Whose time is it?

   Global projects.  Teams in five different time zones.  Team members traveling.  “We will meet again on the telcon at 5 on Tuesday.”

When?  Tuesday your time?  my time?

Some of us may have a calendar system that automatically can communicate and translate date/time.  Wonderful (and horrible in other ways that we won’t go into here).

Unfortunately, there are still many “opportunities” for confusion.  Ok, maybe it’s not the most critical concern, but many of us have lost time and money (and perhaps sanity) by dropping something critical due to a “late”  call, or a “missing” deliverable. (more…)

Mexican Project Management

I recently spent 4 days working in Mexico for the first time.  Eye-eye-eye!  What a place!  There wasn’t a Taco Bell in sight.  The tequila was more aromatic than the most savory brandy, and the seafood was as fresh as a daisy, served raw like the sushi in Japan, but with incredible spices and sauces that made the flavors bounce out of my mouth and do a samba dance on my tongue.  This was an eye-opening experience for me because I previously have only been a tourist in Mexico, soaking up the sun and indulging in a margarita or two.  Get ready, world, Mexico is becoming a center of technical excellence for software development! (more…)

Leadership for a Tiny Planet

When I worked at HP/Agilent back in the 1990’s we focused mostly on the US market and a bit on Europe. Now my friends who still work there are making frequent visits to India, China and Poland, markets that were too minuscule to warrant any significant R&D budget, and certainly not personal visits more than once in a blue moon. Domestic sales for many international companies now make up a minority of the revenue stream.

These days it’s very humbling to live in the US and watch the changes that are happening on the planet. I find myself musing about the fact that England was the richest and most powerful country in the world in 1900, and that China will soon be the country with the most English-speaking people on earth. (more…)

Leading Online - The Future of Virtual Leadership Development

Leading virtual teams requires a unique set of competencies to master in addition to the traditional project management tools/techniques. The book “Mastering Virtual Teams” by Duarte & Snyder provides a great set that I promote in my training seminars:

• Coaching & managing performance without traditional forms of feedback
• Selecting and appropriately using electric communication and collaborative technologies
• Leading in a cross-cultural environment
• Building and maintaining trust

The critical question is how do you build these skill sets? If you or your company is looking for an innovative strategy to develop virtual skills without the risk of a trial-by-fire approach, then I’m going to suggest you unplug from the “real world” and embark on a leadership adventure through multi-player online gaming. And here is why… (more…)

The Project Culture Cunundrum

The challenge of managing virtual projects is amplified by a complexity factor equal to the number of cultures represented on your team. When you start doing the computations based on the different cultures related to nationality, company, functional discipline, age and caste you can quickly realize why you and your peers heads are spinning when planning and executing projects. Now try to factor in the subcultures that exist within each of these areas. Let’s take national culture for example. If you haven’t heard the news, India is not ONE culture. The variety is amazingly diverse just like the difference between California, the deep south and the Bronx here in the US.

The good news is that you don’t need to know anything about the diverse cultures represented on your team to manage virtual projects effectively! But you better learn fast about the specific individuals that you will be working with or scope, schedule and cost are irreverent goals that will never materialize. Cultural adaptation is the skill set for advancing project managers for the next iteration I’ll call Globalization 2.0 . (more…)

Transforming Virtual Teams

The accelerated pace of globalization has made the need for virtual teams essential. The list of benefits that corporate executives tout to stockholders and channel partners is accelerated time to market, customer intimacy, resource utilization, employee retention and cost efficiency, to name a few. The challenge lies at the feet of project managers around the world to deliver on these promises. My role is to help simplify the complex algorithms of culture, time zones, processes and technology to find the project team equation that fits your current situation.

Last week’s conference at Stanford on “Engaging Teams Across Distance, Time and Culture” has planted new seeds of insights and solidified long standing beliefs that we’ll explore, discuss and debate with you over the course of the week. (more…)