AS BUSINESS BECOMES increasingly cross-cultural, business management is playing an instrumental role in this process. Contemporary managers talk about going global, internationalizing activities, relocating facilities abroad. This type of organizational restructuring means that more employees are required to work with counterparts in different countries. The result is the growing use of a combination of work teams and international internal alliances: global work teams.
The global work team is an emerging type of internal alliance. As the workforce is going global, such a team concept is quickly following suit. And with good reason: They can have a dramatic impact on an organization's bottom line because they capitalize on the expertise from a variety of people and offer companies a better understanding of the needs of international customers.
Yet, global internal alliances are not easy to implement. in fact, they are often as difficult to manage as cross-border partnerships between companies. A number of obstacles can impede their progress, which makes proper planning and management crucial to their success. in addition to the expected logistical problems, organizations now must learn to deal with and overcome differences in cultural behavior and expectations. These differences must be explored upfront and a plan for dealing with them must be developed. Otherwise, companies will be ill prepared to cope with the resulting cultural and business mistakes.
Among the 1,400 companies that have participated in my programs on alliances, a vast majority of the larger ones are now in cross-border, team-based alliance relationships. The most challenging, many executives agree, are those within their own organizations.
Larraine Segil is a partner and co-founder of The Lared Group, an alliance management consulting firm in Los Angeles. She is also the author of Intelligent Business Alliances: How to Manage Today's Most Important Strategic Tool (Times Books/Random House, 1996). For more information, visit her web site at larrainesegil.com.
According to Tony Barnes, director of human resources development at the Japan Center in England, global work teams are reaching the next stage: “I think corporations as we've known them have actually run their course and are beginning to break into autonomous business units. Global teams are one way of cross-pollinating—they move people who are successful in one branch of the organization to work with people in another country and another branch of the organization.” To foster the creation of a cohesive team, cultural issues need to take center stage. If not, their incompatibility can lead to the demise of an otherwise solid, strategic internal alliance.
Understand Cultural Differences. The first, and perhaps most critical, element in creating profitable international work teams is fostering an understanding of the various cultures. Team members must understand and appreciate the expectations and business practices of other peoples before they can join to create a unified team. They must acknowledge cultural incompatibilities and differences and must be willing to listen to others and learn about their ways in order to find acceptance and common ground. Strong alliances—whether internal or external—are not deals; they are relationships. They are built on certain levels of trust and understanding. Without creating this foundation, the alliance's chances for success are slim.
The concept I drive home to senior managers of global organizations is “transculturalization”—namely, adapting management processes to the differing beliefs of the countries and cultures with which they interact. This requires a proactive effort to adapt—not a reactive response. It also involves damage control for the fracturing of trust, which is difficult to achieve.
Organizations need to create opportunities for teams to talk about cultural differences and provide opportunities for team members to learn about them. Intel Corp., based in Santa Clara, Calif., uses a number of cross-cultural internal alliance teams. Sharon Richards, training program manager, points out that, “For the team to be effective, the members have to really identify and harness the different cultural strengths and what contributions each member can make to the team.”
Select the Right Team Leader and Team Members. To create effective teams, organizations must select team leaders who possess certain qualities. Leaders must be flexible, be willing to support the team. They must want to help team members work together, understand their cultural differences, and facilitate communication. They must also possess a global mindset that will prompt them to respond quickly, thoughtfully and creatively to challenges that arise.
Once the team leader is chosen, organizations must select the optimal cross-cultural team members. Minimizing the importance of this step will affect the team's performance. Sylvia Chevrier, a lecturer at the university of Quebec, conducted a study of three European teams of engineers working in the telecommunications industry. She found that joining a cross-cultural team is often a matter of choice. Most of the interviewed team members were interested in international careers. And, more than 50 percent had previous international experience.
However, not all members had chosen to get involved in an international work team. For instance, some members were selected only because they had appropriate skills and knowledge of the organization. This is not enough. Skills are important, but they are not everything. You can teach technical skills more easily than you can change a personality or develop a good communicator. Interpersonal and communication skills, flexibility, and the willingness to learn about other cultures are just as important as technical skills.
When participants agree to work on an international work team, they sign a sort of psychological contract implying that the benefits of learning from other cultures should outweigh the difficulties. Team members agree to tolerate differences and adjust to diversity. On international teams, it is not always possible to instill one way of doing things—participants need to accept the coexistence of different behaviors in ways of communicating and conducting business.
