Virtual Edge

mmayer@spexperts.com

SECTION ONE

Implications of Globally Distributed Resources

Like it or not, the workplace has been changing, and today's business runs on global time. This means work occurs around the world, 24/7 and with resources from many cultures and with varied experiences. Managing these diverse resources means understanding the opportunities, challenges, communications, assumptions, cultural nuances, and expectations working with global or distributed people brings.

As the workplace has become more global, expertise and input from people who often come from various backgrounds, with unique experiences is required. This means that findings the right resources may no longer mean looking in the same building or state, but they may now be located anywhere in the world. Because of the Internet and private corporate networks, resources can come from anywhere and may never actually ever meet one another in person.

Quality leadership is more important than ever before as today's global leader must understand the responsibility, how to truly lead others, to build teamwork and motivation, and to deliver to expectations. Today's global project leader must use technology in ways that add to the team's experience and add value to the effort. Ensuring the right work is being done is also the leader's job and she must be able to stop work if it no longer is delivering value. This means she must be diplomatic, know how to negotiate, and be an extremely qualified facilitator and presenter.

Critical thinking is not an option but a requirement when leading global teams. Thinking about the situation, analyzing the alternatives and implications, developing strategies, and defending recommendations is critical to be respected and successful.

Communications seems like something that never is mastered. Technology continues to offer new and exciting ways to communicate yet, there still is a lack of quality communication. Relying on technology is not the answer and in a global environment communicating well is more important than ever. The following chapters discuss these areas and suggest what it means to lead global resources.

Managing these distributed resources from one place adds complexity to a leader's job. The next two chapters identify some of the opportunities and challenges global leaders face. The chapters are:

Chapter One—Today's Global Workplace

Chapter Two—Communications

CHAPTER ONE

Today's Global Workplace

Today's workplace is no longer defined by its brick and mortar walls, its boundaries are as far-reaching as the other side of the world. Time-zone differences no longer hamper productivity as resources often take advantage of the 24-hour day in delivering to expectations. Managing a global workforce is challenging, interesting, rewarding, and frightening at times. Knowing how to motivate resources from other cultures is something that must be learned in order for a global leader to be successful. What are the challenges that managing a global workforce or team presents? How does a global leader motivate a team that lives and works in a variety of countries? What are the nuances and complexities a global leader must understand in this 24-hour-a-day workplace?

Nuances and Complexities

Leading and managing distributed resources in today's workplace means understanding the nuances and complexities globalization has imposed. This means that resources may reside in many locations and, in order for work to be completed, a company may require using staff or contractors from around the world. An example may be a U.S.-based software development company that needs Flash programmers for a project and finds that using U.S.-based resources is too expensive. It finds a partner organization in India that specializes in Flash development and contracts work through this organization.

The nuances and complexities now become apparent, as the U.S.-based manager tries to explain the scope of work and the final deliverable to the contracted organization. Explaining what is expected means understanding the Indian cultural nuances.

Part of the nuances is understanding that the Indian manager may be trying to build a relationship with the U.S. manager and commits to the work—even though he does not really understand what he has committed to do. The U.S. manager assumes that because the Indian manager said yes, he explained the requirements clearly enough and will receive work based on his expectations.

Unfortunately, often the Indian developer concludes the work according to the local manager's understanding of the scope and requirements, they deliver the work and the U.S. manager receives something he or she did not expect. There is a miscommunication between what each party understands is the expectation for the deliverable, and there is a cultural nuance in communication and understanding. This nuance may be that the complexity of the work may not have been explained in a way that resonated with the Indian manager because the U.S. manager did not understand the Indian cultural subtleties. The U.S. manager may not have taken the time to build a relationship for mutual trust, to understand that yes does not always mean agreement and, therefore, miscommunication occurred.

One complexity that globalization has added to is the volume of e-mails that people receive and are expected to read daily. With global resources, e-mail messages are sent while people are sleeping so this may increase to the number of messages that normally come in everyday. Some people say that they receive over 150 e-mails daily and cannot possibly read and understand them all. When asked how they manage this, they say they read only the ones from people they directly work with and leave the others that seem informational only unread. Do the e-mails that come from global team members stay in the priority to be read? Why are people wasting their time sending e-mails that may never be read nor responded to? Why do the receivers not ask to be removed from the information-only distribution list? Are critical e-mails not being read and responded to in a timely manner? These are important questions that must be addressed when managing a global team.

Another complexity is the demand for real-time information has increased. How have companies accommodated this need when resources are scattered around the world? The demand for real-time information has also increased the need for performance measurement tools. Measuring the effects of the demand and response on business is increasingly important. In addition, technology innovation has increased the demand for new and better ways of communicating with one another. Figure 1 shows the rate of technology adaptation that is impacting global business and increasing organizational complexity.

