Building Management Skills

Question: Describe about the Building Management Skills? Answer: Introduction: According to Daft and Marcic (2014) performance of global team can be affected due to high cultural diversity. The current assignment deals with analysis of the problems for managing global teams. Some recommendations are also made for managing global teams. 1. Case study Review: Challenges caused by geographical and cultural diversity: Analysis on the case study indicates that the major challenges which were faced by both ART and ITC team were lack of communication, lack of infrastructure in ITC team and lack of participation in ART team with the designing process. According to the case study, both ITC and ART team was physically separated. The case study also indicates that designing of the new product was mainly done by experts of ITC team. ITC, being a small company of India did not possess infrastructure of high quality. Although ART possessed advanced infrastructure, the organisation had not participated with the designing and new product development process actively. Lack of participation led to failure of product development strategies (Govindarajan and Gupta, 2002).In case of global teams, cultural differences impact negatively on the functioning of teams (Daim et al., 2012). Approaches for addressing challenges: The current case study reflects that a special team was developed for successful completion of new product designing project. As this special team included experts from both ITC and ART units, this new unit was more effective to minimize the problems regarding virtual teams. 1.2 Strategies for managing virtual teams: The problems related with management of global team can be minimized by developing team charter and adapting proper communication model. Development of team charters: According to Kerzner (2014) development of team charter is effective to reduce the problems relate with culturally diverse teams. In case of highly diverse teams, role of leader is important for improving the performance. Development of team charter enables the physically separated units to select a leader effectively. Lane and Maznevski (2014) stated that development of team charter enables an organisation to identify the need of external coaches. Members of a culturally diverse team may disagree on the process of team functioning and thus the effectiveness of teams may be reduced (McDonough et al., 2001). Use of team charter can reduce the number of conflicts as it suggests policies suitable for all members. Adaptation of MCDM (Multi-criteria Decision models): Mobley et al. (2012) opined that use of multi criteria decision model for teams which are involved in technological developments. Adaptation of MCDM not only provides a project team with the ideas regarding required equipments, but adaptation of this model also benefits a team by providing information on investment policies. 1.3 Recommendations for Filtration unit: Filtration unit of ART is mainly facing two problems- lack of coordination due to physical separation and requirement of huge investment. Analysis made in the previous sections indicates that these problems can be analysed by using project charter and modifying the decision making process. Development of project charter: As ART and ITC team belong to US and India respectively, cultural diversity is high within the unit. From the case study, it is evident that both the teams do not co-ordinate with each other. Although ART possess advanced infrastructure, ITC cannot access this infrastructure due to lack of collaboration among these units. ITC management should develop a project charter so that both the teams can work in collaboration with each other. Adaptation of MCDM: Although the project of new product development is failing to deliver any new product successfully, it requires investment of huge capital for final test. However filtration unit of ART should adopt MCDM to identify the alternative ways of investment 2. SWOT analysis of Filtration unit: Strength Advanced infrastructure Technological expertise of members Management strategies for implementing innovation Weakness Lack of discipline Lack of collaboration with other units Relying on outsourcing Opportunities New innovative products Launching products for emerging markets Joint ventures with other teams Threats Failure for developing new product Lack of sales fore casting knowledge Lack of capital for investment Table 1: SWOT for filtration unit Although ART unit possess experts with deep knowledge in modern technology, new product development strategies of the management can be considered as the most important among its strengths. As the management focus on developing new products, experts in the research and development team are utilized effectively. However, effectiveness of management strategies is reduced due to lack of discipline in the team. Although there are other weaknesses, functionality of the team is affected more due to lack of discipline. Although members of the team contribute significantly for making their project successful, performance of the whole team degrades due to lack of coordination among members. Inefficient outsourcing strategies also impact greatly on the performance of a team (Wilson and L. Doz, 2015). According to Daim et al., (2012) maintaining proper communication is important for ensuring successful completion of a project. As the filtration unit of ART relies on outsourcing and does not co- ordinate with their business partners, most of their project fails to deliver required outcomes. However, management of the unit focuses on new product development and successful completion of such projects can improve profitability of the unit. Performance of the team also can be improved by making joint ventures with other units and launching products for emerging markets. As the members of filtration unit lack sufficient knowledge for sales forecasting, effectiveness of new strategies can be reduced. However continuous failure of projects and lack of funding can also impact on the new product development strategies. 3. Decision for investment: Analysis on the current case study indicates that Vyas should invest on the new product development project. Findings of the market analysis indicate that demand for the product will be very high if it is launched successfully. It indicates that successful completion of the product development project can increases the profitability of filtration unit. Currently, the filtration unit is failing to develop the product as it is failing to manage global team. However Vyas should develop team charter and proper communication model to minimize such problems. Conclusion: Analysis made in this assignment indicates that functionality of a global team can be affected due to communication problems. Such problems can be minimized using advanced technology and proper communication models. References Daft, R. and Marcic, D. (2014). Building management skills. Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning. Daim, T., Ha, A., Reutiman, S., Hughes, B., Pathak, U., Bynum, W. and Bhatla, A. (2012). Exploring the communication breakdown in global virtual teams. International Journal of Project Management, 30(2), pp.199-212. Govindarajan, V. and Gupta, A. (2002). Building an effective global business team. IEEE Engineering Management Review, 30(2), pp.28-28. Kerzner, H. (2014). Project management best practices. Hoboken: Wiley. Lane, H. and Maznevski, M. (2014). International Management Behavior. Hoboken: Wiley. McDonough, E., Kahnb, K. and Barczaka, G. (2001). An investigation of the use of global, virtual, and colocated new product development teams. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 18(2), pp.110-120. Mobley, W., Li, M. and Wang, Y. (2012). Advances in global leadership. Bingley, U.K.: Emerald. Wilson, K. and L. Doz, Y. (2015). Traditional best practices wont work. You need a stricter, more top-down playbook.