One Suggestion for Greg James to Manage Global Team

One suggestion for Greg James to manage global team

Greg James, a global manager at Sun Microsystems, faced with a challenge that caused by a serious customer system outage. Since the company is a multinational corporation, James has to meet with his entire member in customer implementation global team, in which James has to solve the interpersonal conflicts and management issues.

Although Sun is a famous and large-scale international company, there are still problems and conflicts among the communication level. The HS Holding disaster is a sign that warns the management team of Sun should take consideration of how to collaborate different departments that spread across the world efficiently. Luckily, James solve the problem this time perfectly, but top level managers like James should make changes to it.

The cause of the HS holding disaster is mainly the miscommunication between the multi-cultural global teams. As for the suggestions for James, improving the communication efficiency is the key to success. However, since the company is global scale, inconsistent compensation plan is a major issue. The discrepancies between two teams in different countries may lead employees unwilling to work proactively. Thus the policy that no-disclosure salary level or using global pay rule are good ways to encourage employees. On the other hand, from the perspective of manager like James, he might not need to travel too frequently between countries since he could make good use of virtual meetings directly with team in different countries.

In conclusion, in order to avoid another HS holding disaster in the future, management team not only should make a little changes within the company policies such as keeping salary level in consistent or non-disclosure, but also make good use of virtual techniques.