MY SECTION IS ONLY ON STEP 9 “TRAINING & TECHNOLOGY” & STEP 10 “TEAM MANAGEMENT”)
For this project, you will work in a team where you will be creating a Narrated PowerPoint presentation on implementing virtual, multi-cultural, geographically distributed teams in your organization. You will prepare and conduct your presentation over the next 13 steps during which you will review data on types of teams, team roles, and team leadership. Before you get started, read the full description of the final deliverable and the Steps to Completion.
Begin your presentation by going to Step 1: Teammates and Organization.
When you submit your project, your work will be evaluated using the competencies listed below. You can use the list below to self-check your work before submission.
- 2.1: Identify and clearly explain the issue, question, or problem under critical consideration.
- 2.2: Locate and access sufficient information to investigate the issue or problem.
- 2.3: Evaluate the information in a logical and organized manner to determine its value and relevance to the problem.
- 2.4: Consider and analyze information in context to the issue or problem.
- 2.5: Develop well-reasoned ideas, conclusions or decisions, checking them against relevant criteria and benchmarks.
- 4.1: Lead and/or participate in a diverse group to accomplish projects and assignments.
- 4.2: Demonstrate the ability to plan and execute a project, articulating clear objectives and goals for the team.
- 4.3: Contribute to team projects, assignments, or organizational goals as an engaged member of a team.
- 4.4: Demonstrate diversity and inclusiveness in a team setting.
- 5.1: Develop constructive resolutions for ethical dilemmas based on application of ethical theories, principles and models.
- 5.4: Resolve workplace conflicts using the optimal approaches and techniques for the situation and involved parties.
- 8.2: Analyze an organization’s current technology capabilities and needs, identifying specific strengths and areas of weakness.
- 9.1: Design organizational structure, systems and processes that support the strategic goals of the organization.
- 11.1: Recommend strategic plan for the use of technology to meet the strategic goals of organization.
- 13.1: Identify and analyze new opportunities.
- 13.2: Create and implement new initiative or enterprise.
Step 1: Teammates and Organization
The first thing you need to do is introduce yourself. You’re all new to this team, so give everyone a little bit of background about yourself. Then review the following:
As a team, select an organization to work with.
To do this, first review your individual organizational analyses projects. Then, as a team, decide if one of your organizations might be a good choice for Project 4. If none of the team members’ organizations seem to be a good fit for this project, identify and agree on a possible alternative to submit to your professor for approval.
After you have a good idea of the scope of work, discuss with your instructor any limiting factors you may encounter as you work on this project.
Step 2: Team Agreement and Project Work Plan
The next step is to complete a team agreement template and project work plan (creating a project plan). These are especially important because you (a) are a new team and (b) will be geographically distributed yourselves.
Submit your project plan and work plan to your instructor for review and feedback.
Step 3: Team Types and Principles/Guidelines
The next step is to determine the type of team (types of teams) that would make the most sense, given the mission and goals of your organization. After picking the team type, create a set of general team principles or guidelines that should be useful for a virtual team. Provide rationales for both.
Step 4: Challenges, Solutions, Recommendations
Knowing that you just made recommendations about team types and objectives, it’s time to think through challenges and solutions to your recommendations. You and your teammates decide on the following course of action:
- Given your recommendations in Step 3, identify and analyze challenges that are likely to arise in coordinating the work of these geographically dispersed teams (in Paris, Tokyo, Honolulu, and on the East Coast of the United States).
- Analyze the available options for ensuring successful operations in light of these challenges.
- Determine whether utilizing a follow-the-sun model makes sense for the team’s tasks and objectives or whether there is an alternative way of managing the team’s project work that would be more appropriate.
- Based on your analysis, develop, propose, and defend a recommendation about how to organize and manage work flow to leverage the capacity of teams located in multiple time zones.
Step 5: Team Composition
It’s time to start looking at the teams themselves and thinking about how they should be composed.
Keep the following preferences in mind as you make recommendations about team composition:
- Recommend ideal team size, team composition, and team roles, based on your organization’s needs.
- Analyze options for handling team leadership.
- Identify the team leadership model best suited for your organization and provide a rationale for your explanation.
Step 6: Team Member Personality Assessments
After your team has decided on team composition, the next step is to learn how personality assessments coupled with follow-up training and development (including coaching and mentoring) can enable successful teams.
You and your team should do the following:
- A good place to start is to review the readings you did for Project 1 on personality characteristics (assessments) and discuss with your team how various combinations of personalities might affect team development or team dynamics.
