Greg,
One key element you should focus on is ‘disparity diversity’ (Edmondson & Roloff, 49). Differences in pay and vacation days between the U.S. and France, and the exclusion of India and the UAE teams from decision-making, have everyone feeling that they are not being valued as much as other team members. These feelings of inequality hurt group performance and systems of communication and cooperation. A second key element that you should focus on is ‘spontaneous communication’—casual, spur of the moment interactions between team members (Hinds & Mortenson, 293). The teams have had tense work-related interactions. Nick blames the India team for the HS Holdings situation. Interactions between India and the UAE are strained. Spontaneous communication would allow the teams opportunities to develop personal connections so they can approach conflicts with mutual understanding and respect.
A solution to the issue of disparity diversity is having teams rotate on different jobs monthly, and creating a shared file including all job documents, allowing teams equal opportunities. A solution that implements spontaneous communication, increasing face-to-face interactions between team members, is rotating site meetings. Four times a year, the team could convene at one of the regional sites in Santa Clara, France, the UAE, or India and rotate through visiting each place once a year. Doing so would increase opportunities for spontaneous communication between teams and contribute to the breakdown of barriers created by disparity diversity. Teams being able to visit each site will help build context around each location and their differing local cultures.
Focusing on disparity diversity was a good key idea, as well as bringing up the difference in income and vacation days between the countries. That is definitely a major issue that can cause people to feel inferior than the others and causes tension. The ideas of rotating jobs monthly as well as holding the meetings in the different sites once a year is very smart and has a lot of potential to help with their communication issues. I really like both of those ideas!
I really love how you focused on the pay disparity between the France and American team. That was a point I found very important but not many focused on. Really great essay!
I completely agree that one of the main issues through out Greg’s team is separation diversity, having a company spread out across different continents makes communication difficult due to time differences. It also created problems because he wasn’t visiting certain places, and had less communication with some countries. I agree that if they formed closer bonds, and spent time getting to know one another that some of their issues would dissolve. I think that them having regional meeting a couple times a year creates a sense of familiarity between all members and will create some respect and form bonds.
Hello,
This essay is a phenomenal recommendation to Greg James using the methods and theory we learned in class – I also especially love that this tears as an email. One question I had is that when you say that “teams rotate on different jobs monthly” do you mean the individual jobs within a team? Or the overall responsibilities of the team as a whole?
– Jackson