Looking Ahead: Cultural Communication Issues and Effective e-Leadership

Tlie impact of multiple cultures on communications in the virtual team is significant enough to merit a separate chapter of this book—Chapter 4. As the 21st century unfolds, global growth continues to present challenges. Organizations will begin to see major imbalances in the skills and labor market and will look to global workers and global leadership to maintain a competitive advantage. Tlie workforce of the future needs and wants to be mobile [46]. Years ago John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, summarized the importance of understanding culture in communications for global leaders: “Globally linked virtual teams will transform every government and company in the world. Any of our peers who don’t do it won’t survive” [47].

Case Studies

CASE STUDY 3.1: Jorge Makes the Switch to a Virtual Communication Plan

OVERVIEW

Jorge is a project manager for a large electronics company. As a project manager for traditional, collocated projects, he relies heavily upon oral communication (face-to-face, team meetings), telephone, e-mail, and hard copies (paper) for reports, memos, and letters. Yesterday Jorge was given his first hybrid virtual project. Several of the team members are virtual and in different time zones. Only Jorge and two team members are collocated at the organization's headquarters. He immediately realizes that his tried-and-true project communication plan template will need to change.

DEBRIEF

Jorge begins to sketch out his thoughts regarding how he will communicate with his dispersed project team. Realizing the importance of a good communications plan, he drafts his ideas for the communication plan in a table format (Table 3.7) to share with the team.

He quickly realizes that his draft looks just like his tried- and-true traditional collocated project communications plans

Table 3.7 Jorge's Communications Plan Draft

Table 3.8 Jorge's Modified Columns to the Communications Plan

and modifies it by adding one more column to the table (Table 3.8)—to answer the where for each piece of his plan.

It is immediately evident that he is going to need the company to set up some kind of collaborative database for his project that all his team members and stakeholders can access. He sets up a meeting to talk with the IT department about what his needs will be for this database. He also decides to talk with them to determine the how of communicating with his new team. He presents them the following needs for communication technology [1]:

• 1. Voicemail and e-mail for updates and information sharing (low-interaction activities)
• 2. Electronic bulletin board, chat room, website, and video- and audio-conferencing for brainstorming, problem solving, and decision making (moderate-interaction activities)
• 3. Conferencing with audio/video and text/graphic, whiteboards with audio/video link, collaborative writing tools with audio/video links, and electronic meeting system (EMS) with audio/video and text and graphic support for collaborative work (high-interaction activities)

After the team's kickoff meeting, Jorge knows he will need to involve the team in putting together the final version of their communications plan. As he always does with his teams, he will be asking for their help in developing the communications plan. He will involve them in deciding what messages need to be conveyed and who needs to get them, the frequency of the communications, the level of detail needed, and the outcome of the communications. With this team, however, he decides the most important questions he will be asking are, "What is the best format for each audience and message?" and "What is the best medium for each audience and message?" Understanding that several virtual members of the team have been on virtual teams before, Jorge is ready to listen to their suggestions and allow emergent leaders to come forward with information and ideas for the plan.

CASE STUDY 3.2: Face-to-Face in Action

[As told to the author by "K," who worked for many years as a virtual human resources representative for a large US-based software organization (anonymous interview).]

OVERVIEW

In my organization, the consultants attended four mandatory days in the office every month to attend project meetings to set scope, budget, work breakdown structure (WBS), requirements, and all. Otherwise we were totally virtual. Once every quarter everyone came to an actual office, where we shared project info, milestones, business, profits, best practices, and all. During these meetings, our consultants arrived and left at different times to accommodate one-on-one meetings with leadership. But we all got together at least once during this time for the quarterly meeting. Sometimes leadership would fly to us, or we would fly there. They were really flexible and sensitive to virtual work—very interactively hands-off— they knew they had no control and sometimes got jealous because they were bound to the office! But they would pull all the consultants in regularly for on-ground meetings. They would bring everybody in and say, "What's been going on? What's been good or bad? What needs to change? What can't change?" I know in the military they call it a debrief, and maybe that's the same word you'd use here—that's just what we did.

DEBRIEF

K's organization, involved in IT work, called their employees consultants. The consultants were treated like entrepreneurs within the company and given ownership of projects. Each consultant was considered very experienced and had at a minimum seven years of experience in his or her specialization. A project manager was assigned by expertise and need, and all the consultants were trained in the company's project management methodology. Teams were given autonomy, and the virtual workers monitored themselves. The organization illustrates entrepreneurial and empowerment leadership styles and was very successful in managing software development projects virtually.

К says: "The consultants attended four mandatory days in the office every month." Monthly mandatory office days were required to help the consultants stay connected to the organization and provide support for project work. The organization had a strong mentoring program, and often the quarterly meeting time was used for mentoring, human resource updates, training, and relationship building. K's organization would use this time during the planning phase of a virtual project to hold project meetings to set scope, determine budget, develop the initial work breakdown structure, and determine project requirements.

Face-to-face meetings with all the organization's consultants were required quarterly. К says: "Once every quarter everyone came to an actual office, where we shared project info, milestones, business, profits, best practices, and all." During quarterly meetings leadership would gauge the progress of the projects, set the vision for the organization, and build trust and relationships. Leadership was able to enhance virtual communication and productivity using these quarterly meetings with the consultants, and also use the time to identify and resolve problems and set leadership expectations. К suggests that the leadership used this time to listen and learn: "They would bring everybody in and say, 'What's been going on? What's been good or bad? What needs to change? What can't change?'"

In this case study, we also see leadership using the quarterly meeting time as a "revolving door" for one-on-one meetings with the consultants. By staggering the times when the consultants arrived and departed from the quarterly meeting location, the leadership was able to provide personal contact time with each consultant.