Global development and communication myths - a small list

This topic is actually a very vast one. However I'm writing this solely for those readers of this blog who are budding or new managers or engineers who directly communicate with global teams within their company across world wide offices. To keep things simple, let me address some myths that exist today among the said audience.

1. Myth1: In order to buy time, let me keep things as vague as possible.

I have seen teams from India or Japan for example, give rounded, very convoluted answers to simple questions because the team/individual is afraid to say things clearly as they will be held responsible for the statement. Let us look at an example.

US team: 'Hi, have you merged the branches of the ver 2.1 code'?
India Team: 'Actually, we are looking into it. The replication is taking very long and we are considering it. My manager, Raju, will be talking to his director and will be getting back to you on this'.

Gosh! The real scene at home was that merging was not done because the coding was not complete. And the coding was not complete because a third party program with Microsoft who had to provide the SDK was delayed. The average, fearful, engineer or budding manager thinks that he or she will be given the boot if he/she explains the situation in crisp terms.

A neater way of responding this would be : 'No. The merge has not happened. While we are ready with the code, we are awaiting the SDK upgrade from Microsoft. I estimate that we will be able to merge in the next two days. In any case, we will keep you posted'.

Myth 2: If you working in a matrix mode, where you have a functional manager in US and a local manager in India, then you have to keep both of them updated with the same amount of information. Or you will suffer during your appraisal.

Many budding managers struggle to do this. It is important to understand what role each manager plays in the overall context. Remember, more often than not, you will never get the answers in black and white. Let us assume that the functional manager is the person responsible for product releases and the local manager is responsible for running the operations, you must know which information to give to each other and how to diplomatically explain when both your managers confuse their roles.

US matrix manager: 'Hey, can you send me the daily status of what each of your engineers are doing?'.

Reportee budding manager: 'I have updated the product development status and the percentage complete at out portal. We are locally managing the resources to do this. Let me know if you anticipate issues in delivery'. (Now, you have indirectly told him not to micro manage and at the same time said that you are accountable for deliveries).

Local Ops manager: 'Hi, I think we should take a decision on the patch release today. Why don't you send me the entire project status as well as risks that you see for the patch release.?'

Reportee budding manager: 'Sure. I'm discussing with our US manager the patch release. Why don't you join our conference call tonight and you will get up to date information on this' (note, again diplomatically the budding manager has clearly differentiated the functions and balanced it well).

Myth 3: Being very agreeable and very amicable makes me a great team player.

False! A good team player is the one who asks many questions in the interest of the team and overall goals and pushes back arguments for them to get validated. Agreeing to everything or being very amicable makes you a weak player and not a reliable robust player. Again, just listening to someone and executing the instructions is very easy. However you will never grow out of that position. The person who is considered valuable is some one who can ask many informed questions and who makes daily attempts to understand the domain of work and it's business perspectives.

I had a manager who asked me 'You say I have no listening skills. But have I ever spoken a word when you were explaining me something? I always only listened and listened and listened'. Do you see the problem? This manager had never tried to understand or validate with me if his understanding was correct. Good listening skills also means good validating skills.

In contrast, I had an engineer who was several layers below me and he found me near the water cooler and asked me 'I'm developing the web services for this component. What surprises me is that the company we acquired recently has a product with the same set of services. Can't we reuse them?'. Now this was revelation! When the new M&A was done, all that we knew were the products of the acquired company but at senior management level you are not privy to the exact services exposed.

So keep asking questions.

Myth 4: I can argue as much as I want because questioning is going to increase my stock value:

While healthy, constructive, informed questions raise your value, unnecessary arguments that go round and round in circles pushes you several notches down. Nobody likes a budding manager or engineer who is extremely argumentative and who needs to see everything in black and white, right and now!

I can provide hundreds of examples. Pl do send me questions if you have specific situations troubling you and I will pick good ones, anonymously and suggest solutions.