In the past, managers and leaders often worked with teams who reported directly to them, sitting in the same office. But the world we work in, thanks to advances in technology, has changed. Does the following sound familiar? You have a young new team member who gets promoted to a managerial role during a reorganization. The new team she is responsible for leading includes the following:

• Two people (former peers) in the same office as she is
• Two people (whom she has never met face to face) working from home in different cities
• Three people (for whom English is a second language) working in foreign subsidiaries

Welcome to the dual world of virtual AND global!

Now it’s everybody!

Global work used to be the mandate of a few jet setters while leading virtual teams was the purview of a few executives with access to the videoconferencing room.

But then the world became more connected and more flat. Today everybody in the enterprise has to master the skills of working on teams that are both physically dispersed and culturally diverse.

So how did this come to pass?

It often goes unstated, but it’s worth asking: Why do we need to embrace virtual and global work?

The quick response is that it is critical in getting the work done in today’s business environment. Organizations need to take advantage of the global talent market, while the cost arbitrage means that relying only on local suppliers of products and services would make your enterprise uncompetitive. For decades now, companies have sought out efficiencies by organizing teams in matrix structures, which often means global functions are spread thinly around the globe.

While many employees report the frustrations and challenges of working both virtually and globally, few seem to figure out the best options for making this arrangement work in their favor.

A challenge left unmastered

And yet, despite decades of working behind computers, are we any better at managing our virtual relationships? Even though people of all levels in organizations are working globally, do they know how to do this well?

The first step in developing better skills is to be aware of the challenges in working virtually, globally, or both. Here is a quick summary of the top challenges:

The importance of being thoughtful

Today, in this new context, team members need to be savvy at avoiding the pitfalls that come with working virtually, but also have to be aware of difficulties in intercultural communication. This requires everyone to be more thoughtful in how they approach their work. When working virtually and globally, we need to pause and question our default ways of working.

For instance, the temptation to use email to fix everything is very strong and presents an appealing alternative to truly dealing with tangible communication barriers. Creativity is required to align people who are in different time zones, speak different languages, and yet need to accomplish a complex goal.

When it comes to working virtually and globally, here are some best practices to increase clarity and drive collaboration:

• Email is never going to be the answer to everything: Although it may be difficult to meet due to time zone differences, some questions and tasks are better achieved over a conference call than by emailing back and forth. Choose the right technology for the right task and learn to use them all, at the appropriate opportunity.
• Align on priorities: Do not allow valuable in-person or virtual meeting time to go wasted by not checking in that everyone knows what the next steps will look like and why those priorities might change.
• Learn what disagreement sounds like across cultures: Don’t expect everyone you are working with to express disagreement or hesitation in the same way. Check your assumptions.
• Pre-work for meetings can be a very useful tactic: Amazon famously makes meetings more effective by creating six-page “briefs” of the topics that need to be covered during the meeting, so everyone can read and understand the question in depth. This means that face-to-face time involves rich discussion and is not slowed down by clarifying questions or is held up by needing more information. If meeting time is scarce, make pre-work meaningful, concise, and mandatory.
• Avoid colloquialisms: These will not help you communicate with someone across a language barrier with a time zone delay. You might want to “table the discussion” and “put a pin in it” until you figure out “if that dog can hunt,” but saying it in that exact way will not “score you a home run” with a global team.

So, before you write that next email, schedule that next meeting (at 3:00 AM Tokyo time), or pick up the phone, remember to think carefully about how to bridge the gaps that exist and ask yourself if how you are working supports what you are working toward. The people who do best with working virtually and globally have a clear intentionality to their actions and their approach. This thoughtfulness in process, method, and collaboration is an absolute requirement to thriving in the modern age of work.

I’ve just returned from four days at Helitech 2015 – Europe’s largest exhibition for all things rotary. The GP Strategies’ EMEA Professional and Technical Solutions (PTS) team demonstrated virtual and augmented reality technologies. We showcased both our Technical Publications and Digital Learning Solutions capabilities. So what was the common thread linking these two disciplines? We have been able to bring the technical reference manual to life by incorporating interactive 3D models through augmented reality (AR) and providing real added value both as a training aid and as a maintenance asset.

Helitech 2015 demonstrated that the ability to overlay digital information onto a live video source is increasingly impacting a range of sectors. A significant number of show exhibitors were from the surveillance space. Attendees saw everything from gimballed camera turrets that can be mounted on any airborne platform and a micro UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle or drone) to search and rescue helicopters. Augmented reality allows the superimposition of real time data, either from on-board instruments or GPS mapping, providing the operator with enhanced information.

