How to improve mutual accountability with teams.
People Are Irrational, But Teams Don't Have to Be - Francesca Gino - HBS Faculty - Harvard Business Review
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
How can global teams improve their effectiveness to deliver the results organisations need?
One of the greatest challenges in
moving to a new country, culture and workplace is the ability to identify,
understand and work with diversity and differences. After running my own learning
and development consultancy in Australia for the past 20 years, I recently relocated
to the Middle East, with the intention of continuing my work in the Leadership
and Team Effectiveness arena.
What
I hadn’t anticipated fully, were the differences in each global organisations
level of corporate maturity, as well the extreme diversity that exists in the high tech
workplace.
In Israel, where I live, there are over
70 different nationalities trying to live, work and co-exist together. If we
add the strong cultural tendency towards being a touch arrogant, very curious, seriously
argumentative and amazingly entrepreneurial, it’s a wonder that anything gets
done at all!
Being a very new and naive player to
the Israeli consulting market, I quickly noticed there are lots of English
speaking consultants working in ‘cross cultural’ training programs. As I was a
small and new fish, in a tiny chaotic new sea, I quickly decided that I did not
want to work in this space. I also knew intuitively
that teaching an American Manager how to speak and collaborate with an Israeli Manager
probably wasn’t possible to teach successfully anyway!
What I did realise was that there was a definite and available niche enabling leaders and teams to collaborate effectively across cultural and geographic boundaries.
I focussed on adapting our proven and
well established Top Team Alignment Learning Journey, integrating it with the
wisdom of my cultural mentor, Ed Schein, and developed a whole new learning journey
designed to develop high performing
multi cultural teams in global companies.
The intent is to enable leaders, from different cultures and geographic
locations to come together, as working groups, or teams, to interact
effectively to solve problems, deliver projects and achieve organisational
outcomes. To enable people to collaborate & cohesive, within loose
structures, in ways that can be temporary and fluid, when they come together.
My first
Top Team Consulting Project aimed at shifting a global HR team from an
essentially dependent, avoidant and approval seeking set of collective behaviours,
driven by a very powerful team leader, towards a more confident, encouraging, courageous
and achieving set of team behaviours.
On the team of 11 managers, there were
people from Polish, Russian, Israeli Sabra, Moroccan, Yemenite and Canadian
backgrounds!
They call this unique set of ingredients, the “Israeli Salad Bowl!”
With no common understanding of each other’s
needs, values, beliefs, similarities and differences, and no agreed team
processes, it was no wonder that they demonstrated such passive defensive
behaviours!
So, in my very eclectic, yet effective mix of
Hebrew and English, I managed, after hurdling through my own serious set of
cultural challenges, to design and deliver a comprehensive global team development
journey.
This involved a customised program that was based on the following
four key steps:
|
We explored, understood & worked
with the differences between the corporate and the
peoples own unique & internal cultures.
We worked towards
creating a common understanding & empathy to bridge & respect
differences, so that people could
interact effectively.
|
|
We
assumed that every member of each culture had the right and proper way of
doing things, that there was no one “right or wrong” way.
We
then designed a series of facilitative group processes that engaged the team
in a mutual search for common ground that was inclusive and empathic to all.
|
|
We
designed customised experiential learning activities (games, role plays,
simulations) and processes that enabled the teams to learn from their own
efforts.
This enabled them to become a
team that confronted & explored the issues of
authority, intimacy & identity at a personal & visceral level in a
safe and supportive way.
They also explored differing cultural perceptions &
expectations about their managers
& each other’s roles & goals.
|
|
We
facilitated low key informal conversations to suspend reactions,
disagreement, objections that may have been triggered by actual face to face
conversations.
We
facilitated a set of agreed ground rules & incorporated
“check in” processes. We facilitated free-flowing conversations that helped
to create a new “container” & sense of “group” that now enabled them to
interact effectively together.
|
These
four steps were followed by a series of team skills development workshops,
review sessions and one on one coaching program for the team leader.
So what did we achieve?
The outcome was that the managers learnt
to appreciate each other’s unique contribution and value to the team, to listen,
speak and hear each other.
This formed the basis for creating a
more constructive, collaborative and inclusive work environment, where more people
felt more confident, became more encouraging and more courageous.
They worked together cohesively and effectively to solve problems, make decisions and delivered projects that impacted significantly on the organisational outcomes!
Microsoft launches in Israel
Today, Microsoft is launching the first startup accelerator* in the company’s history in an effort to encourage more entrepreneurs to build their cloud-based applications using Windows Azure. The program will take place at the Microsoft Israel Research and Development Center, and is a part of the Israel R&D Center’s outreach program Think Next as well as the Microsoft BizSpark program for startups.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/13/to-boost-windows-azure-microsoft-launches-companys-first-ever-startup-accelerator/
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/13/to-boost-windows-azure-microsoft-launches-companys-first-ever-startup-accelerator/
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
How to Educate More Creative Problem-Solvers - Mirian Graddick-Weir - Harvard Business Review
This article describes a new way of thinking that will enable us to solve new and existing problems in Innovative ways, watch this space, as this is what my new Israeli Start Up, ImagineNation will be teaching!
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Israel ranks highest in the world for venture capital investment percentage of GDP
Israel has the second largest number of NASDAQ listed high tech companies of any foreign country (after China). Read this article to find out why!
http://kw.wharton.upenn.edu/israel/2012/01/27/global-social-impact-from-the-innovation-nation/
http://kw.wharton.upenn.edu/israel/2012/01/27/global-social-impact-from-the-innovation-nation/
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Does Your Passion Match Your Aspiration? - Rosabeth Moss Kanter - Harvard Business Review
How many of us are willing to take courageous risks to be audacious?
How to make a region innovative!
This article explores and sets the context for establishing innovative eco-systems
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/12103?pg=0
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/12103?pg=0
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)