The Cranky Middle Manager Show #312 The Future of the MBA Ken Starkey
The Cranky Middle Manager Show #202 Remote Teams and Cultures with Anil Saxena
Posted on 04. Aug, 2009 by Wayne in Podcast
Today Wayne Turmel talks to Anil Saxena of Cube 214 about building trust with virtual teams, and how to work cross-culturally without starting a war. Speaking of which, we salute the guy from Glory and take 2100 year old motherly advice. Quit pouting and listen up.
SHOW NOTES
o:oo Welcome to the Oasis that is The Cranky Middle Manager Show. If you read my latest BNET article, you know that remote teams and the home office don’t always get along. That’s what we’re going to look at today. it’s even harder when the home office is somewhere in another country and you don’t know what “they’re” thinking. We salute a couple of listeners and the guy Matthew Broderick played in the movie Glory. We can only assume that Colonel Robert Gould Shaw understood cross cultural communication better than most.
4:14 The quote of the week is from 150 BC (or BCE). Quit pouting and do it happily. Your mother said it, but it was first said by Terence in his lovely poem, The Self Tormentor which so much classier in Latin.
5:00 We are talking today to Anil Saxena about managing remotely and cross cultural problems which we’ll get to. Anil has 6 rules for managing virtually:
- - Building a strong team starts with you
- - Creating a high performance team takes planning
- -Build a sense of “we”
- - Manage by results
- -Master the art of virtual communication
- - Put technology to work
it’s tough to start managing remotely… not impossible but certainly more challenging.
8:12 You’d better really want to do the job of manager. Have fun with it and develop patience.
9:25 How do you develop trust between team members- you have to build a sense of “we”. The team has to create the rules for how they will communicate and what they expect from each other. You have to share information and maximize every interaction.
12:15 Managing by results is a tough shift for a lot of us to make. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Armstrong needs to hear this….. Sometimes this show is just therapy for me.
16:32 Mastering the art of virtual communication means dealing with technology in the right way. Communciation is the goal, not cool technology.
20:45 Okay, one of my listeners has asked for this topic for a while. How do we identify and then elminate cross-cultural problems? They usually involve decision making, problem solving and conflict. Don’t underestimate the impact of power balances.
Anil’s Resources
