Group: Ajit Bopalkar, Matt Dezenzo, Richard Johnson, Stanton Man, Suruchi

Sheth, Julia Yang

Group #22

Greg James Case

1. How well has Greg James managed his team? Justify your
evaluation.
Although Greg James has had success in the past from his earlier
management position, he did not effectively manage his global team, as
outlined by the string of problems that culminated in the HS Holding crisis. It
seemed that James had managed his team sufficiently, but the crisis brought
the underlying issues to the surface, showing the actual tensions between
the team members that James had previously not noticed. This shows that
James himself did not accurately assess how well he was managing his team
before the crisis.
An effective way to manage a team is to request team members to
give feedback to the manager, which not only addresses managements
successes, but also brings to the surface potential issues between teams and
management. In the case, we do not know if Greg James had asked for
feedback, but based upon his lack of knowledge of the global teams
underlying issues, we can assume that his this form of interaction was very
limited, which is grounds to presume his inadequacy as a manager of this
team.
In any team, communication is a key factor to its success. James team
is producing output globally, which, because of time zone and cultural
differences, can be difficult and lead to tension between teams. It is fair to
acknowledge that the issue of communication cannot be entirely pinned on
James poor management because time zones are fixed. However, being
aware of the problems time zones cause and balancing out the work load
and unfair hours is key to maintaining employee satisfaction as well as
strong team success. One of the main issues that the Indian team had with

management was their unfairly long work hours on conference days (six in
the morning to ten at night) to accommodate all the other teams. James
shouldve recognized this issue and worked to alleviate the strain placed on
the Indian team.
On top of this, the Indian team has felt greatly underappreciated as a
result of their concerns usually being reviewed last, their few agenda items
compared to the other teams, and being interrupted and ignored in during
conferences. They make the point that when an issue arises, they are usually
the first called upon to solve the problem, but they are not given any
interesting work even though they are more than qualified. One of the
leadership points made in the Handbook is that creating variety in tasks
leads to higher employee satisfaction, which James clearly does not do.
During the crisis, the Indian team leader Rahul tried to take matters into his
own hand and solve the issue because his team, instead of contacting Nick,
because his team wanted to prove the US team, who viewed them as
incompetent, wrong. Each of the teams in the global project should
complement each other in their work, and not be competing for the respect
of their peers. In this instance, communication would have been more
effective if the Indian team did not think that other teams looked down on
them.
Greg James management of the teams becomes very one sided as he
demonstrates favoritism of the United States team. Rather than consulting
all teams on issues and decisions, James and the United States team seem to
make decisions without consulting other teams in their emails, and choose to
copy them as an afterthought. James probably interacts more with the US
team because of his physical proximity, which again brings up a problem of
time zones that he did not recognize. Greg James has poor relationships with
his members, allows problems to escalate, and did not take full responsibility
for the crisis. Though, James does try to keep the big picture in mind while
managing the details that he could. Sun Systems may be responsible for
focusing too much on innovation and too little on team building. When

managing a diverse team, it is at least common courtesy to keep everyone in

the loop to keep the teams on equal footing. If everyone has a share in the
decision making process, these issues between the teams can be reduced or
even entirely avoided. However, James chooses to not build consensus
between teams, yet engages in projects which require that every team be
involved.
In addition to this favoritism, James clearly has a lack of interaction
between other teams in a face to face setting. He addresses this in the last
paragraph, which shows that he is attempting to reconcile these issues.
However, up until now, his management skills are highly questionable. In
the past, we can assume that each branch of the global team was competent
enough on their own with their work, and this lack of communication was not
an issue. But when this crisis occurs, the team panics and ends up losing one
of their biggest clients. From this favoritism, these inter-team issues, and the
evident lack of communication between teams and management, it is clear
that Greg James has not been an effective manager of this team.

2. Who is responsible for the HS Holding crisis?

Greg James is primarily responsible for the HS Holding crisis because
he is the leader of the team. But, it seems that no one is solely at fault
because the problem arose from several misunderstanding and
miscommunication among several members of Sun Microsystems Inc.
Leadership is necessary in order to establish direction, create structures and
systems, and engage with external resources. As the leader, Greg James
failed to complete his main objective. Effective team leadership is ensuring
that the functions that are most critical for achieving team purposes are
identified and fulfilled.
One of misunderstandings happens between Nick the leader of the US
team and Praveen from the Indian team. There is an issue with the lack of

