When Global Integration was asked to sponsor this year’s London Tweetcamp, it was an easy decision for us. We are always on the lookout for ways for our delegates to save themselves time and effort by taming technology. Having the best part of 300 Tweeters and bloggers to share with next Saturday (8 October) will be a real opportunity to learn and share.

We’re hoping that there will also be some conversations happening around Twitter and HR, around teamwork using Twitter as an enabler, especially in virtual teams, and around communicating across borders – but the learning’s the important bit.

WIN A TWEETCAMP PLACE

We have a couple of spare sponsor tickets as two of our team can’t now come as they’re not in the UK. So if you don’t have one, you may be able to win one of our team places by tweeting us the answer to what global working means to you in the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter. (Yes, we know there are tools that allow you more, but this challenge is 140!)

Just tweet at us @globalinteg with the hashtag #gw for a chance to win!

Tweetcamp is a free to attend, tickets only ‘unconference’ being held on October 8, 2011 in Shadwell, London, with an after party held in Bank, London. 

Oct 03 2011

After 15 years training leaders of ever more complex teams in over 300 of the world’s leading companies in 40 countries and delivering over 100,000 participant days of training, the Global Integration team  reached some startling conclusions with major implications for leadership training and development. Global Integration CEO Kevan Hall explains why the situation is still looking bleak:

At risk of repeating myself, leadership training has scarcely changed over the past two decades. If you search for leadership training programs on the websites of even some of the world’s leading business schools you will see approaches that have changed little since the ’70s and ’80s.

Yet leadership has changed radically. Leaders operate in multiple locations, across timezones, with highly diverse groups of employees and in much more complex and fast moving organizations. The gap between the new reality and the old-fashioned skills being taught on  leadership training programs not only means that much leadership training is a poor investment, it may even make things worse .

Take, for example, three key leadership myths often perpetuated within the current systems:

Read the rest of this entry »

Sep 30 2011

Kevan Hall offers five basic ways of dealing with the three major workday ‘interruptions’: email, people and ‘phone calls, typical of most working environments, but particularly pronounced when working in a  matrix.

(1)        Limit interruptions to specific times.

To prevent interruptions and allow you to focus, research has demonstrated that checking emails two to four times per day is optimal. Some reports have shown people checking emails obsessively,  over 150 times per day in some cases. If you work in an office, close the door, or agree some signal with your colleagues on when you do not want to be interrupted.

(2)        Be tough with yourself about dealing with interruptions.

Make a quick decision about whether to deal with it immediately or park it and return to your original task. Write it down to free your mind to let go of it.

(3)        Develop a strategy for fast re-engagement with your original task.

Leaving a document open or writing a quick post-it of where you were up to before dealing with the interruption can help you quickly pick up the task again.

(4)        Interruptions don’t need to become major distractions.

When an interruption happens, don’t allow this to drag you into two or three other tasks (which is what usually happens). If the original task was important – get straight back to it and complete it.

(5)        Have a plan.

A clear plan or prioritised action list prominently displayed at your workspace can help stop you bouncing into activity for its own sake.

Don’t forget that prevention is better than a cure: we can often prevent the interruption in the first place by not checking emails so regularly, by working from home, or putting on voicemail to screen calls.

Further information about building the people capability to make complex organizations faster, less expensive to run and more satisfying to work in can be found on the Global Integration website and blog.

Sep 26 2011

Global Integration CEO Kevan Hall’s article on trust as a barometer of management health started many conversations. Here he summarises, in ten points, the essentials of trust building within a team:

1. Demonstrate your trust in individuals, to them and also publicly  -  people need to see that you are offering trust first.

2. Reduce controls on others: this builds and demonstrates trust; it also builds their confidence (self-trust) to do things for themselves.