Global teams mean that people come from different cultures and have unique experiences that companies often do not often stop to consider. These differences may be seen in cultural communications styles, and individual's frames of reference. One example of a cultural difference may be that many U.S. non-exempt employees spend approximately 50 hours or more per week working. Their day is not eight hours in length but more often it is a 10- or 12-hour day where working remotely from home is a part of the job. A non-exempt worker in England, Germany, or France may not work a minute over 8 hours and their mobile devices may be turned off when they leave the office. What issues can these work ethic differences have on a global team? How do global teams find out about one another's work practices and cultures when they are distributed around the world and may have never met one another?

With companies having a presence around the world, their operations have become truly global. In some cases, in order to support different time zones, companies employ evening or early-morning shift workers. An example of this is a support center in the Philippines managing U.S.-based calls that may be in a time zone that is 10-18 hours different. This work schedule differentiation has major implications for global teams with resources around the world. One implication is the need for enough real-time communications to ensure the teams have what they need when they need it. The need for real-time communications is complicated by the time-zone differences, and deciding on the best time for a conference call or online chat is not always easy. Reaching beyond each country's frame of reference means understanding inconveniences that could occur with distributed resources.

An implication of change is the effect on leadership and the ability to lead across cultures. In the U.S., it is not uncommon for an excellent engineer to be promoted to a leadership role without any guidance or training. This person may try very hard to be a good leader but is lacking the fundamental skills and knowledge surrounding quality leadership. The result is that untrained leaders often do not know how to engage others, and find that in order to accomplish things they do it themselves. With the new demand to lead globally, this same person who has difficulty leading in the U.S. now must interface and influence people in cultures that he or she has never been exposed to nor understands.

The opposite of this is a leader who knows what needs to be done and makes things happen. This leader can see reality, size up a situation, and make appropriate and needed decisions. Leaders are the change agents, the people who know what and when change should be done and support the change. They are tasked with motivating people and helping them to be more effective in their work. One of the most significant things leaders do is to model the way things are done. A leader shows good judgment by making quality decisions, inspiring others, challenging the way things have are done, and enabling others to act and be successful (Kouzes & Posner, 2003). Kotter (1999) suggests that leadership is about coping with change, especially in today's competitive and stressful economy. As Kotter (1999) said, More change always demands more leadership.

The lack of good leadership has both short- and long-term effects on global organizations. Short-term effects are that the quantity of work produced could be lower than anticipated, staff motivation may be low, and all parties are discouraged by the lack of good communication. Long-term effects may be that the organization loses its window of opportunity in its market because the team has no leader, it has no cohesion, and the expected projects are delayed or incomplete. Other indications of poor leadership are that customers do not receive the support they desire because the staff is not experienced or motivated to support an angry customer.

An example of this occurred a few years ago when Google, a global company, realized that, although they hire the best employees from the best schools, they had a void in leadership. As a result, they formed a Learning and Leadership Development (LLD) area to support and develop leadership talent. This meant developing a leadership program that fit the Google culture (Google LLD, 2008). These leaders were trained to know how to lead and make the decisions the Google way, a way that worked within this global, corporate culture.

Critical Thinking and Quality Decision-Making

Critical thinking is essential in today's global economy. It has become apparent that many people do not know how to think critically in order to make quality decisions. Companies cannot afford to make rash decisions without fully analyzing the facts, the situations, and thinking through the results of their decisions. Making the wrong decision on a global scale can be costly in terms of money spent and/or lost goodwill within countries, and employee morale, and respect for the company. Although there is a need for rapid decision-making, there is also a need for quality decisions that have positive outcomes. Companies that are global often offer their global project leaders the opportunity to learn about critical thinking and decision making so that they will be better at leading their teams. Universities are beginning to emphasize critical thinking in some of their programs in order to better prepare tomorrow's leaders for the challenges working with a global team presents. This is one of the first steps to enabling organizations to be ready for working globally.

Critical thinking means that people analyze a situation, weigh alternatives and make well researched and thought-out decisions of the issues. They validate data or speak to others to get a better view of the problem and the decision needed. Some basic ways of supporting critical thinking are:

Asking the right questions;

Asking clarifying questions;

Actively listening to one another;

Probing assumptions, reasons, evidence;

Probing implications and consequences;

Understanding multiple viewpoints;

Respecting and building on one other's ideas; and

Constructing one's own thinking.

One resource for understanding critical thinking is Bloom's taxonomy which addressed six levels of thinking (Bloom, 1956). An example of Bloom's critical thinking is shown in Figure 2. The model identifies the application of knowledge, remembering, comprehension, and understanding in thinking critically. In addition, information is analyzed as