International Teams: a Case Study

Then divide the group into at least two subgroups of no more than six participants (this will ensure that everyone has the opportunity to contribute). Ask the subgroups to discuss the scenario and how they would deal with it. Allow 20 minutes for this.

Review Activity (15 minutes)

Bring the participants back together to review the findings of each subgroup. Ask participants to share their suggestions and explain why they would take these actions.

Focus in particular on issues concerning:

• Building relationships
• Fostering trust
• Appropriate use of email
• Being sensitive to cultural differences
• Taking time differences into account
• Making the best use of teleconferences
• The style of written and verbal communication

Apply Learning (10 minutes)

Encourage the group to think about how this case study relates back to their teams. What did they learn from Andy that they can take back to the workplace and apply to their own job? Encourage participants to consider their own approach to leading virtual or international teams and whether it is appropriate.

Hang two flipcharts around the room, one entitled ‘things I will start doing or do differently’ and ‘things I will stop doing’. Distribute marker pens and ask each participant to contribute at least one action to each flipchart (putting their initials to identify their actions). End by reviewing these and encouraging participants to apply them back in the workplace.

Keep the flipcharts and circulate the action points by email a few days after the course to remind the participants of their good intentions.

International Teams: Task Sheet

Andy Kirk is a project manager in a UK-based company that manufactures beer and lager for sale worldwide. Before now, he had worked only on sales in the United Kingdom, doing much of his work face-to-face or on the telephone. However, he has recently taken on a project to launch a new product in various countries across the globe, including France, Germany, America and Australia. With seven years of project management experience, he looked forward to this new challenge and was confident that everything would run smoothly.

Unfortunately, however, the project is proving to be more difficult than he had anticipated. Deadlines are not being met, there is confusion over the work to be done, and motivation is low. Andy is having trouble placing his finger on why things are not going well.

The team is made up of marketing experts and project managers from all over the world, each well informed on the cultural and legal issues specific to each country.

Andy has never met or worked with any of them before, and he has found it strange getting used to working closely with people he can’t put a face to. The first time he even spoke to them was at a teleconference two weeks into the project.

He has now set up a teleconference at 15.00 GMT every second Thursday to update the whole project team on progress, although attendance is continually lower at each one. He does get down to business straight away, but it normally lasts around two hours, as he discusses each country in turn, reviewing progress in legal matters and other country-specific issues. The discussions tend to end up defaulting to the various native language, especially when getting down to the finer technical points.

Most of the work is done by email, and Andy receives a vast number of emails every day. Although he doesn’t manage to reply to them all immediately, most people get a brief response within a couple of days. He finds email a rather impersonal form of communication and prefers to keep to the point.

Andy is keen to keep the launch and branding consistent across the globe, especially as the UK approach was highly successful, but he is experiencing resistance to a lot of his ideas with some of the other project team members in various issues.

Task In your group, discuss the following two questions

1. What do you think are the reasons for the problems which Andy faces?
2. How could he get everyone to work better as a team?