Teams are becoming increasingly more global. Do you have any advice on how to manage the day-to-day of a increasingly global team?

Team & Organizational Design Talent Management & Performance

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CEO in Services (non-Government), 2 - 10 employees

Go back to the basics. Be very clear what their job descriptions are, how they contribute to the team larger team, and how they affect your larger strategy. That helps set up cohesive and well-oiled teams across the globe.

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Managing Partner, Partnerships & Strategy in Software, 1,001 - 5,000 employees

Thanks Manish. Part of the basics is hiring the right team members to begin with - this is of course easier said than done - but having people join the team for the right reasons and the right motivation is critical. Just my 2 cents.

Senior Director, IT Systems in Healthcare and Biotech, 10,001+ employees

Maintain a constant dialogue via phone, IM, email, and other collab technologies. Initially, I used video conferencing a few times a week. It’s important to keep all lines of communication open. This will help minimize miscommunication which can often lead to unclear expectations, missed deliverable's, and poor quality.

Chief Security Officer in Software, 10,001+ employees

Leverage different communication methods like voice, video, chat to make sure everyone is pointed in the right direction. Be conscious of time zones and cultural differences between countries. Don’t try to force everyone together at once. You will need to delegate and trust your folks.

IT Director in Software, 10,001+ employees

Focus on developing good communication skills in each regional leader. Be meticulous in what is to be delivered (OKR Framework?). As much as possible, find reasons / projects that would cause members of teams to work together across timezones e.g. working on a cutting edge tech so they have a reason to assimilate without you in the middle. ( within reason of course...this particular approach has brought more cultural awareness than trainings). Travel once a quarter or at least once a year to meet global leaders (management and tech). Once a quarter all hands/OKR reviews to publish what is going on across the larger organization.

Consulting Director for IT in Software, 11 - 50 employees

Having had the opportunity to manage project and project team members (from junior resources to executive counterparts) located across the globe on the Global Delivery Organization delivery model, I'd say (1) Open and seamless COMMUNICATION is topmost success factor for projects with this global set up. I admonished my global teams to be utterly RESPONSIVE on all comms and queries of the team especially of course from the client. Indeed, like Lee Vorthman mentioned above, there are a handful of communication tools enabling us for seamless comms i.e. IM, Video call, conf.call, email, ticketing systems, etc, (2) Carry out DUE DILIGENCE on our tasks relative to our respective role and responsibility on our work (i.e Owning responsibility and accountability on the respective tasks. - get everyone to be professionally responsible..(3) toolwise - make us of a good Project Management Collaboration tool (which are a handful out there), that keeps everyone visible of every task and everyone's progress (and challenges) on delivering the project/outcomes.

CEO in Services (non-Government), 2 - 10 employees

Someone mentioned culture in this chain of discussion. I could not agree more.

Communication starts flowing freely and teams come together much faster when we respect various cultures. When we use the “American Way” (or any other cultural way) of communication with everyone in the globe, then communication breaks down.

Managing a team in Asia was one thing for me. But when I lived in Asia for a few years I leant so much more on how to connect before communicate. Similarly in Europe and Americas.

The critical thing to global teams is connect before communicate. Connect comes from Culture.

3 1 Reply

CPO in Education, 11 - 50 employees

Couldn't agree more with this, respecting cultures even within the same country is key to a successful global organiz(s)ation. There are many processes you can follow to keep things on track whether its ITIL, SRUM etc. but without understand cultures the communication doesn't flow. One of the most important things in my experience is letting people have chance to speak and have an opinion. Being quiet is not sign of ignorance and at the opposite end of the scale talking over people can just be enthusiasm boiling over. In days gone by these things were much easier to note and deal with in face to face meetings but are magnified in remote sessions and often end in frustration. Know your audience and compensate where you can.

- in Software, Self-employed

Having managed two remote teams including a 100% distributed global team across 3 continents, I can give several pieces of advice.
1.) Implement a culture of accountability that is open, honest, fair, and doesn’t punish for mistakes but instead encourages learning to eliminate repeating those mistakes.
2.) Daily stand-ups or status updates from members in the same region and ideally having a lead, scrum master, program or product manager in the region that can track daily progress with the team. In some cases depending on the team it may not need to be daily but every other day.
3.) Global weekly meetings with the entire team with a pre-set agenda that walks through the activity and status of each project. Because the time zones can be so disparate, I would encourage either a time that isn’t super hard on everyone of if no time exists, create a monthly schedule that means that it is difficult on a group only maybe once per month.
4.) Try to get the entire team together quarterly or bi-annually. If this simply isn’t possible, at least ensure the regional teams gather quarterly and do an annual gathering. If none of this is possible due to budgets, then you will need to go and visit your teams as often as possible. This would mean at a minimum going annually depending on team sizes and work being done. If you can, you would go quarterly or even more frequently.
5.) Select the tools that the team likes best and don’t impose inferior tools on them (tools that are flakey/don’t work well, or are unreliable such as Skype). Make sure you have a good project/agile tool such as Jira. Make sure you have good communications tools such as Slack, Zoom, confluence, aha, etc.
6.) With engineering and product teams, ensure that you have an agreed upon set of processes for code. This includes coding style guidelines, use of code repos (like GitHub), Pull Requests, continuous integration and continuous delivery if possible. If you don’t have engineering and product teams, you still must ensure that all locations follow the same processes or things will fall apart.
7.) If possible you should be involved in as many hires as possible, even if it means using zoom to do remote face to face interviews with candidates. All teams should have similar or the same general process for interviewing candidates.

This would be a great start, there are even more things that can be done. This just isn’t the medium for me to write a book on doing this. ;-)

Director Of Information Technology in Software, 11 - 50 employees

Yes I have lots since I was the Global marketing sales coordinator for Hewlett Packard. I would need a little more information the question is very vague. But I have done this for many VC’s. Please provide a little more information ( call centers) (sales teams) (work life balance) or just remote workers. The amount of variables and size would be helpful.

Director, Information Technology and Services in Services (non-Government), 201 - 500 employees

There is and is not a simple answer to this question – I recommend a single shared platform for chat, scheduling, meetings, document look-up, and collaboration. There is Microsoft 365 and their Teams application. There is Slack. And there is G-Suite and their host of applications. I lean more towards Microsoft Teams but have not had enough experience to recommend it unequivocally.

General Manager America at HCL Technologies (Infrastructure Services Division) in Software, 5,001 - 10,000 employees

Organizations struggle to capture benefits from collaboration tools as they focus on technology usage rather than team work processes. To promote effective collaboration practices and global team productivity ;1) Periodically assess the key behaviors that drive virtual team effectiveness to continually improve team performance.2) Analyze the root causes of team performance gaps and strengths to select the most powerful and efficient solution.3) Organize team Collaboration platform around the key drivers of team productivity to reinforce effective collaboration behaviors. 4) Assist teams with establishing effective ways of communicating and collaborating to reach business objectives

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CTO in Software, 201 - 500 employees

Without a doubt - Technical Debt! It's a ball and chain that creates an ever increasing drag on any organization, stifles innovation, and prevents transformation.

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