NEWS

‘Flat world’ video conference brings international teamwork to life

London and Singapore, 13 March 2008

Sheppard Moscow hosted a video-conference on international team-work on 13 March, featuring consultants and clients in London and Singapore.
Delegates heard addresses from Miles Flint, until recently President of Sony Ericsson, and Philip Whiteley, co-author of the new book How to Manage in a Flat World. The event also afforded an opportunity for Steve Bridge, Mary Moore and other consultants to describe the Sheppard Moscow teams model, and for senior executives from a wide range of organisations such as the World Bank, Astra Zeneca, WL Gore, Merrill Lynch, News International, Nokia, the Capital Group and others to exchange ideas.
The London venue was the head office of Financial Times Prentice Hall, publisher of the book.

Key Features of Successful Teams
Miles Flint gave some fascinating insights into the key features of successfully running a cross-border joint venture – an enterprise that traditionally has a high failure rate.
He starkly illustrated the centrality of trust, communication and teamwork to the role of the modern CEO. The chief executive is ‘in the middle of an hour glass’, he said, with huge expectations from above, and a huge organisation below. It is never possible to know everything that goes on in the organisation. Communication is key, and so is trust. Again and again it comes back to that, he said: ‘Do I trust my management team and their ability to communicate with me and me with them and do I trust them to communicate with and trust each other?’

Role of Travel
He said that while new technologies open up new ways of communicating, some travel will always be necessary, for example for understanding local markets. While organisations may be structured globally, there can be huge local differences, preferences and laws that the sensitive organisation needs to be aware of.

How important is Culture?
Miles added that, while national culture can be significant, culture has many other dimensions, including cultures of personalities and of professional groups: ‘People would ask me “What is it like running a Swedish-Japanese company?” but often the real cultural issues were between professions, not nationalities: for example, between sales and marketing people wanting more features and engineers needing more time and space to develop them.’

Networks
Philip Whiteley introduced the event, describing how his interviews with executives from leading international organisations in the research for the book illustrated that complex networks of teams are largely replacing the conventional corporate department. The modern organisation is more like a brain with thousands of neural networks, than a structure with resources, he said.

Principles of Effective Teamwork
Steve Bridge emphasised the importance of the three over-arching principles of effective teamwork:

Clarity of purpose

Importance of relationships

Clarity of contracting

‘The practicalities can become problematic as you extend the geography, but the principles remain the same,’ Steve said. The importance of developing sufficient trust to deliver your purpose remains the same, but the challenge is greater as trust-building becomes harder when you are not meeting face-to-face.

Emerging Themes
More than an hour’s discussion followed, with conversation flowing freely over the video-screens. Some of the ideas and themes that emerged were:

Concern over the cost, time and carbon output of travel is putting a pressure on travel budgets. Many people need to learn effective ways of communicating virtually, and to make the most of face-to-face time. ‘It can be a good thing if travel is not on free vend,’ in the words of one contributor.

If meetings are few, they need to be used for what they are best at: trust-building and deep conversations; not Powerpoint. “Powerpoint is powerless and pointless.” There can be far more informal socialising at face-to-face events, and this helps build strong relationships of trust.

It is important to vary the levels of engagement for an international team, so that the mode of communication is well suited. It is not a question of either travel or virtual connection; but selecting the most suitable medium for the context.

A complete travel ban can be damaging for the team. When you're in a matrix managed operation without sufficient contact you become merely a ‘representative of your constituency’, in the words of one contributor, and the group can cease to exist as a team. Another delegate who works in a safety-critical industry made the point that trust is essential for high levels of safety – and meeting face-to-face is an essential part of building trust.

Generation Y are natural networkers, often gathering huge numbers of friends and contacts at a young age. They are unafraid to experiment, but some lack social skills in a face-to-face setting.

How can we be inspirational and creative as well as effective? We need to acknowledge diversity of individuals, and create reasonable levels of autonomy for creative ideas. Much of this comes down to climate: the freedom to experiment, and to make suggestions, without fear of being slapped down if they do not work out.

WL Gore has a high-empowerment, low-hierarchy philosophy and structure, with no formal ‘bosses’ and heavy emphasis upon teamwork. Discipline is maintained both through careful recruitment, and by holding each other to account. People set their own deadlines and commit to deliver.

Video-conferencing is on the verge of a step change in improved quality, affording much larger, clearer images and better synchronisation of sound and vision.

Questions of personal health and well-being are increasing in importance for many executives, particularly those who travel a great deal. This is important for business reasons as well as personal health: individuals need to have high levels of energy and powers of concentration. There is growing awareness of the role that rest, diet, time with family, and so on, play in this.

Cultural differences can be a source of frustration or even conflict within international teams; however, they can also be a source of interest and of conversation. Those who are sensitive to other ways of thinking and being are best suited to international working. Overcoming any tendency to think in terms of simplistic national stereotypes requires the disciplines of: checking your assumptions about others; being open about your own culture; being curious about others’ cultures.

Summary: Where Next for International Teams?
It is difficult to see anything other than a continually growing role for international teams in creating services and products, and sustaining organisations. Generation Y is perfectly comfortable with multi-media communications, and takes it for granted that a new friend or colleague may equally be in Rio, Delhi, Beijing, London or San Francisco. Even some small firms now have a global reach, especially in the hi-tech sector.
An approach of ‘command and control’ has always been insufficient for securing the best performance, but it could be relied upon in the conventional, single-site corporate department. In the 21st century, it is no longer fit for purpose. The Sheppard Moscow values of engagement, communication and attention to relationships has always been the superior route to high performance: increasingly, it will be the only one.

Delegates
Attending were executives from many leading employers, including Astra Zeneca, WL Gore, Merrill Lynch, News International, Nokia, the World Bank, PWC, Jaguar, Capital Group, Chubb and Merrill Lynch.

More information: Sheppard Moscow
If you would like to talk to someone at Sheppard Moscow about how we can help you to build and maintain effective teams, please contact:
London: Ally Salisbury on +44 (0)20 7929 9650
Edinburgh: Robert Davison on +44 (0)131 226 3399
Dublin: Orla Kelly on +353 (0)12 937 010
Singapore: Mary Moore on +65 - 6837 3832

More information: How to Manage in a Flat World
How to Manage in a Flat World, by Susan Bloch and Philip Whiteley, is published by FT-Prentice Hall, a Pearson Education imprint. It is available at major bookstores and www.amazon.co.uk price £17.99.

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