The team meetings were held once or twice a week as planned and various issues were reviewed in each. One of the younger members proposed a new idea that moved well beyond all previous concepts and another member, with years of experience, proposed a concrete plan of how all the relevant organizations and civil groups might collaborate. Some members, on the other hand, were absent from several meetings with the excuse that they were too busy or were off on vacation. One member in particular, found fault with every opinion put forward but never made any contribution himself about how to solve the problem. Minutes were taken at each meeting and distributed to each member and relevant sections before the next.
After a couple of weeks, the discussion moved from general issues to more specific topics. Each member's contribution came more and more to reflect their own sections' interests. Other relevant sections not represented by the team expressed their points of view directly to Mr. Ishida.
The team finally had to conclude this discussion and draw up a draft plan. They had not, however, reached a satisfactory conclusion on several points. In regard to these points, the Planning Department decided to draft these themselves, keeping them consistent with other parts of the plan. Mr. Ishida submitted these to the team and asked for their approval He hoped to follow this up with a consensus at the meeting of Department Heads so that the draft plan could finally be submitted to the Mayor.
Things did not go so well as he had expected, however. Members of the team did not agree to certain parts of the plan. In addition to this, some members opposed that the plan be submitted to the meeting of Department Heads without the prior approval of each relevant section, as the project team did not have any authority to approve anything.
Mr. Ishida tried to persuade them otherwise by explaining that the Planning Department had the authority to coordinate opinion gathering among the different sections. The team members were section representatives so there was no need to consult each section further to this. Some members were still not persuaded stating that they did not have the authority to represent their section and had attended the team meetings simply as a spoke person for their sections' interests. They threatened that if the plan was not submitted to their section for consultation in advance, their section would not cooperate in its implementation.
In the end, after discussing the problem with the Head of the Planning Department, Mr. Ishida decided to consult each department about the plan. The comments made by each department were almost identical to the ones already made by their representatives at the meetings.
Mr. Ishida began to wonder about the significance of what the team had achieved so far.
(Discussion Point)
・For what reason was the project team not successful ? What could have been done to improve its chances of success ?
