Learning Solutions for Increased Project Performance

Welcome to Our August Issue

This month, we’ll be looking at the topic of “working globally.” As we continue our evolution towards becoming a world community, project managers increasingly find themselves managing projects that are global in scope, with project teams working from a variety of international locations. This ever-increasing circumstance presents the dual challenge of managing a virtual team, as well as being able to lead proficiently on a multicultural level. That is why today’s project managers would do well to add “cultural competency” to their list of general management skills.

Included in this issue:

• Free Aug. 24 Webinar: Global Pharma/Biotech R&D – Challenges, Opportunities, Pathways
• Understanding Cultural Layers
• Project Management Q&A
• Building Individual Relationships with Your Diverse Team
• Communicating with Global Teams
• Using Technology to Manage Global and Virtual Teams
• What’s Your CQ?
• Reading Room: Working Globally
• Resource: Cultural Differences Article
• Keeping Up the Morale of Virtual Teams

Next Month’s Topic: Innovation and Creativity

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pmPractitioner is published as a service to the project management community. Each issue provides practical project management solutions and tips adapted from a variety of business publications and resources.

Free 8/24 Webinar: Global Pharma/Biotech R&D – Challenges, Opportunities, Pathways

We’ll be hosting a free webinar on August 24th entitled “Global Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology R&D – Challenges, Opportunities, Pathways.” The intermediate level webinar will take place from 1-2pm Eastern time and you can register here.

Summary

What factors contribute to increased R&D productivity?  What business model best reflects increasing scientific & technological complexity, the need for disease area specific knowledge und the immense level of scientific, technical, clinical and medical uncertainty?  How can we specifically organize R&D projects to be more productive, effective, and operationally efficient?

Join us on August 24th for a webinar that will:

• Provide an integrated, high level approach to understand the pharma/biotech R&D challenges in the broader context of the entire value chain spanning from drug discovery research, drug development and commercialization.
• Discuss current approaches and opportunities to increase productivity, effectiveness, and realize efficiencies in these highly differentiated areas will be presented.
• Help you understand the different overall objectives, key outcomes and potential measures relevant for drug discovery research, drug development and commercialization.

Thomas Schulze, PhD, PMP

Thomas is senior consultant for Action for Results Inc., as well as a Thousands Oaks, CA-based entrepreneur. He is an adjunct faculty member at California State University Channel Islands Extended University, teaching Entrepreneurial Management, life sciences creativity & innovation, and Global Project Management in Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Drug Research, Development and Commercialization.

REGISTER HERE

From Action for Results, Inc.

Understanding Cultural Layers

A global project team can made up of people with different functional, educational, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds. Moreover, as with any project, it will affect multiple stakeholders (suppliers, end users, executives, etc.) at varying levels in an organization, introducing a different cultural dimension. Getting diverse team members and stakeholders to collaborate and produce the desired results, especially under pressure and deadlines, takes not only good managerial and leadership skills, but a great deal of sensitivity to the cultural context inherent in most project environments.

Key cultural differences exist not only between and within countries, but also within organizations and teams. When the cultures are similar, we barely notice these differences. However, if the cultural spectrum we are working in widens, so does the complexity that we must manage in our project relationships.

Here are some examples where differences between countries can often be highlighted:

• Physical and perceived time
• Monetary and procurement policies
• Negotiating practices
• Language (incl. body language)
• Quality and education standards
• Risk thresholds
• Management styles
• Country infrastructure (government constraints, etc.)

Even inside a country’s own borders, differences can be found in:

• Religious and race groups
• Class/social structure
• Gender roles
• Local and regional laws

Having a basic understanding of individual team members’ cultural backgrounds will help leverage the best of the team’s overall capabilities in creatively and synergistically approaching opportunities, problems and tasks. It also aids in identifying potential sources of conflicts and provides insight when resolving interpersonal conflicts.

It can’t be expected that you know all about every culture represented by your team and stakeholders as you manage a global project. However, if faced with a difficult situation, it will help in almost every circumstance if you maintain awareness and always consider that underlying cultural assumptions (and values) could be guiding people’s behaviors.

