Building Cross-Cultural Project Teams for High Performance Results

In this global economy whether it is strong or weak, projects have a cross-cultural element that we must all work to strengthen. There are so many factors and I will go into just a few here that should be considered when building a global and thus cross-cultural team.

Team integration should be seamless to kick off the project and move forward in step with the project plan and master schedule. The Project Manager should consider each stakeholder, member of the Project Management Office, as well as endusers. A few of the integration categories are:

• Credentials - Nation to nation, school systems have different accreditation bodies to ensure the quality of graduates. The Project Manager must be able to align the value of a university or trade school and its degrees


• Skills - Skillsets vary depending on demand in a market, and a Project Manager on a global project must know how and where to resource the appropriate skillsets needed based on the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and the Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS).


• Experience - The level of experience should be evaluated along with credentials and skills to determine a best fit on the project team. Years of experience should be assessed along with depth of experience.


• Merit - Project Managers should recognize the meaning and value of merit in recruitment, promotion, and success on a project may vary nation to nation, culture to culture to culture. Merit is sometimes like comparing apples to oranges, but a skilled, politically attuned Project Manager should be able to know the differences globally.


• Productivity - Master Schedule Plans developed in the "home office" of a corporation's PMO rarely reflect the local differences whether it be as simple as time zones or public holidays. A global, cross cultural Project Manager should know that he/she will not be taking off the 4th of July as an American when working overseas. By the same token, the global Project Manager should learn as quickly as possible that local offices of the project will observe differing working hours (maybe 10 instead of 8 hours), working days (Sundays for instance).


• Innovation - This area is often overlooked on projects. A degree of repeatability has been garnered over time by experienced Project Managers. However, change happens quickly on projects these days, and not just with technology. Innovation could either drive a project via new ideas or new ways of working, or be a reaction to the shortfalls of people, process or tools being experienced on a project. The Project Manager will have to which type of innovator he or she will be. I prefer to drive rather than to react.


• Creativity - A Project Manager who is adept globally, will be creative in completing the project on-time and on-budget. Creativity could be something as simple as using cultural themes to decorate and identify the conference rooms in the "home office", or to actually bring in language tutors to train long term staff in a local language or even business English. The Japanese have been very good about teaching their managers posted to Thailand the Thai language.


• Trust - For a Project Manager, or anyone really, trust takes a long time to build, and a New York minute to destroy. Credible, ethical Project Managers are an example to the global project team. Your words and actions are watched constantly, interpreted, misinterpreted, and reinterpreted. Building trust begins before the project kicks off, and in many cases may take an entire project lifecycle to fully achieve.

I always give high priority to these integration aspects of managing cross-cultural project teams for high performance results.

I am always interested in your comments to my blog posts. If you agree or disagree, lets start a dialogue so we all can upgrade our skills.

Have a great weekend!

Regards,

Rick