With natural disasters and disruptions seemingly occurring somewhere in the world every week, whether earthquake, flood, tornado or cyclone. In recognising this, I got to thinking about the way that international projects often rely on their communications, both the face to face component, and their often relatively formalised and centralised communication and power... read more →
May
10
May
03
The advent of the video conference should have marked a quantum change in the way international project coordination meetings are conducted, however, a combination of the technology initially being both extremely expensive and complex, along with the immature technology at its launch, made it difficult to access for the majority... read more →
Apr
26
Marginalisation is a real problem faced by many if not all virtual teams at some point. However you structure your virtual work teams, you will almost always find some groups who feel they have more and some groups less control over the way the project is run. There will be groups who get... read more →
Apr
19
When you select and engage with an international partner for the execution of your projects, whether internal or external, what discussions do you have regarding strategic alignment of your goals, desires and organisational requirements? If you don't have such discussions, have you considered, or even experienced first hand, the impact... read more →
Apr
12
We all have our little speech quirks, turns of phrase, specialist business and technical language and colloquialisms. They are the little things we often say without thinking, the things that make perfect sense to us and, usually, though not always, make as much sense to our colleagues. They can be... read more →
Apr
05
There are times in every virtual teams project, when there is little real substitute for a face to face meeting. Getting everyone, or at least a majority of the project’s key players into a single room, for a series of meetings, is periodically essential to keep the project on track.... read more →
Mar
29
Communication skills are one of those things most of us all believe we have developed pretty much by the time we have learnt to talk and write, however, the real skills of an effective communicator are far more subtle and much broader than those learnt through the course of our day to day... read more →
Mar
22
For most people, coming to terms with all of the changes involved when moving to a new country and experiencing new cultures and the culture shock associated with the move is a daunting experience. After a few days, weeks or, in rarer cases, months, what initially felt strange and possibly threatening,... read more →
Mar
15
Quite some time ago, I began thinking about how best to help senior, and generally very busy managers improve their communications abilities when running or working in virtual team environments. These people usually come from a world where they are assumed to know everything, and yet rarely have the time to learn... read more →
Mar
12
In the Knowledge Age, being a professional requires much more than a qualification or ‘know how’. Every industry has a mix of practitioners and professionals; regardless of whether they are engineers, accountants, lawyers or doctors, work in procurement, human resources, project management or any one of many hundreds of other... read more →