Not really. . . just tougher

Who’s in charge? Leadership is crucial
“We don’t need a leader. . .we need leadership.”

Meetings are tough enough person to person with an occasional person being conferenced in.  You have side bars, multitasking and drifting from the agenda.  Now imagine that with every meeting being a phone call and having to set your alarm to be on the call because of different time zones. 

Not really . . . just tougher

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”—Henry Ford

Virtual Teams. . . Global Teams, whatever label we give them, they are a different beast in the species of teams.  Research shows that most are not run effectively and about 50% of these teams do not achieve their goals. Team efforts connecting members in developing and developed countries have a higher failure rate than those connecting its members in two or more developed countries. Some failing teams disband entirely, while others dysfunctionally operate despite themselves, the victims of rework and disorganization with the challenge of achieving goals amplified. 

Research and experience indicates that the major contributor to global team failure is the difficulty of building trusting, positive relationships across the boundaries of geography, time zones, and cultural differences. And as we all know e-mail and other electronic means of communication designed to bridge boundaries, can actually distance us even more.

Louise Kursmark, Monster.com Contributing Writer, wrote about this issue recently on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Center.  You can read the article in full here.  Selections from her article appear below.

So why does good talent leave?  Data from Kursmark’s survey supports three contributing factors:  Compensation, Management & Retention, and Communication.

For some companies an unhealthy economy serves as the driving force for getting good employees. Managers may threaten, “If you don’t want this job then we’ll get someone else.”  And maybe they will, but at what cost?  Is this threatening approach motivational for employees? Don’t we want to develop good talent?  Employee retention is still needed in a recession.