What are the greatest obstacles you've encountered when managing global virtual teams?

Alexandra -

Creating shared understanding at the onset and throughout the duration of the project to avoid having to spend all my efforts in course correction.

Kiron

Alexandra,

The most significant obstacles are the ones that go unspoken due to their cultural connection, for instance:

[1] Different risk tolerance thresholds
[2] Openness to variant leadership styles (e.g., challenge-based)
[3] Perspectives of and tolerance to trust
[4] Approach to decision making
[4] Etc.

The lesson learned is to address these areas upfront and not avoid them due to their uncomfortableness, or else suffer the consequences of constant resets or a derailed project.

George

It is important of understand 'Course correction' takes a whole lot of effort and time. We do need to understand the recent 'Crowdstrike' incident, which teaches us a lot about being right the first time.

- Cultural differences (see Hofstede for potential gaps; it depends on which cultures are combined)
- Scheduling difficulties (employ a tool, set fixed timeslots)
- Lack of trust (if possible, have a f2f kickoff, encourage video when having virtual meetings, establish common signs, rites, habits, do 1:1 chats)
- ambiguous communications