Global Teams: How Top Multinationals Span Boundaries and Cultures with High-Speed Teamwork

Just like the companies in which they function, teams are going global. In every corner of the world, organizations are calling upon people to communicate and cooperate across different cultures, to manage widely dispersed work groups and corporate subsidiaries, and to hurdle multiple time zones. From Singapore to Zurich, Sao Paulo to Detroit, Michael Marquardt and Lisa Horvath have culled the best practices and lessons learned from such global leaders as Glaxo-Wellcome, General Motors University, Marriott and Colgate-Palmolive to show how any organization can create and sustain teams that will work well across the boundaries and barriers of diversity and distance. Marquardt and Horvath bring together detailed case studies, many written by global team members themselves, and Marquardt's 30 years of frontline experience to examine the foundation of global teams—culture and technology—and to present practical advice on how to build trust, develop effective leaders and motivate team members; develop and maintain a sense of team; build teams with a common vision and purpose while encouraging diversity of thinking and action; and tap the power of informational and learning technologies to maximize support of global teams.