Five Virtues of a Brilliant Virtual Manager

J. Sears Alan

Description

From the author of the BESTSELLING The Six Conversations of a Brilliant Manager.In his latest business fable Alan J. Sears focuses on the trials, challenges, and rewards, of managing a virtual team. Vannimed is a global medical equipment supplier, but its Customer Service operation is in disarray. Roxanne Leonard is asked to coordinate her London team' s efforts with colleagues in New York, Mumbai, Sydney, Sã o Paolo and Singapore, making her the manager of a new global team. How can Roxanne build bridges across cultures, overcome the challenge of working in six different time zones and fend off internal challenges to achieve her goal of making Customer Services a truly first class operation? And how can she hold her family together while husband Evan is in Antarctica, daughter Soria is away at university and son Cornell is travelling somewhere on a gap year?Will the same solutions she employs at work help to keep her family united?Virtue #1 - ClarityVirtue #2 - ConsistencyVirtue #3 - ConsiderationVirtue #4 - ConfidenceVirtue #5 – CandourAs with Alan J. Sears' previous books the challenges and solutions, in this case of managing a virtual team, are woven into a compelling plot, peopled with engaging and wholly believable characters. The five virtues themselves are explained in detail in Part Two, providing a highly practical and easy to use toolkit for anyone needing to get the best out of a team working from different locations at different times.

Sujets

• Gestion et management

Informations

• Publié par: RedDoor Press
• Date de parution: 28 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781915194244
• Langue: English