3. Encourage participative decision-making: allowing people to agree objectives and constraints commits them to the deliverables rather than having them imposed

4. Delegate authority  - and the responsibility that goes with it. (One without the other undermines trust.)

5. Discuss and negotiate clear mutual expectations. (Trust may be undermined by unspoken assumptions not being met.)

6. Encourage open communication.

7. Allow others to influence you as a manager.

8. Offer rewards and sanctions for trustworthy and untrustworthy actions.

9. Help people to learn new skills and capabilities: this builds trust from both sides.

10. Be accessible in a timely manner when people need you

Sep 21 2011

Acorn's pool - vital facility for sick children

Our team of elite consultants and trainers here at Global Integration can lay claim to a certain degree of sporting prowess, even boasting an ex Olympian in our midst.

So it’s not entirely surprising to learn that matrix management specialist Phil Stockbridge is taking to the streets for his latest challenge: running  a half marathon – the BUPA Great Birmingham Run – on the 23rd October (2011)  in aid of Acorns Children’s Hospice.

Hospices provide invaluable care and respite, and Acorns provides care and support specifically for children and young people who have life limiting or life threatening conditions, and provides vital support for all the family. It costs £750 per day (around $1200 at today’s rates) for each child’s care, over 70% of which comes from community initiatives like Phil’s run.

(For those of us who know and love Phil, it’s somewhat  less surprising to note that this is the chosen charity of Burton Rugby Club, to which Phil offers keen support.)

If you’d like to sponsor him for this great cause, you can do so on his Just Giving page, here: http://www.justgiving.com/PhilStockbridge

We’ll let you know how he gets on.

Sep 18 2011

Kevan Hall, CEO of Global Integration,  discusses why trust is a good barometer of a healthy, well managed team

Organizations with high levels of trust innovate faster and find it easier to attract and retain top talent. Job satisfaction, commitment and loyalty are closely aligned to perceptions of trust. Trust is a critical element in an organization’s culture. Trust is vital to management credibility, workforce loyalty, creativity, challenge and open communication. So why do we pay so little attention to it?

When trust is lacking, employees’ performance are affected, loyalty is compromised and a culture of low morale results, significantly reducing the overall success and prospects of an organization. Yet the many specific benefits achieved by high levels of trust include lower transaction costs (the costs of checking and monitoring relationships); increased willingness to share information and knowledge; greater willingness and confidence to take risks when dealing with ambiguity and to come up with creative solutions; and faster responses through empowered, decentralized decision making.

Ironically in a more networked, social world, building trust is becoming more challenging. Trust has been reducing consistently since the 1950s and well-publicized international business scandals in recent years, including Enron and WorldCom, have led to an overall reduction in trust in business.

With yet more stories of large-scale fraud emerging, the challenge is set to become bigger still.

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Sep 15 2011

Kevan Hall, CEO, Global Integration discusses one of the key challenges of matrix working and operating virtual teams: creating community

Having a sense of community and trust is a key success factor in today’s complex companies and teams. Community reduces barriers to cooperation. Community speeds up the way people work together. And community can make people less averse to change.

Community was once a by-product of location. Given the choice people naturally tend to form a community with people who are physically close to them and socially similar. Today’s work communities include colleagues from other cultures and other locations and we are required to build virtual communities and demand trust through technologies like email, just because they work for the same company.

In the multi-site businesses common today, let’s not gloss it over: it is expensive and difficult to build community. Managers often feel that a sense of identity or team spirit is missing. Building a deep and enduring sense of community and trust does not happen quickly. It takes time and requires a lot of face to face contact. It is surprising that it works at all.

People are often pulled in different directions by competing priorities, multiple reporting lines and rapid change. Organisations often respond to this by introducing a matrix type organization structure. Whilst different reporting lines to geography, product group, functions and so on can create a structure of excellence, the resulting divided loyalties can present a problem.

