Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc

Write-up on “Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A)”

Greg James, a Global Manager at SUN Microsystems faces an issue with his global team when there is a system outage for their customer. After the investigation he founds problems like Miscommunication, Interpersonal Conflicts, Time-zone conflict, Cultural barriers which are all part of Global Team Management issue.

For this issue my suggestion would be to build-up proper communication structure by organizing weekly, monthly meetings through webcasts and Face to Face meetings and conducting satisfaction surveys through forums.

Following are the points from readings that support the suggestion given above

• Bob Crandall of Eastman Kodak found that it was difficult to convey his vision to his employees through communication. So he conducted weekly meetings with his direct reports and monthly meetings with other employees through copy product forums1   and conducted a program called Dialog Letters1   to breakdown the barrier between leader and employees because of which quality of product lines increased.
• In order to know about his company’s performance and areas of improvement, James Rogers of Athena health, invited employees to raise concerns2 about the company through satisfaction surveys.
• Meetings through webcasts make colleagues to look one another3. According to Randy Pond, Cisco’s executive vice-president this type of interaction gives productive outcome.
• If there is any issue at customer site, it can be handled effectively by communicating constantly5 to understand changes and updates.

Works Cite:

Citation 1 John P Kotter What Leaders Really Do (HBR, Dec 2001, R0111F)

Citation 2 Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind Leadership is a Conversation (2009, HBR, R1206D)

Citation 3 Managing Teams for High Performance, (2007, HBP Product No 2304 9-15) How Will You Make Your Team a Team? (p.9)