From Action for Results, Inc., 2009

August Project Management Q&A

Test your project management knowledge with these questions or use them as an exercise to help prepare for your PMP certification exam.

1. Rework is:

2. You are in a meeting where the goal is to identify key ways to achieve project customer satisfaction. Which of the following suggestions (for an agenda item) adds the most value to the meeting’s goal?

Answers appear at the end of the newsletter.

Building Individual Relationships with Your Diverse Team

Leveraging a diverse project team requires effective integration of multiple perspectives, approaches, priorities and requirements into the whole without losing cohesiveness and focus on needed results. Essential to this process is a good relationship between the project manager and individual team members.

Trust
As a project leader, you must be competent at understanding where differences may occur within your team and be able to build trust with individuals based on their specific needs. This is always the first issue that must be confronted in building strong interpersonal relationships. Trust is built on understanding. You must take the time to understand the values and perspectives of other cultures and incorporate them into your thinking and decision making. Understanding breeds receptivity and awareness.

Feedback
One of the primary places where trust can be built up (or totally lost) is in the feedback process. Feedback is best understood in terms of the receiver. Culture and values play an important role in what is viewed as acceptable feedback. Some cultures, such as Asian and some Europeans, will prefer more explicit and non-verbal forms of feedback, while other Europeans and Americans tend to value verbal, direct feedback. Performance feedback can be misunderstood and contentious if delivered in a manner other than what is expected and accepted. Familiarize yourself with the different styles and preferences of those you work with, and provide culturally appropriate feedback. Involve third parties and other resources if you are not clear.

Development
While the content and purpose of development is relatively universal, learning styles and instruction are not. Both are strongly influenced by culture. Areas which must be considered in development include use of an agenda, level of formality, credentials, discussion vs. debate.

Adapted from Leading Across Culture and Difference, Action for Results, Inc., 2006

Communicating with Global Teams

It’s often the case that some members of a global project team are not communicating in their primary language. This makes it all the more important for everyone to choose their words carefully. Incorrect usage or mispronunciation can cause additional confusion in this type of environment.

To make things clearer for every team member, here are some tips on what to avoid:

• Bureaucratic Talk: Many people won’t know what you’re talking about and may even lose interest.
• Fad Words/Slang: Not only is slang closely tied to cultures and regions, it may also have subtle, derogatory meanings for some people.
• Acronyms: Don’t use an acronym unless you’ve stated its meaning or you’re absolutely sure everyone knows it.
• Vague Words: Avoid words such as several, various, recently and other vague terms. They lack definition, can weaken your message, and may have different meanings to different cultures.

Adapted from How to Be a Great Communicator, Nido R. Qubein. John Wiley and Sons, 1996

Using Technology to Manage Global and Virtual Teams

The level of sophistication with respect to technology will almost always differ by organization. Therefore, it’s vital to determine up-front what technology will be by used by the project team and ensure that it is accessible to all members. In addition, each individual must be adequately trained in the use of the technology. These are issues that must be addressed and resolved at the earliest stages of a project.

Groupware or electronic meeting systems serve best as a support tool for a virtual team and it may be well worth the effort to obtain resources to research and install standard meeting software for all team members. Voice and video-conferencing also work well, but it will take a bit more effort in facilitation to work complex problems with voice conferencing.

Generally speaking, technology can be used to support the following activities:

• Planning and strategy development
• Data collection and idea generation
• Simple and complex problem-solving
• Interpersonal and technical negotiations (e.g., requirements, specifications)

Technology should not be used to address serious interpersonal or performance issues unless there are absolutely no other options. Keep in mind, as well, that all teams benefit from occasional face-to-face interaction, especially in the early stages. Be sure to build this into your plan.

From Action for Results, Inc., 2008

What’s Your CQ?

Cultural intelligence, the capability to deal effectively with people from different cultural backgrounds, is a multi-faceted competency consisting of cultural knowledge, the practice of mindfulness, and a repertoire of cross-cultural skills.