Extrait

The five virtues of a brilliant virtual manager
Alan J. Sears
Published by RedDoor Press www.reddoorpress.co.uk
© 2022 Alan J. Sears
The right of Alan J. Sears to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means or otherwise transmitted without written permission from
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover design: Rawshock Design
Typesetting: Jen Parker, Fuzzy Flamingo www.fuzzyflamingo.co.uk
Contents
Part I:
Chapter 1 : One Day in Vienna
Chapter 2 : Around the World
Chapter 3 : Time Zones
Chapter 4 : Back in the U SA
Chapter 5 : A Map of the Territory
Chapter 6 : The Golden Rules
Chapter 7 : Family Matters
Chapter 8 : One-to-One
Chapter 9 : Trusting Me, Trusting You
Chapter 10 : What, Why, How and Who
Chapter 11 : Lightning Strikes
Chapter 12 : Engines
Chapter 13 : Cold Front
Chapter 14 : Better Together
Chapter 15 : Team Talk Two
Chapter 16 : First with the News
Chapter 17 : Singapore
Chapter 18 : The Best Policy
Chapter 19 : Past, Present and Future
Chapter 20 : Roxanne Writes a Message
Chapter 21 : Passing It On
Chapter 22 : Coffee and Doughnuts
Chapter 23 : No Place Like Home
Chapter 24 : Getting to Know You
Chapter 25 : The Three Musketeers
Chapter 26 : Paying Attention
Chapter 27 : Moving Up
Chapter 28 : Welcome on Board
Chapter 29 : Welcome Back to the Territory
Chapter 30 : Missing!
Chapter 31 : Time Spent in Reconnaissance
Chapter 32 : The Girl in La Paz
Chapter 33 : Arjun Checks In
Chapter 34 : In the Lions’ Den
Chapter 35 : Staying Up
Chapter 36 : A Call from New York
Chapter 37 : Family Reunion
Part I I: The Five Virtues
Acknowledgements
About The Author
Part I:
The Story
Chapter 1
ONE DAY IN VIENNA
Roxanne Leonard took her seat opposite her boss in Vienna. The meeting rooms at Vannimed were all named after cities in which the company had premises. Most meetings took place in open areas around the building, so the request to meet in Vienna immediately told Roxanne that something was in the air.
Vannimed was a big medical equipment company making everything from artificial hips and knees, to the surgical equipment that would be used in theatre, to the bed you would wake up in after your operation. Across a huge product range, Vannimed supplied all sorts of high-tech equipment to hospitals and clinics, as well as patient handling and emergency equipment and a mind-numbing array of medical devices used in a variety of specialities.
Dan Lepada greeted her with a smile, but she had known him long enough to detect the frown behind it.
‘Hi Roxanne,’ he began, ‘thanks for coming in.’
‘Are you OK, Dan?’ she asked.
‘Oh yeah, sure,’ Dan told her. ‘We have a bit of a problem, but I think I have a solution to it.’
‘And the solution, I am guessing,’ Roxanne smiled, ‘involves me. Right?’
Dan barked a short laugh. ‘You’re way ahead of me!’ he admitted.
‘So…?’ Roxanne knew the power of a pause and waited for Dan to continue.
‘Well, here’s the thing. Apart from your part of it, which is working well – and that by the way is why we are having this conversation – Customer Services is just not functioning. Customers are saying they aren’t getting answers, or if they do, they get contradictory ones, or they are passed around from person to person, saying “Oh I’ll put you through…” It’s like we have more silos in Customer Services than in the rest of the business put together. Would you believe we’re even getting complaints about our complaints procedures?’
Whilst quality control was an obsession throughout the business, there would be complaints and those needed to be rapidly resolved, not only for the peace of mind of doctors and patients alike, but also to avoid reputational risk and damage to Vannimed’s good name.
Dan sat back and took a deep breath, then went on in more measured tones.
‘Now I realise that some of this is because people don’t have the information they need at their fingertips, and they can’t always get it. That’s part of the problem. We need to sort out a lot of internal systems and procedures, as well as dealing with our customers’ concerns properly. We also need to get the feedback loops working correctly, so that if we do get something wrong, then we learn from it and don’t make the same mistake again.’
‘Okaaay,’ Roxanne smiled across the desk, ‘and you are telling me this because…?’
Dan looked up. ‘Because we are going to be doing things very differently from now on. We are going to get everyone on to the same system and set up a follow-the-sun model. That is going to mean coordinating here with New York, Mumbai, Singapore and Melbourne. And the person I want to do that is you.’
Roxanne’s mouth opened in surprise. She shut it again without saying anything, then took a breath.
‘Dan, I’m flattered, I really am,’ she said at last, ‘but I don’t think I’m qualified to do that. I’ve never run a virtual team, let alone a global operation with different cultures in different time zones.’
‘Roxanne, you’ve worked in the Middle East, you ran New Zealand for three years and you’ve spent a good deal of time in the US operation. No one is better qualified than you to see this done right,’ Dan came back at her.
‘That’s all true, but it’s different. Besides, what will the others think?’
‘Well, this may surprise you, but I have spoken to Blake in New York and Arjun in Mumbai, and they are both up for it.’
‘And Mitchie in Singapore?’
‘Mitchie has been telling me for a while that she doesn’t get as much support as she would like reporting into the region, and of course Liam in Melbourne only joined recently, and that was on the basis that things might be reorganised.’
‘Which just leaves Joao in S ã o Paulo.’
‘Ye-es.’ Dan paused. ‘Things may be a little trickier there, but…’ he tailed off, leaving the sentence hanging.
‘Hmm…’ Roxanne pursed her lips. ‘It sounds as though this is pretty much a done deal.’
‘It only needs you to say yes,’ Dan told her with a grin.
CHAPTER 2
AROUND THE WORLD
A week later, following a round of emails and announcements, Roxanne was at her workstation early. At 7 a.m. she put in a video call to Liam in Melbourne, knowing it would be 5 p.m. at his end. Liam answered promptly, a big toothy smile and a mass of sandy hair appearing on screen. His Hawaiian shirt suggested that the office dress code there was fairly relaxed. Roxanne spent a few minutes chatting amiably, swapping information, and finding out something about Liam: ‘What do you like to do when you’re not working?’ being one of her favourite questions. Liam’s first answer to that was ‘sailing’. He owned a small day boat and had taught both his daughters to sail, so that the whole family enjoyed days on the water together. His second answer was ‘chess’.
‘That’s an interesting combination,’ Roxanne remarked. ‘One quite physical and the other very cerebral.’
‘You might be right there,’ Liam told her, ‘but I see them as pretty much the same. In both cases you are trying to figure out what your opponent is going to do next, anticipate it and counter it. It’s just that when you’re out on the water your opponent is the weather, the wind and the waves.’
‘I’d certainly never thought of it like that!’ replied Roxanne.
‘I suppose the big difference,’ Liam responded, ‘is that when you are sailing, you are trying to get into a position where the wind and the waves are actually helping you. That’s never going to happen in a chess tournament – your opponent helping you, I mean, not the wind and the waves!’
OK , Roxanne thought, here is someone who likes to think ahead, predict what might happen and change course accordingly . Liam seemed easy going, relaxed and confident chatting to his new boss for the first time. Roxanne moved the conversation on to business and listened while Liam explained his initial thoughts on improving performance in his area.
At 8 a.m. Roxanne called Mitchie in Singapore, where it was 3 p.m. on a typically humid afternoon. Mitchie was wearing a loose cardigan over a patterned blouse.
‘It’s funny here,’ she laughed, ‘it’s so hot outside that the lightest clothes are all you need, but everywhere has air conditioning that’s freezing cold, so in the office everyone has an extra layer on!’
Roxanne soon worked out that Mitchie preferred to talk about life in Singapore in general, rather than about herself. Her goal was to buy a flat of her own from the HDB – the Housing and Development Board.
‘If you are single, you can’t buy an HDB flat until you are thirty-five,’ Mitchie explained, ‘unless you buy with someone in your family. I love my four brothers,’ she went on, ‘but I don’t want to live with any of them! Anyway, it gives me four more years to save for my deposit.’ As the conversation turned to business, Mitchie outlined some of the challenges she was facing. ‘People here are very diligent and work very hard. You know, it’s a money-driven society, but it’s also a rule-driven society.’ She laughed, then went on. ‘We have rules for everything here, and in some ways that’s great. Singapore is not only beautiful, it’s also clean and virtually crime free. And we are very polite! After all, you can be sent to jail for getting in someone’s way on the pavement! However, because of that, there tends to be very strict ways of doing things. Even though our office here has a relatively westernised culture, it is still difficult to change things. I can see l