6.6 Learning review

Read through the case study and identify the issues and challenges that were not considered, but could have helped the team if they had been addressed. Note them down in your learning journal.

Let us get back to the case "Designing a new office chair" that we discussed in session 1. Do you remember this case with Maryam from Dubai, who worked with her team from eight different locations on four continents? The goal of the virtual team was to come up with the design and production of a new office chair. You might remember that the diversity of this team was high, due to different age and hierarchy levels as well as a high participant turnover.

Let us see what happened with this team. The task of this team was fairly transparent, i.e. they were to produce an office chair in the next 16 months that would sell well in all of the company´s relevant markets.  Despite this clarity of task, the teams within the different locations had very different priorities, which were never aligned. While the US team was fighting off a competitor that frequently sold their office furniture at a cheaper price, the Japanese location felt it was not innovative enough and expected to finish the new product within the next 8 months at the latest. The locations were unwilling to compromise much with regard to their individual goals.

This resulted in a lower level of cooperation. Since the Japanese location wanted to speed things up, they went ahead with many design steps, but did not translate them into English due to time pressure. The design was also tailor-made for the Japanese supplier market, which meant that the German or Chinese locations were not able to obtain the correct screws from their suppliers in order to build this chair. Japan was then somewhat frustrated when they did not receive the resources in terms of budget and manpower, as the headquarters in the US felt that other markets were more relevant for the company.

In the end, the project failed: The different markets designed a different chair that was not very innovative, and the quality was considered to be generally lower than that of the competition. Since every team worked for themselves, the chair could not be produced at high volume, which resulted in higher production costs. Most of the team members, as well as the management at head office were unsatisfied with the team's results.

Read through the case study and highlight the issues that were addressed, and are likely to have helped the team's development and performance.

A Dutch company that produces screws for industrial purposes wants to relocate the production of a certain type of screw from Bulgaria to Vietnam. The production start date was set for 12 months' time. There was already a factory in Vietnam, which was producing some other lines of screws. It would be necessary to add another line here.

The task was to have the factory in Vietnam up and running with the help of their Bulgarian co-workers. The beginning was somewhat challenging, as the Bulgarian workers had been producing their screws for more than 15 years. They were not only sceptical as to how the Vietnamese staff could be trained swiftly enough to take over from them, but were also concerned that there would be less work for them in the future.

Due to budget restrictions the collaboration was mainly virtual. The Dutch project managers had regular meetings with the Vietnamese and Bulgarian factory leaders to explain to them the potential for both locations. Whereas Vietnam would get an important new product line for the large market in Asia, Bulgaria would free up resources that they could use for a more modern line of screws to be delivered to European customers. After several sessions, it was possible to create more trust amongst the team members. Instead of mutual distrust, the co-workers from the two locations saw themselves as one team that was completing a crucial project for the future of the global company.

Communication was crucial. Cultural training workshops helped here, which among other things illustrated the differing communication styles: When the trainer introduced an email exercise, some Dutch co-workers were surprised to see that even their own colleagues from the Netherlands would sometimes rate their emails as offensive. The management always made sure that all documentation of all the meetings was written in English.

The new production line ended up starting with a delay of a few weeks, but the customers were happy to wait, benefitting from lower-priced consignments of screws due to the lower production costs.