Management of a Global Team - Case Study Example

MEMO April 29, Greg James Management of a global team As a consultant for the Sun Microsystems Inc. (Sun), I seek to present my thoughts through this memo to Greg James, the global manager of the Company on how well he has managed his global team, the individuals responsible for the HS Holding crisis, and the role the “Open Work” environment has played in this case. In addition, I will highlight on the role diversity plays on the team and the short and long goals that James should focus on achieving to make their business more successful. Management of the global team As the global manager of Sun, James has shown an exemplary character by being responsible and being quick to react to the problems that arise in the business. James commitment is seen as he travelled to various countries from Sun’s headquarters in California unexpectedly with a few hours’ notice to meet the 45 global team members dealing with customer implementation in France, United Arab Emirates (UAE), United States (US), and India. The fact that he followed up the core of the problem shows that he is responsible, flexible, and dependable hence portraying the character of an intelligent manager of a global team. You displayed an image of responsibility as a manager when you travelled to the countries where Sun operates to find out for the second time why they were not responding promptly to the customer system outage, as they were required by the agreements in their service contracts. James managed his global team well by ensuring constant communication between the other managers in other countries for instance; he had strings of emails that had been forwarded by service managers such Ashok Rahul from Mumbai team. This effort confirms that James is knowledgeable of all the events that take place in the firm in various countries hence ensuring success in the business. James is an organized leader as he ensured recruitment of individuals from at least all the countries where they had operations in Europe and Asia to serve the customers of Sun’s enterprise. The experience of James in the technical field enables him to manage the global teams and enables him to get a sixth sense and to trust himself when in challenging situations (Garton and Wegryn, 45-46). HS Holding crisis In my opinion, the individual who should be blamed for the HS Holding crisis is Praveen Devilal who is the Support Engineer for team in Mumbai. Praveen should be blamed because due to his irrational behavior he used the weekday contact protocols instead of using the weekend protocol forgetting that in California it was still a weekend. Nick Elliott the Application support Engineer for the Santa Clara Team states that the situation at HS Holding was placed in the wrong queue and hence they did not receive any pages concerning the system outage at HS Holding. Praveen should be blamed because he had on option to call the home number for Nick since it was an emergency and his mobile phone was off but he did not. Nick should have been the first to respond to the incidence since he is the primary contact for HS Holding considering that he had the experience of working with them in their system integration contractors to enable them to customize Sun’s software products for their systems of online bankin. Praveen avoided contacting Nick because he claimed that he had insulted him by calling the Indian team incompetent, hence he decided to handle the HS Holding problem with his colleagues in India. Praveen and the Indian team tried their best to solve the issue by attempting to access significant information about the firm but did not succeed since it was not on their support queue where the client requests for assistance are saved and HS Holding had disconnected their phone number. Role of the “Open Work” environment The role that “open work” environment played in the case is to provide the employees with combined tools, support processes, and technologies that enable them to do their work anytime and anywhere utilizing the technology available. The Open Work program was introduced after the diverse employees of Sun had to do work activities together across the multiple time zones within the countries they were operating. The employees advocated for better structures for balancing private and professional choices and flexible working schedules (Garton and Wegryn, 50-51). According to the case, the Open Work was implemented to reduce the costs involved in real estates and save many expenditures that could be used in the future. Garton and Wegryn stated that the Open Work program gives the employees an opportunity to enjoy the choices of having flexibility in their work arrangements (56). In the case study Open Work programs facilitates mobility with security whereby employees of Sun moved around the various work sites in other countries as they had consistent mobile accessibility to private computer sessions. Open work enabled employees to be able to access their work places daily in different places such as drop-in offices, Sun campus, or client sites. The role of the open work program was to give the employees the luxury of working from their homes although they had a right to use the workspaces at Sun when they needed an alternative. The Open Work program is important as it motivates employees and makes the productivity of the business to remain strong. Role of diversity Diversity was important to the Sun team as individuals were employed from India, US, France, and UAE to ensure good service to the customers in Europe and Asia. Garton and Wegryn observed that diversity increases the growth of the company as it gives the business a greater perception about the needs of its customers and the employees from the various ethnic and racial groups provide valuable insights concerning customer tactics to improve sales in their respective regions (60-62). Diversity in Sun enabled the employees to work in different countries comfortably since most of them were located their home countries where they conversant with the time zones and the cultural backgrounds of the customers. Diversity in Sun enterprises improved the workforce quality where the employees relied on each other for guidance and technical expertise during times of crises. Diversity proved to be challenging in Sun when other team members were complaining of various matters such as being given minimal attention and interrupted regularly, working longer hours, inequality in incomes, vacations, and other teams especially from the US favored than others. Recommendation James needs to implement short and long-term goals to ensure that Sun enterprises remains ahead of its competitors and the problems of their employees in the various countries are solved to ensure a productive and successful working relationship. The short-term goals for James should be to ensure that his team members are committed to their work by following up on their activities in their countries. He should solve the current issues in the US and travel to UAE, France, and India regularly to have face-to-face interactions with the team members hence eliminating the problems about some areas having minimal attention from James. James should conduct multiple meetings with all the members throughout the week to enhance communication processes across national and cultural boundaries hence reducing the chances of some teams in countries like India being called incompetent. James should focus on improving the image of the Sun enterprises in the long term by training their members on effective customer relationships to eliminate the chances of other members avoiding to pass information to the other experts in the business because of personal conflicts. To ensure effective global management of Sun enterprises, James needs to research on strategies to generate growth for the Company and competitive profits that are sustainable over long periods by striving to be the technology and market leader in offering superior solutions to network management, infrastructure, and other services. Thanks for your time. Works cited Garton, Colleen, and Wegryn Kevin. Managing Without Walls: Maximize Success with Virtual, Global, and Cross-Cultural Teams. Lewisville, TX: MC Press, 2006. Print. Read More