This is the beginning of a new term. And a new start to this initiative. Will try my best to update everything that I have learnt in class to be here.

Managing People in Organizations

Case - Managing A Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A)

Case is available here - http://www.scribd.com/doc/37095326/Managing-a-Global-Team-Sun-Microsystems

Analysis:

People Involved

Greg James - A fast growing manager at IBM who faces a sudden series of issues in his team, which spans 3 countries - India, UAE and France, in addition to the team in the US.

Rahul Ashok - An IIT grad, who has worked in US before. He is a very good engineer and a promising manager. 

Ahmed Nazar - An engineer from the UAE office. Had issues working with Rahul. 

Devilal - 

Jamal - 

Pam Lawry - VP and treated Greg as her protege.

IBM's Working Environment

Problem:

HS Holding's server went down and for the second time Sun didn't respond as per SLA. They are now threatening a law suit and Greg has to fix the problem immediately. 

Upon root cause analysis, he finds out that his team has several interpersonal issues and a lot of dis-harmony. 

Some examples are 

1. Time Zone clashes for working in multiple teams was an issue. 

2. Compensation Mismatch 

3. Vacation and work load distribution during vacation

4. Perceived neglect on the part of Greg

5. Alleged favoritism on the part of Greg

6. Personal clashes between members on the basis of ethnicity. 

Solution: 

Options being considered by Greg are

1.  More facetime with each team.

2. Reduce facetime and emphasize that was the style suited for global teams.

Class Discussion:

Despite the obvious problems in the case, class discussion was pretty fruitful. A role playing exercise was followed and some not so obvious problems came to fore.