In Chevrier's study, the interviewed engineers noted several different approaches to conducting business that team members had to deal with. For example, German participants are extensively prepared for meetings and stick strictly to the agenda, while Latin participants are ready to improvise and feel free to start on unexpected topics. Latin people also easily speak their minds, while the Scandinavians feel they need to express themselves only if they have objections to make or if they disagree with a decision. One engineer was quick to point out, “In our country (Portugal), you get consensus when everybody agrees. Here consensus is reached when nobody speaks. It took time to adjust.” To be effective, the team members had to be comfortable working with these varying approaches to business. Employees who cannot be flexible should not be on the team.
Create a Shared, Common Goal. The formation of the internal alliance must be based upon a common, shared goal. When a team is composed of people from different functional backgrounds and across countries and cultures, the complexities of interaction become challenging to manage. Having a focused approach creates an overall umbrella under which the team will operate and is critical if it is going to move forward. Clear goals need to be set forth and reinforced throughout the life of the alliance. One of the important elements that I observed in my research into more than 235 companies through my activities at Cal-tech, as well as with many of the existing alliances on which The Lared Group advises, was that the definition of success differs greatly, depending on the cultural expectations.
A recent program I presented in Singapore involved multinational companies as well as local organizations. The cultural expectations were apparent in the discussion on creating value in alliances: Asian-country managers were more relationship-focused, Western (u.S. and European) managers focused more on revenues. These issues became particularly difficult when internal alliances were discussed between the local area executives and their U.S. or European headquarters counterparts.
“We have a major education problem on our hands. We cannot be driven by quarterly results in an environment where relationships and guanxi (networked contacts) are everything,” said the Asia managing director of a world leader in transportation services and technology. The company is installing cross-cultural education programs at the highest level of management in order to integrate the “relationship” message companywide.
Balance Commitment and Priority. The process of cross-cultural adjustment suggests the frailty of arrangements in cross-cultural teams. As the roles and responsibilities are delineated, team members must accept their assignments and understand their contributions to the ultimate goal—and each team member must place the same level of priority on achieving that goal. The balance of the interests of team members can be questioned at any time, and any imbalance puts a strain on working together to achieve a common goal. As a result, cross-cultural teams are often on the verge of disintegrating. If, for any reason, common stakeholders feel their interests are damaged, the whole team might be pulled down.
Enhance Communication. Enhanced communication—including face-to-face meetings—will keep the team focused on the goal at hand and will help maintain a high level of commitment. Personal meetings early in the creation of the team build trust from the outset and assure clarity of the team's vision and objectives. They also help make future meetings, conducted via teleconferencing, videoconferencing, e-mail, etc., run more smoothly.
It is important that the right people attend the meetings—involving both those who will implement and key players whose input is valued. During the meetings, be sure to get everyone involved in creating a plan for implementing and managing the internal alliance.
After assessing the similarities and differences of the team members, developing the plan helps bring all the pieces back together by highlighting how best to carry out the various tasks of the team. The plan should focus on staffing, resource allocation, monitoring of the project, expectations, and financial considerations. The underlying message of the plan should be the fostering of mutual problem-solving skills, encouraging the use of candid discussion, and negotiation of compromises among members to address the problems that are destined to arise. An implementation plan should address who will do what; how contributions will be made; what communications mechanisms will be in place for approvals; how the information will flow; what incentive programs are appropriate; and how the team will fit into the existing organization.
Distributing written minutes of the meetings immediately afterward will help ensure that all team members and key company personnel understand the tasks that were assigned and the agreements that were made. These initial meetings lay the groundwork for the global team's formation and direction. Addressing these issues upfront, and planning for trouble spots minimizes the frustrations when cultural differences and language barriers begin to surface.
I have found that communication issues become far more important over time. I recommend an approach called the “points of interface” methodology, which addresses a protocol and format for multiple opportunities for communication, but has a streamlining effect of refining information transfer so that information is only given, verbally and nonverbally, in culturally appropriate ways. Of course this requires planning and resource allocation to the process of the internal alliance, not just its substance.
GLOBAL INTERNAL ALLIANCES are here. International companies must embrace them and create strategies for implementing them effectively. By planning for and managing cultural differences, organizations can create effective global work teams that provide team members with the challenges and rewards they seek, and provide companies with the innovation and competitiveness they need.
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