Page 331 - Global Project Management Handbook

16-18 MANAGEMENT OF GLOBAL PROGRAMS AND PROJECTS

success is all about good people. Similarly, we believe that the people are the crux in
VGS projects, especially three tactical factors related to these employees. True leadership
(the first factor) on VGS teams dictates the communication (the second factor), whereas
the first two factors enable a drive toward trust building (the third factor).

CSF11
CSF10
CSF12

CSF10: Provide True VGS Team Leadership. True team leaders forge the vision for
the team, evangelically communicate it, and inspire and motivate team members to fol-
low them. All this is typically associated with the face-to-face influence characteristic of
colocated teams. On such teams, project managers exploit every second of their team
time in every project activity to preach their leadership message continuously. Thus the
question is: Is it possible build true leadership in VGS teams? Says a project manager of
a project including Oregon, Massachusetts, Germany, and Italy:

Leadership for a VGS team is possible, but it takes a special effort of many members.
It was much easier before the traveling freeze, because we could take advantage of face-
to-face meetings. Our VGS team had an assigned project leader—myself—but leadership
roles can be expressed by anyone within the team and in fact may need to be in order to
carry the team forward. Leadership roles included motivation, information or opinion
seeking, mediation, facilitating communication, removing barriers, lubricating interfaces,
and making each conflict functional so it could be used to improve the quality of our
decisions. All these aspects are important for building team spirit. Now, after the freeze,
only I am allowed to travel. And frankly, I am on the road all the time, trying to con-
stantly link all team pieces and do all the roles. Yes, I think I am doing a good job, but
it’s too difficult, and sometimes it doesn’t work. Why? Simply because sometimes I
don’t get to see some team members face to face for months, and other team members
don’t get to do their portion of leadership.

Obviously, true leadership in successful VGS teams is possible with true leaders and
face-to-face meetings.

CSF11: Use All Communication Channels at All Times. Remember, these are VGS pro-
jects fraught with communication barriers stemming from the geographic, temporal,
cultural, and organizational separations (Zigurs, 2003). Therefore, management of
communication is the foremost enabler of the successful execution of the rest of the
VGS project management activities. With effective tools (see that strategic factor) and
consciously designed effort, including simple and more complex issues, some project
managers are able to alleviate the effects of all these separations, even linguistic separa-
tion. A very simple example from an executive who sponsored a VGS between Oregon
and Russia will demonstrate: “We tend to emphasize a lot of written communication. So,
there is lots of room for misunderstandings, and there is room for language issues to come
up, and we emphasize creating some opportunities for face-to-face discussions.” When it
is not possible to provide opportunities for VGS team members to meet face to face, one
company uses a “diplomat,” who can speak the technical and business languages and who
is bicultural, to travel between sites or it has on-site contact persons who regularly have
face-to-face meetings. Furthermore, even clear milestones may provide simple synchro-
nization points for all sites, according to an experienced VGS project manager.