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Sep 09 2011

Guest post by Jyri Kuokka, Technical Communications Assistant, KONE Corp./KONE Training and Documentation

Jyri Kuokka is the current Technical Communications Assistant at KONE Training and Documentation as well as the vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter behind the Finnish heavy metal act The Fathomless Deep. Jyri has a BBA in Management and Human Resources from Pacific Lutheran University (in Tacoma, WA) and a QBA in Accounting and Finance from Helsinki Business College in Finland.

Jyri Kuokka, Technical Communications Assistant, KONE Corp.

Virtual Trainer Skills is an exciting new course at KONE. It coaches trainers to train virtually without forgoing the level of engagement perhaps more easily attainable with face-to-face teaching.

VTS exists because virtual training exists; a simple fact, but the reality in most large organizations is that virtual training is not only employed, but encouraged. It is, or can be, an effective means of teaching a large number of people across the globe, without the costs of travel or arranging a learning facility, or the cost in terms of time needed for organization and administration.

As a learning platform, virtual training can be a difficult craft, as trainers may feel distant from their audience, or find true contact impossible. Tony Poots, our VTS instructor, discusses the key challenges, most common mistakes, and the solutions, which, as he analogizes, are not entirely unlike handling customers at your restaurant.

A difficult meal to prepare. The key challenges in virtual training

Imagine going to a restaurant, being taken to your table, but no further. Nobody has given you a menu, let alone something to eat. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, you would not feel like eating there. The same trap fall exists in virtual training. Tony Poots explains: “The key challenges are engaging people, keeping them engaged, and getting the content right. Human beings are really designed to be face-to-face creatures so when we engage one another in a conversation or training it’s about the words we use, it’s about the content, it’s about your voice, it’s about movement, and interaction between us at a physical level.”

Tony continues: “So, the key challenge is how you engage people when all you’ve got is your voice and something happening on the screen and you don’t have eye contact, you don’t know what people are doing, and they’re not really getting to know you. The other major challenge area is getting the content right to ensure that you don’t spend your whole time in some kind of one-way death-by-PowerPoint activity and do something, which is actually very practical and useful for people that they can’t get from simply reading a book.”

Poor nutrition – The most common mistakes in virtual training

“The most common mistake people typically make is lack of interaction. For some reason, either [trainers] think that creating true interaction is impossible or because they themselves feel quite remote from their audience,” he comments.

The second mistake often occurs as a result of or in conjunction with the first. “[Trainers] forget about the need for interaction, which leads them into the second biggest mistake, which is talking at people, rather than discussing with them.”

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Sep 05 2011

Kevan Hall, CEO, Global Integration, contends that our people management practises are holding us back.

Over the past decades, organizations have invested heavily in information systems and process reengineering to improve business performance.Many operate several business lines across multiple sites and time zones, in virtual teams, and employ highly diverse groups of people.

This organizational complexity often eventually undermines the performance that created the company’s successful in the first place. Entrepreneurial spirit erodes, bureaucracy increases and progress slows.
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Sep 02 2011

By management and leadership expert,  Kevan Hall, CEO, Global Integration

So August is over. When you came back from your holiday, relaxed and tanned, to find 600 e-mails waiting for you, you doubtless felt you needed another holiday to cope.

So here’s a thought: delete the lot! Virtually all of them will have resolved while you were away and the urgent ones will call you anyway.

A year ago a small survey we undertook at Speedleading.com revealed that people receive an average of 58 e-mails per day, of which only 43% are necessary for them to do their job.  This means that on average a person who has gone away for a two week holiday can expect to find nearly 600 e-mails waiting for them on their return – unless they take an  e-mail device on holiday, being constantly distracted from enjoyment and relaxation.

I recommend letting people know you will be away and that you will delete any emails sent when you are away (using the auto-respond message on your email system). This can annoy some people  -  if you are worried about it,  just quietly implement the policy yourself.

If that’s too drastic, a less risky alternative is to sort all the e-mails you receive by name and only call your boss and people who have sent more than five emails – not to discuss the mails but to ask them ‘What happened while I was away?’ People will call back if their mail was urgent.

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Aug 27 2011