Outside of the aerospace sector, augmented reality is becoming an increasingly important technology associated with the proliferation of video sources, from the smartphone to wearable technology. Increasingly, video recording devices are being incorporated into the workplace – as part of the police uniform, on borescope inspection appliances, or as part of the surgeon’s head wear. I’m convinced that with this growing access to video imagery in the workplace, opportunities to enhance learning experiences, provide mentor support and assess on-the-job performance are significantly improved.

Where it is impractical to gain access to the live environment for cost or safety reasons, the ability to create virtual worlds provides an effective supplement to on-the-job training. Increasingly, manufacturers are able to source 3D/CAD models of their product ranges. These provide the learning designer with a rich asset around which to build simulations, interactive tasks and even games. When these virtual environments are combined with the physical control devices operators routinely use, learning outcomes increase significantly.

We all recognise the importance of bridging the gap between classroom training and workplace learning. These emerging immersive technologies are now reaching a maturity that enables them to be considered a realistic and cost effective addition to learning organisations’ toolsets.

“Well, Mrs. Claus, that just about wraps up another year, and it was a good year, too, don’t you think?” Santa sighed as he settled into his favorite recliner. They sipped their mugs of hot cocoa as they relaxed in front of the roaring fire on the open hearth of their North Pole home.

This was Santa’s favorite time of the season—well, next to spreading holiday cheer, of course—sitting back and reflecting on how the season went and starting the planning process for next year. Santa’s operation had sure grown over the years. Every year it seemed to take more and more planning to pull it off with the excellence the kids had come to expect. Santa always did his best thinking in front of a roaring fire with a hot drink in his hand.

“Yes,” Mrs. Claus chimed in, “it really was a good season. Some of those improvement initiatives we started last year really made a big difference.”

“What do you think made the biggest difference?” Santa asked.

Mrs. Claus replied, “Well, for me, that new LMS was key. Keeping track of all that data in spreadsheets and tables was killing me!”

Santa smiled. He knew that Mrs. Claus was the unsung hero of the North Pole’s operation. Without her keeping everything working smoothly, everything would grind to a halt.

“I agree,” Santa said. “That freed you up to focus more on the production side of things, which really helped.”

Mrs. Claus added, “Speaking of production, I also think that Role Excellence Profile (REP) we commissioned for the manufacturing elves really made a huge difference. I’d like to expand that to the distribution side. I think we should target at least a 10% improvement in throughput next season.”

Santa chuckled, “Agreed, but only 10%? We might need even more since our sales distribution channels are doing so much more. The recent focus on sales enablement really paid off.”

“Yes—almost too well! Omnichannel. Who knew that would make so much difference!” Mrs. Claus laughed along with Santa. She stared into the flames and sipped her cocoa. “So what are you thinking about for next year’s priorities? How bold do you want to go?”

“What did you have in mind?” Santa asked.

She replied, “You know, making sure we get the most efficient and effective ECM [Elven Capital Management] effort is really starting to become a significant strain. I wonder if there’s an organization with truly global scale and experience to take over the whole operation?”

Santa shook his head and looked at Mrs. Claus. “Great minds think alike. I was thinking of a BPO partner as well. We could put the REP work and the focus on outcomes together with the new focus on leadership and coaching. We would have to find a really great partner to work with. One who understands the operation and is willing to roll up their sleeves and work alongside us.”

Mrs. Claus nodded. “Of course, they’d also have to have some serious cold weather experience. Don’t you know someone at Alyeska? Maybe you could ask who they work with?”

“Great idea, I’ll call them first thing next week.”

They sat looking into the fire. Mrs. Claus got up and refilled their mugs. While she was out of earshot, Santa mused aloud, “She’ll think I’m crazy, but I wonder if that experiment FedEx and UPS are running with making only right turns would work with a sleigh? It might save some wear and tear on the reindeer. I could add it to the list of factors for the new sleigh routing software we’re considering…”

Wishing everyone a successful year ahead!

Spring is here and the opportunity to refresh, renew, and regenerate is irresistible. Yes, it is time to dig out those tried and true programs and begin to think about them differently. The advances in the ways we design and deliver learning enable us to begin to think about redesigning learning for today’s time-squeezed, media-driven, geographically dispersed, globally influenced audience.

