Case Study: Building high performance global teams

BACKGROUND

Our client is one of the world's largest IT companies, with a portfolio that spans personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure. This company serves more than one billion customers in more than 170 countries on six continents.

CHALLENGE

As a global organization the client's structure encompasses a complex arrangement of businesses, product groups, functions, brands and geographies. It therefore needed to find the best approach to manage this complexity and generate collaborative advantage through leveraging cooperation across internal and external borders. This entailed:

More effective transfer of knowledge and technologies
Generating speed to market
Developing global products
Maximising responsiveness to changes in the market place

Internal reviews and audits identified more effective team-working as a mission critical aspect of ensuring its future profitability and competitiveness. The perception was that although team-working was an intrinsic part of the client's way of working, there was no single method for evaluating its success and no consistent method or model for devising appropriate programmes to tackle sub-optimal team performance across the client's multiple business and geographic areas.

SOLUTIONS

The client approached TMA World in early 2000 to develop a uniform approach to team-working that could be taught in classroom and virtual settings and replicated across the global organization. Using proprietary models allied to a detailed understanding of the client's business needs and culture, TMA World designed a workshop around the theme of "high performance teams".

The essential focus was on providing team leaders and team members with the attitudes, awareness, knowledge and skills needed to derive significant business value from working in face-to-face and remote teams. The programme encompassed a number of different components aimed at intact teams, virtual teams and cross-cultural teams. As an example; prior to the class session, intact teams completed the online TeamNavigator™ questionnaire enabling an assessment of team performance in the areas of Challenges, Direction, Culture and Adaptability. The classroom session expanded on these themes, focusing on:

Experiencing the benefits of teamwork first-hand.
Identifying the critical success factors for high performance teams.
Developing skills in three key areas: shared leadership, communication, and organization.
Exploring team dynamics in relation to different personal styles: learning, culture, communication, personality, and conflict management.
Identifying initiatives for improving teamwork capabilities.

Teams also had the option to complete the TMA World Team Navigator™ again at regular intervals, and receive a team-specific feedback report on progress.

RESULTS

To date, TMA World has delivered training to over 900 teams and 25,000 delegates in all areas of the world. Learning formats offered include face to face classroom, virtual classroom or an e-learning format. Using the Kirkpatrick model of evaluation, the client has measured the performance of teams following the implementation of this programme and found improvements in all areas relating to team process, team skills and team dynamics. In addition the reports provided by the on-line assessment tools allowed team leaders to track their team's performance and make the necessary adjustments to achieve maximum success. This in turn has strengthened the client's team based culture and enabled it to harness all its talent to the competitive advantage of the organization.

The key to the success of this programme was TMA World's ability to provide a truly global approach and service in order to facilitate a programme of this size. Moreover, given our expertise in the field of global management, TMA World was ideally positioned to place the programme within a multi-cultural business context, a vital factor in ensuring that the approach and methodology was accepted and utilised across the organization's many regional offices.

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