- Identify some team assessments the team should take.
- Explain why and how these assessments will help team members:
- manage disagreements
- limit harmful conflict
- build swift trust
- prevent free ridership
- make timely decisions
- complete assigned work
- qualify as a high-performing team
Consider the possible things your client organization might do to limit challenges associated with likely personality and other differences among team members.
Step 7: Country Cultural Differences
The next challenge to tackle is cultural differences. With this merger, members of your virtual teams will be French, Japanese, and American, and you have to make some suggestions about how to navigate the cultural differences and preferences among members of these three nationalities. This resource on country cultural differences provides guidance about how to proceed with this important component of your team project.
After reading the resources on country cultural differences:
- Identify potential sources of concern about having company operations in different locations around the world.
- Make and defend recommendations about the optimal approach to prepare for culturally-derived orientations and preferences among team members.
Step 8: Group Decision-Making Processes
One thing you’ve come to realize since you started working on this project is the importance of having good mechanisms in place to make decisions as a group. Research and compile a list of specific resources for brainstorming and other decision-making processes.
Step 9: Training and Technology Needs
After reading up on how to make decisions as a group, your next step will be to identify training opportunities. To identify those opportunities, complete the following tasks:
- Identify optimal information and communication technology (ICT) (team communication/collaborations) to facilitate communication, collaboration, and decision-making.
- Identify necessary training for virtual teams and consider the pros and cons of the CEO’s preference to conduct the team training online rather than with a preliminary face-to-face meeting.
- Include a cost-benefit analysis that helps the CEO understand the pros and cons of her preference for virtual teams. Refer to the Michel and Oliverio (2007) article on cost-benefit analysis you read when working on Project 2.
Step 10: Team Management
Finally, after completing all the previous steps, you should have some recommendations for team management, one of the most important elements of any work team.
- Identify and analyze the options for managing these geographically dispersed multinational and multicultural virtual teams.
- Prepare recommendations that will help the CEO make the best decision about how to do this.
Step 11: Other Advantages and Challenges
You’re nearly done with this project, but after surveying your results, you and your teammates agree that you have to address one last issue: cost, though important, shouldn’t be the only determining factor in the decision to implement virtual teams.
- Identify other advantages and challenges the organization is likely to confront when making this strategic change to virtual, cross-site, global teams.
Step 12: Final Deliverable: Team Narrated PowerPoint presentation
Post your final team narrated PowerPoint presentation as response to a new thread you create titled “Final Team Project” in your team’s study group. Your professor will post general feedback in your study group and, for privacy reasons, post individual grades in the Assignment folder.
Before you submit your assignment, review the competencies below, which your instructor will use to evaluate your work. A good practice would be to use each competency as a self-check to confirm you have incorporated all of them in your work.
- 2.1: Identify and clearly explain the issue, question, or problem under critical consideration.
- 2.2: Locate and access sufficient information to investigate the issue or problem.
- 2.3: Evaluate the information in a logical and organized manner to determine its value and relevance to the problem.
- 2.4: Consider and analyze information in context to the issue or problem.
- 2.5: Develop well-reasoned ideas, conclusions or decisions, checking them against relevant criteria and benchmarks.
- 4.1: Lead and/or participate in a diverse group to accomplish projects and assignments.
- 4.2: Demonstrate the ability to plan and execute a project, articulating clear objectives and goals for the team.
- 4.3: Contribute to team projects, assignments, or organizational goals as an engaged member of a team.
- 4.4: Demonstrate diversity and inclusiveness in a team setting.
- 5.1: Develop constructive resolutions for ethical dilemmas based on application of ethical theories, principles and models.
- 5.4: Resolve workplace conflicts using the optimal approaches and techniques for the situation and involved parties.
- 8.2: Analyze an organization’s current technology capabilities and needs, identifying specific strengths and areas of weakness.
- 9.1: Design organizational structure, systems and processes that support the strategic goals of the organization.
- 11.1: Recommend strategic plan for the use of technology to meet the strategic goals of organization.
- 13.1: Identify and analyze new opportunities.
- 13.2: Create and implement new initiative or enterprise.
Step 13: Confidential Individual Team Assessment
Now that you’ve completed your PowerPoint presentation, your final step is to complete confidential assessments on each team member using this form. The purpose of this assessment, and the feedback you may receive from it, to help you and your teammates further develop the skills you’ll need to be effective contributors to team projects in the future.
Submit your team assessment to instructor.