Where to begin? Get a few tips for getting started here.

Click here to read the full issue of Performance Matters.

As a global performance improvement company, we have the honor and privilege of partnering with leading organizations to help them accomplish their missions. We are passionate about helping our customers solve their business challenges to produce measurable results.  The following video demonstrates our passion by showcasing examples of what drives us as a company.

As the video states, at GP Strategies: We’re at our best, when helping our clients achieve their best. Together, we’re making a meaningful impact on the world.

Here are links that illustrate how GP Strategies can help you and your organization reach its highest potential:

• Create leaders that drive performance
• Sell more
• Deliver efficient and sustainable energy
• Ensure safe products
• Develop effective practices…and work environments
• Prepare communities and organizations to mitigate risks
• Achieve results in complex regulatory arenas

At a time when we fight fires and react to change, it can be hard to reach out, to reach beyond, and to dream of places afar. We can get caught in the reactionary now instead of the dreams of a better place. We need dreams. We need to be inspired and to strive to inspire others. We need to see the beauty in the world around us so that we can create and innovate in our immediate lives.

A little dreamy? Well, give me that once in a while. If people hadn’t dared to dream, we would never have left the planets behind and struck out on a grand adventure that will live beyond our years. We may not see the end, but we’ve witnessed the start.

What has inspired you to reach beyond the day-to-day routine and make a bigger impact through the work that you do?

Originally published on Julian Stodd’s Learning Blog

Joe Nasal, Senior Vice President of GP Strategies’ Energy Services Division, discusses how Performance and Condition Monitoring Technologies have changed over the years and where we are headed.

The ever-evolving business model is based on the orchestration of information and human capital—this harmonious combination must be delivered in a clear, concise format. More so, the barrage of information in the operation of any business must be tempered with how the delivery mechanism is designed. Without a delivery format and effective distribution system, information can become lost to the abyss. Training companies can solve that issue when they implement methodologies proven to elevate the benefits of supply chain management learning.

With globalization, the field of competition has increased and the marketplace changes at a much more rapid pace. In order to maintain a forefront position on the knowledge curve, companies, namely multinational corporations, need to create a learning atmosphere conducive to capturing the knowledge and skill sets needed to advance a supply chain learning model. The challenge is incorporating learning methodologies into the supply chain without impeding the current supply chain mechanics.

Supply chain learning models play a pivotal role in the optimization of supply chain management; more simply, supply chain learning models are the orchestration within the supply chain cycle. Agility and responsiveness become quintessential terms in supply chain optimization, yet at the root of it is the element of learning. Each supply chain learning model may differ, but here are seven essential basics to the supply chain structure:

1. Create for cultures – One of the challenges for the multinationals includes handling the diversity of multiple cultures and seasons. Certain parameters and guidelines need to be made.
2. Collaborate – Share “best practices” captured in the learning model and release them to the supply chain value streams.
3. Communicate – Both internal and external communications must clearly illustrate who, what, when, where, and how. Additionally, benefits need to be well defined and expectations need to be set.
4. Implement – The methods for broadcasting the learning content and tracking its application are a must.
5. Innovate – Look for common ground or synergies in the supply chain. Determine if supplier groups work in conjunction relative to timing to optimize delivery (for example, bottles, labels, and caps).
6. Sustain through measurement – Sustaining the learning network requires a consistent scheduling. Required due outs and reports of progress and cost avoidance need to be captured and tracked.
7. Compete – The supply chain becomes the harmony within any business model; any interruption or threat weakens its competitiveness.

Initiative success is a result of synchronous collaboration between finance and accounting, engineering, operations (learning), maintenance, health/safety, and quality. Global leaders bear the responsibility of engaging all departments, soliciting feedback, and delivering the critical information through training models. Best-in-class organizations that are examples of supply chain optimization have demonstrated the ability to tap into the importance of learning models as a basic element of the decision-making process.

For example, an airline pilot and an accountant may have similar personality traits such as “attention to detail” and “a reluctance to take chances.” It’s not until the focus turns to what employees are expected to accomplish in their jobs that it becomes apparent why it’s short-sighted to stop at the competency stage.

Personality-based hiring and competency-based learning won’t achieve what matters most to your business.  Read “The Problem With Personality-Based Hiring”, an article featured in this month’s issue of CLO Magazine, to learn more about Role Profiling and how a different way of thinking about learning can produce greater performance for your organization.

