Global Communication Scenario the Scenario

Global Communication Scenario The Scenario The General Electric (GE) Country Managers' Meeting being held in Paris, France brought together leaders from Japan, Nigeria, France and India to discuss how they could coordinate more effectively in new product development. The meeting often became very heated between the French and Japanese general management teams as each felt the other sent mixed signals both verbally and non-verbally about their commitment to projects and plans. G.E.

senior management had created these cross-functional teams a decade ago and required each Country Manager to participate in person. The concept of creating greater collaboration through tacit knowledge sharing is one of the implicit agenda items of having global teams periodically meet in person (Auch, Smyth, 2010). GE had found that having these in-person team meetings in host countries also brought a greater level of cultural and emotional intelligence to the group over time.

For global teams to be effective there needs to be more of a focus on transformation leadership, not just the enabling of information transactions, but a sharing of the common vision of the entire group (Bodla, Nawaz, 2010). GE had seen this in their training programs, and realizing that the four nations included in the session often were the most contentious with each other in e-mail, conference calls and varying philosophical views, it was deliberate that they all ended up in the same room in Paris for a quarterly meeting.

With the topic being the development of entirely new approaches to launching GE produces concurrently across their geographies, the teams began debating how best to orchestrate a new product launch across all their regions. Immediately it became apparent that the differences between Japan and France would be very difficult to get around. The Vice President, Products for GE, headquartered in the U.S. took control of the meeting and attempted to keep it on target towards its goals.

Anatomy of a Leadership Challenge What is at stake in the meeting is the launch of a new series of medical products that are to be manufactured in each of the countries represented. It's critical that the common manufacturing processes and steps be defined across all four nations to ensure high quality of production. It is essential for Japan and India work closely together, as Japan will do the R&D on next-generation systems and India will produce the majority of them.

France and its exceptional quality control and quality management practices, which are highly regarded through the GE culture, will have complete control over approving production builds from India. This is the catalyst of so many disagreements between Japan and India vs. France. French quality management teams will leave nothing to change and often require intensive work analysis to determine if and when a component will fail in production. This is not possible to know many times until production starts and in that disagreement is where many of the arguments begin.

As the Country Managers are seated around the table, the VP of products for GE goes around the table and asks for input on the agenda he has placed on the whiteboard in the front of the room. Yet this VP is different than others because he has the sales goals for the new product defined at the top of the board and the key measures of performance by country right below it.

He is attempting to show why cooperating and working together is literally the only way the sales goal can be achieved. As he points to each country and explains how their contributions, turn-around times, and most importantly, cooperation and collaboration all affects the revenue figure, he does something even more important. He walks in front of each, stops, and asks for agreement. Transformational leaders have the ability to create consensus and support with emotional intelligence and the development of consensus over time (Bodla, Nawaz, 2010).

The focus is on raising the level of awareness of just how much it costs the company for the continual bickering and arguing, and how the time list in conflict is time away from accomplishing critical goals that define the future of this division of GE. The Country Managers nod in agreement and each then presents how they plan to support the new product introduction.

Within five minutes of the India discussion beginning the point is made very clearly, through charts and graphs, that France is being a major bottleneck to customizing the medical systems for customers globally. It is as if the India Country Manager built the slide deck to slam the French Quality Assurance team. Saying nothing, the French Country Manager glares at the Indian Country Manager and waits until he is through talking.

At the end of the Indian Country Manager's presentation the French Country Manager tells him if he indeed did accomplish Six Sigma production levels there would be no need for French Q.A. To be so rigorous. However, he adds, the Indian subsidiary is performing way below acceptable quality levels on other products. The French manager, obviously angry, rattles off a series of statistics and the near-recall of another medical device.

It is getting to the point of a full-on conflict and the VP of Products yells "Stop!" And the entire room falls silent. The VP goes back to the board, this time, banging on it with his hand right on the revenue figure. He reminds the team that their careers at GE are on the line. Either they pull together and make the launch successful or their reputations will be hurt.

The room falls silent as the next presentation begins and even though it is clear slides are meant to attack other countries and their teams, the managers refrain and discuss how they could best work together, albeit very reluctantly. Analyzing the Conflict between Countries in This Meeting What is going on in this meeting is not as personal as the attendees think yet more culturally-based with the potential for resolution as well. The G.E.

VP of Products needs to rely on the Hofstede Cultural Dimensions Model (Hofstede, 1998) to troubleshoot at the cultural level what is going on in this cross-cultural team. Dr. Hofstede created the Cultural Dimensions Model while he was working for IBM, a company known for moving managers rapidly from one location to the next, often experiencing culture shock as well (Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayv, Daval, Sanders, 1990). The five cultural dimensions include Individualism (IDV), Long-Term Orientation (LTO), Masculinity, (MAS), Power Distance Index (PDI), and Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI).

Using this model the VP of Products could have quickly seen that the conflicts between India and Japan are much more culturally-based than personality-based. Figure 1, Cultural Dimensions Model of India and Japan graphically illustrates this. Figure 1: Cultural Dimensions Model Applied to India and Japan Source: http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_dimensions.php?culture1=42&culture2=50#compare Japan has a much greater level of uncertainty avoidance than India, and also is much more.