• A simple and powerful process
  • Experiential learning through critical incidents
  • Reliable, repeatable, and structured process
  • Quickly develop applicable skills

Global Teamwork

Cultural Detective Global Teamwork is designed to assist both collocated and remote teams in meeting the five major challenges of teamwork in today's global environment. In our wired and wireless world, it is estimated that up to 85% of communication and work tasks are accomplished via virtual technology. Team membership itself is often highly diverse in culture and activity, whether team members are located on the same premises or not. Whether self-directed or hierarchically managed, this new environment reduces the face-to-face side of management and calls for new and different managerial competencies in meeting the challenges of time and space, team formation and maintenance, stakeholder management, selection and use of appropriate technology, and above all clarity and sustainability of goals, roles and tasks on the part of team members.

In Cultural Detective Global Teamwork you will find the insights, processes and tools to meet these challenges, whether you are using it as an intact team, a team in formation, or as someone responsible for the creation and assignment of new global teams. This practical hands-on training tool will enable you to learn more and teach others about success strategies for geographically distributed, multicultural teams collaborating across time zones, mediated by state-of-the-art telecommunication technologies.

Cultural Detective Global Teamwork contains the following stories and critical incidents:

  • Think-tank Collaboration:

    A typical virtual meeting in the life of English, French, Polish and US American employees who meet monthly.

  • Off-shoring to India:

    The IT group in an Australian bank employs an Indian firm for an enterprise services project.

  • Communication Before Cooperation:

    A German university research team joins with a Japanese and a Dutch telecom firm for a project sponsored by the German government.

  • Global Account Management:

    Italian, Malaysian, Swedish, and US American sales executives discuss how to secure contract renewal on a global account.

In addition to the Global Teamwork Challenges Lens, four critical incidents, and sample debriefs, CD Global Teamwork contains a worksheet for identifying team challenges, a guide to team lifecycle management, three pages of tips for cross-cultural collaboration in global teamwork, a team survey on the impact of virtual tools, a checklist for guiding decision making about when to virtualize a business activity, and a tool for analyzing and creating stakeholder synergy.

Cultural Detective Global Teamwork was authored by Jolanda Tromp, George Simons, Geoffrey Abbott, Charlotta Öberg, Karen Huchendorf and Dianne Hofner Saphiere.