The most common element of life and work is “time”. Some call it a non re-chargeable bank account, one that zero’s out at the end of each day and is confined to one hundred sixty eight hours per week. The use of this valuable asset is said to be the determining factor between successfully completing both large and small scale projects or lead to their failure. Its characteristics allow for it to be gained or loss, leveraged or mishandled, and used effectively and efficiently, or not. Time is the one common element in project management that is being burned at the same rate for all team members, no matter what country you are domiciled in.

As global teams work together, they collaborate on problem solving tasks which lead to increased performance. The rate upon which the solution is attained is said to save time and money, now and in the future. In manufacturing, a number of acronyms have been created to give a name to these problem solving tasks; such as MTTR – mean time to repair, MTTD – mean time to diagnose and FTC – first time through capability. Nevertheless, teams are confronted with challenges that take on ever-changing new dimensions during the process to uncover the root of the problem. Similarly, teams need to quickly be given the highest priority task by the global leader. Execution of challenging tasks can be handled more effectively when all team members collaboratively work towards a known goal or desired expectation.

Priorities by the global leader must be set and time must be managed to not only survive the challenge but to prosper as a functioning team unit. Through my experience, I have developed seven prompts to achieve a given task that include:

1. Set the desired goal. Not many things have more impact on time than the efforts of a team marching to the same beat, mapped by a plan and tracked with measurement. The act of goal setting helps identify those tasks with the highest priorities. Classify such tasks as mission-critical, urgent and important, nice to do, or true bottlenecks. Here is where the global manager must be able to create a focus, remove roadblocks and quickly laser in on the critical few steps necessary for success.
2. Sketch out a timeline. Placing tasks on a piece of paper is only a partial step in task completion process. The other critical step is defining deadlines and a timeline. Some tasks may be interlinked and predicated upon the completion of a previously scheduled tasks, therefore a timeline gives the visual of the when tasks are estimated to be executed and provide for team preparation of such event. Global leaders need to become experts at displaying the timeline to team members through the use of Gantt and PERT Charts or other software programs. When a timeline sketching is put on paper, overlooked or out of sync tasks will be uncovered more easily.
3. Time is money. To be successful as a global leader, the cost of the time the team spends on the project must be paramount. In so much that the cost of the groups and its members must be broken down to hourly, daily and weekly rates. This will supply a measuring device to determine the costs of task completion, this added to the timeline chart will result in a percent of time spent versus the percentage of tasks performed ( or complete).
4. Prevent against distractions. Different cultures and different customs throughout the world place competing demands on team member’s time. Map and forecast out each team members expected schedule. Know who is available to work on the tasks at hand and regulate the execution or lack thereof through active team member reporting. Distractions will surface in the wash once a task is delegated with an anticipated completion target and an expected quality benchmark.
5. Collaborate with other global leaders. Don’t be an island, especially if it’s your first global project. Leverage the talents or at least the advice of others that have had global projects, such as off-shore development projects or international strategic ramp-ups. Remotely managing a team can pose its own logistical challenges and those who have once been there possess time-saving solutions to advance the fluency of the project.
6. Pick your power performers. Global leaders are also learners. The process of regulating the completion of tasks will surface best practices of team members that can be incorporated into the project timeline itself and provide guidance to other team members in need of time management assistance. Watch, compare and obtain feedback as to what went well and what went wrong with the assigned project tasks. Highlight the bottlenecks, it may have been technological snafus or communication hiccups that worked as project anchors. If solutions and short-cuts were uncovered highlight those to team members.
7. Interaction can cause friction. Be sensitive to the time of others and look to limit excessive interaction once the tasks have been assigned and ownership or its completion passed. One of the most detrimental acts a global leader can do is get in the way of progress of highly skilled team members. Certain acts and over-interactions in many cultures are seen as a lack of confidence or a disgrace to the performance of the team. Star performers will seek lofty plateaus in most every global society, poor time management by the leader can shut down progress and hinder moving on to the next task to perform.

In all, global leaders have the responsibility of demonstrating leadership, disclosing a goal, mapping the plan and tracking the progress. Leaders and team members must collaborate upon the task to be performed along with leadership protecting team members from distractions. An important time saver is the ability to say no. Global leaders may have a number of projects all at once and certain tasks need to be delegated, delayed and eliminated to keep themselves and team members on track to successful project completion.

Do you have a concise and quick process to assess time to tasks and explain quality benchmarks? Would you say your leadership approach fosters team collaboration, how?