Start-up Strategies for Building Trust and Transparency Across Global Teams
The global landscape is changing. Recent projections from the Global Cities Institute estimate that by 2100 the five largest cities in the world will be Lagos, Kinshasa, Dar Es Salaam, Mumbai and Delhi. But you won’t need to wait another 80 years before this global shift in population begins to have real-life implications for your day-to-day business operations.
The growth of the middle class, combined with increasing smartphone penetration has led prominent venture capitalist firms to turn their attention to Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. In Africa alone, investment in tech startups grew 53 percent between 2016 and 2017, according to the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator.
With rising focus on emerging markets, business leaders will be required to master building effective, connected cross-functional teams from Karachi to Manila to Rio. While it may never be simple to schedule that global all-hands, there are simple and practical strategies that team leaders can employ to ensure their teams feel as connected and work as efficiently as they would if they were sitting across from each other in San Francisco.
Build for Face Time
Face the facts: your face matters. Facial expressions and gesticulation are essential pieces of communication. If you’re always a voice on a conference call or a few sentences in a chat, it’s difficult to effectively communicate and build relationships with team members. This may seem obvious, but what may be less obvious is the reason why this often proves to be harder said than done. So: let’s talk about your company’s internal IT stack. In emerging markets, reliable internet and your video conferencing becomes your lifeline to your team. A lack of investment in things like internet bandwidth, video equipment, or reliable digital services can mean your day-to-day turns into a Verizon commercial. Can you hear me now? If you have a multi-national team with offices in Kampala and Mexico City, you need to ensure that you invest in the infrastructure to keep your team connected, face-to-face.
Be Realistic with Response Times
When teams are working in the same time zone, it’s easy to get used to sending a Slack message and getting a response in seconds. That changes when your 3 p.m. is 1 a.m. for your team. Managers and team members must change expectations for how quickly questions get responses. Moreover, it’s important for managers to communicate this (lack of) expectation to their teams. You may ping your team at 10 p.m. their time, because it’s 2 p.m. your time, but they may still feel pressure to respond because, hey, it’s not like they are asleep. Take off the pressure let them know that you’re sending messages to ensure they can continue their work tomorrow, and not because you need an immediate response. Your patience in the right now will lead to happier, more productive teams when it counts.
Find the Fun in a Funky Schedule
Tell someone that you get to the office at 6 a.m. and they may think you’re a masochist. But the realities of managing a team that is literally across the world likely means that part of your team’s day will start late and end late; and part of your team’s day will start early and end early. This is particularly true with startups. Embrace it. Having time blocks where everyone is online at the same time — even a few days a week or an hour a day — is critical to keep work moving, conversation open, and teams functioning as, well, teams. Some people love this, but it can take some respectful finessing to make it work and to ensure you’re not alienating team members. People have kids. They train for marathons. They see friends. Work with each team member to understand the reasonable schedule flex that works (as well as it can) for everyone and doesn’t put undue burden on one particular office. And let it be said, once you get used to a schedule where you’ve got meetings from 6:45 to 10 a.m. and big afternoon working blocks, you may not want to go back to an average 9 to 5.
Make Time to be in Market
Working in multiple markets runs the risk of some feeling the work they are doing is low-priority. This can kill team morale fast. Business leaders should look to invest time with each global office early on. Dedicate time to understand the unique pain points for the markets a group is managing, and listen to the viewpoints of the people working there. Upfront investment in in-market time will mean that you’ll be able to more easily empower key team members to make decisions when it matters. You may also pinpoint cultural differences that can meaningfully impact company dynamics. Plus, you’ll more easily provide actionable guidance, set better priorities, and help to solve challenges when they arise.
Working in emerging markets can present a wealth of exciting opportunities and challenges well into the future, but it also requires business leaders to think critically about the culture and team dynamics they are building. Thoughtful, deliberate actions can keep your team performing its best and business continuing to scale.
