Dear Greg James,
The first problem is the apparent separation diversity. With a team across 4 continents, different times, cultures and laws will create a divide between teams. Since you’re located in the same region as one team, others may feel neglected. This action team learning and prevents members from working together (Edmonson & Roloff, 2009). You need to focus on rebuilding a psychologically safe work environment, that allows members to freely express their thoughts and feelings so the team runs efficiently in emergency cases.
The second issue we noted was there were many task conflicts throughout the HS Holdings emergency. For example, the Indian team used the wrong protocol to signal the US and a handful of your team had a misunderstanding with the queue functions. Due to the apparent task conflict, your team’s performance on the emergency situation was very low (Hinds & Mortensen, 2005). The key element you need to focus on is allowing for more shared context within the group to increase group performance.
To apply the key elements of psychological safety and shared context, you’ll need to create a different relational model for your team and have a more communal form of information sharing. By having a general manager for each country acting as a liaison between you and each country, you reduce any bias and provide easier communication between teams. Additionally you should hold monthly team meetings to go over emergency protocols and update members on any new technologies to ensure shared context.
– Team 3
I thought it was really great that you guys highlighted major topics and seperated them into paragraphs to keep the reader engaged on what you were trying to communicate. Great notations on the issues and possible ways to fix them. 🙂
Hi Group 3! I really liked what you had to say about the issues with the separation diversity. I did not even think about how Greg being located with the Santa Clara team could contribute to the perceived imbalance. I think the idea of having general managers in each country would be good for communication, as well.
I love your idea of having monthly team meetings! I thought about doing the same thing, I think your explanations were clear and concise! Very great paper!
You make some great points about psychological safety and task conflict being at the center of the HS Holdings mismanagement. However, I think that there are already managers in each country that act as liaisons, and how would having general managers reduce perceived bias? Monthly meetings with all the teams seems like it would definitely help overall communication!
Hey Group 3,
I agree with you that one of Greg James’ biggest issues here is the lack of psychological safety and shared context between team members. These varying levels of discord are harming their ability to communicate efficiently with each other, which can lead to costly problems for the entire company. I like your idea that they should have a relational model for the team to reference as well as monthly meetings to catch each other up on necessary information or protocol.
Hi! I loved the idea about creating a leader in each branch. However, how will monthly meetings work? Due to time delays, people are already frustrated with team meetings, which is still unresolved. Great effort and good citation!
I really like your idea about the two key elements and the solution. Lacking psychological safety is definitely a big contributor to their problems. With the separate working location, a safe working environment would reduce the problems like that Mumbai team scared to report to US contactor directly happen. Also a shared content would let all teams on the same page and reduce the task conflicts.
I found it interesting that you added a “communial for of information sharing”. I think this is the most important idea to understand. also that if they wish to achieve the key elements they must created and learn how to better apply a relational model. Also the weekly meeting are an important aspect to maximizing constant communication.
I like how you all suggested having a more communal form of information sharing. I think this is especially important for a group to function well and to achieve a high synergy, as opposed to each member working independently. I also liked your suggestion about having a liaison acting as a mediator for communication between countries. I think this could be very helpful in facilitating shared context between teams. Great work!
My group also discussed the idea of increasing psychological safety and I appreciate how your ideas thought about it from a different approach than my group. I also like the idea of each location having a general manager to eliminate communication issues in the future.