In order to get a sense of your current level of cultural intelligence, ask yourself how well the following statements describe you:

• I know the ways in which cultures around the world are different.
• I can give examples of these differences from my personal experience, reading, etc.
• I enjoy talking with people from different cultures.
• I have the ability to accurately understand the feelings of people from other cultures.
• I try to understand people from another culture by imagining how something looks from their perspective.
• I can change my behavior to suit different cultural situations and people.
• I accept delays without becoming upset.
• I am aware of the cultural knowledge I use when interacting with someone from another culture.
• I think a lot about the influence that culture has on my behavior and that of others who are culturally different.
• I am aware that I need to plan my course of action when in different cultural situations and with culturally different people.

The more these statements describe you, the higher your level of cultural intelligence is likely to be.

Adapted from Cultural Intelligence: Living and Working Globally, David C. Thomas and Kerr Inkson, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009

Reading Room: Working Globally

Cultural Intelligence: A Guide to Working with People from Other Cultures, Brooks Peterson, Intercultural Press, 2004

Culture Clash: Managing the Global High-Performance Team, Thomas D. Zweifel, Select Books, 2003

Doing Business Internationally, Second Edition: The Guide To Cross-Cultural Success, Danielle Walker and Thomas Walker, McGraw-Hill, 2002

Global Teams: How Top Multinationals Span Boundaries and Cultures with High-Speed Teamwork, Michael Marquardt, Davies-Black Publishing, 2001

Uniting the Virtual Workforce: Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise, Karen Sobel Lojeski and Richard R. Reilly, Wiley Publishing, 2008

Virtual Leadership: Secrets from the Round Table for the Multi-Site Manager, Jaclyn Kostner, Grand Central Publishing, 1996

Resource: Cultural Differences Article

Gregorio Billikopf of the University of California has written a free, downloadable entitled Party-Directed Mediation: Helping Others Resolve Differences. Appendix I features an interesting essay on cultural differences.  Here’s the link.

Resource from Gregorio Billikopf, University of California, Modesto, CA

Keeping Up the Morale of Virtual Teams

One of the most difficult aspects of managing virtual teams is keeping up morale. Project managers should maintain awareness of multiple factors that may contribute to low morale and work to combat them.

These include:

• Feelings of isolation that do not typically occur with teams located at a single location.
• An “us versus them” mentality when the team is separated but is still organized in small localized groups.
• The group that is physically located with management or the project leader often has a greater amount of influence on the project. This can be a source of frustration for the dispersed team members.
• Impatience and misunderstanding about delayed deliverables and issues because few personal relationships develop between dispersed team members.

To build and maintain team morale, the project manager should arrange regular conference calls or “web” meetings when all team members can attend. This can be quite challenging when team members are in radically different time zones. However, it is important that team members have the opportunity to talk and develop a personal sense of each other. These meetings also provide an opportunity for the project manager to identify team members who are not relating to one another. As a result, project managers can focus on reestablishing lines of communication that seem to be strained.

Adapted from Managing Virtual Project Teams, Bryan Rolf Trautsch, San Francisco State University, 2003

Answers to August Q&A

1. The correct answer is (d) “Action taken to bring a nonconforming item into compliance.”

Rework occurs when an item fails to meet requirements or specifications during inspection. Action (rework) then takes place to bring the defective or nonconforming item back into compliance.

[Control] PMBOK Guide, Fourth Edition, p. 195 & 213

2. The correct answer here is (c) “Understand, evaluate, define, and manage customer expectations.”

Defining up front what the customer needs will set the targets properly for customer satisfaction at the conclusion of the product. This is discussed in PMBOK not only in terms of project management, but also in quality management.

Answer B (Create technologically innovative features in the product) is incorrect. Although technologically innovative features may be very interesting, these features have to match what customers require to achieve customer satisfaction.

[Planning], PMBOK Guide, Fourth Edition, p. 190