting and demonstrating the high level of the support provided by Accenture.  With these meetings we can bring together, in the same room, the natural group of talented individuals that we, as a company, would want to recruit”.

During the formal session, a brief presentation of the activities of the Accenture organisation was presented.  This was aimed to de-mystify the work that a consultant does in the organisation, with an objective to capture the imagination of the many young participants and explain the aims of the Board.  This also gave the participants the opportunity to demonstrate the individual and team contributions made and explain how the learning process had strengthened their collective benefit, whilst registering their appreciation of being sponsored to participate in the Challenge.  The opportunity was then taken to invite interested participants to apply for work with Accenture knowing that they will continue to receive support in strengthening their management skills.

The objectives of the sponsors (supporters) had clearly different goals.  For instance, whilst Accenture was predominantly targeting the recruitment of new talents, Portugal Telecom directed its support to developing special board teams.  Luis Mora, Human Resource Director, explained “their company objectives were to use the Challenge as an opportunity to develop and extend the skills of their board members in the areas of team management, verify how a company is run and to manage attrition and conflicts.The early arrangements of these post-Challenge meetings are important in providing a ‘follow-up’ of the teams’ participation, in a similar way that, for us, the Global Management Challenge works as a Training Session.”

As with Accenture, Portugal Telecom reviewed the strategies adopted and exchanged expectations of future challenges, including advice to improve the Challenge.

In both of the two meetings, the team members exchanged their individual and collective views of the Challenge, generally in terms of strategy and management.  There was generally unanimity between the main points made at both of the Accenture and Portugal Telecom sessions.

- We can learn much about the economy, management and market observations.
- By active participation, we were able to learn that paradigms change and that all the factors count during company decision making.
- This competition provides the learning of management skills and encourages a wider vision in the domain of decision making.
- After participating in this challenge we gain a wider understanding of the variables that affect a company.
- It allows teams to evaluate decisions made in a competitive environment.
- It gives the opportunity to discuss ideas with colleagues from other work areas and with different views of the business.
- Encourages the development of skills in ‘working as a team’ and in time management.
- Strengthens team working.
- Intensifies the importance of communication between work teams.
- Improves the perception of the necessity of a day-by-day global vision.
- Shows the interdependence between areas in order to achieve final success.