trust between Nick and the Indian team, as well as problems with the contact
protocol where the Indian team could not get in touch with the US team. Nick
decided not to update the clients contact information because he figured
that anyone who needed it could go through him, which was an error in
judgement on his part.
Since it was Monday in India and Sunday in the United States, Praveen
used the weekend protocol instead of the weekday protocol to try and
contact the US branch, a problem that was not accounted for in the contact
protocol. In addition to this, Praveen did not try to directly contact Nick
because hed felt insulted by Nick [who was] overheard saying that the
Indian team wasnt competent. So Praveen tried to fix the problem without
Nick, but could not access information about his client because the case was
not in their support queue where client requests were supposed to be stored.
Adding to the problem, the queue was supposed to be programmed by
the Indian team, but the task was transported to the Dubai team due to
some mid-delegation; however, the concept of the queues use was not
communicated effectively between the two teams. So even though Jamal
from Dubai had properly followed the instructions for programming the
queue (and Ahmed Nazr, the manager for the Dubai team, had a second
programmer check Jamals work and found no problems), the instructions
they were working off were incorrect, so the final product did not work as it
was supposed to. The queue was not meant to be used for emergency
requests, but the system of communication failed to properly relay a task
from one branch to another.
Pam Lawry criticized Greg James for his team members acting as if
they were on separate individualized teams. The lack of unity,
communication, and teamwork is detrimental to the entire team as a whole
because the team does not have a unified goal to strive towards. Instead,
there is a type of hierarchy where some teams feel they are inferior to
others. For example, the French team believed they were earning less money
than the US team, and Nick (United States) feels that the Indian team was

incompetent in completing their tasks. There is a lack of professionalism

between Nick Elliott and Praveen because of personal feelings between
them, which should not have been an issue if they had both followed protocol
that worked properly. Because of this, Praveen let the situation get worse
and Nick did not update the numbers of the client (HS Holdings) thinking that
person in need of this number would directly contact him. Since there is no
unified goal for the organization to attain, this system company will not be
successful in the long-term. Overall, there are a lot of tensions among all the
teams that hurt the global team and hurt the ultimate job performance.
As the leader of the team, Greg James is ultimately the one responsible
for efficient communication and understanding between branches. This was
a major cause of the crisis, which could have been avoided had he
established good communication and rapport between the branches, so he
should bear the responsibility for it. Though individuals were involved in the
crisis, it ultimately stemmed from problems they were not necessarily
responsible for. The advantages of teams include sharing knowledge and
information so that the group can accomplish tasks that are more meaningful
and consequential than the work of an individual performer. Unfortunately,
the lack of communication and understanding led to the HS Holding Crisis.

3. What role, if any, did the Open Work environment play in the
case?
Although Open Work does have an impact on the way employees
communicate and when they work, it does not play a major role in this case.
The Open Work program does not solve or create the issue we are seeing
with the global team. Working from home versus working from the office still
does not allow face-to-face interaction with other branches. Even the
communication tools provided to help Open Work be successful do not

solve the face-to-face communication issues because of the time

differences between branches. Regardless of Open Work, team members
will continue to communicate more effectively within their own branch due to
cultural and time conditions.
Due to the cultural and time zone conditions, the Indian team seems to
be the least satisfied and the US team seems to be the most satisfied with
the Open Work environment. The United States system is fairly flexible but it
is not easily transferrable to other countries due to cultural and legal
constraints. Countries have different cultural values in terms of work and it is
tough to transfer the United States flexible system to them.
Although different or individualized work hours (made possible by
Open Work) may increase the overlap between members of different
branches (perhaps making transitions more seamless) the current strategy of
having briefings before different branches go offline already addresses this
issue. The actual problem lies with the fact that teams transition by being
briefed by the previous team instead of getting information directly from the
source. The individualized work hours still do not solve time zone issues
especially since problems are tied to the times zones of the various clients
and not just the employees.
The issues of the queue specification miscommunication, the tension
between Nick and Praveen, and friction between branches is independent of
the Open Work program. As such, the main impact of Open Work should
be seen within each individual branch, but it seems that each branch team is
effective as its own unit. The root of the problems described in this case are
due to each branch having a difficult time coordinating with the other
branches and giving appropriate feedback to the manager so that everyone
is on the same page. If the teams are able to better communicate with each
other and with James, they will be a lot more cohesive and have better job
performance. With or without Open Work, the issues of diversity, time
zones, and communication breakdowns still persist.

4. What role, if any, does diversity play on this team?

Diversity plays a major role on this team. Since Sun Microsystems, Inc.
is a globally run business, it brings in many factors that differ from a
domestically run business. It is important for the team to have and manage
their diversity in order to work globally. Different cultures manage business in
different ways, which resulted in discrepancies between company branches.
The French employees on the global team are upset of the
compensation mismatch between the US employees pay and their pay
(which was 30% less) even though they were similarly trained. James
explains this discrepancy through Frances local economy. French business
currently has the world's highest level of payroll tax, which at 43% is far
higher than in any other country. The American workers responded by
claiming that French job security is far better and the strict labor laws offer
strong protection to the workforce. In times of an economic downturn, the
French would have a better advantage than the Americans. The French are
also required by law to take (receive) more vacation time. Due to this, the US
branch becomes aggravated about the distribution of work.
Also, UAE employees are concerned that James may not understand
that the UAE differs with culture and business challenges of the Middle
Eastern market (which takes much longer to establish relationships), which in
turn influence deadlines and performance evaluations. The UAE also feels
very disconnected from James and fears becoming a subgroup of India due to
cultural differences (as well as the fact that one of the UAE members was
from Pakistan, which has historically had conflicts with India).

The Indian

team also feels that the other teams are getting the more interesting and
creative work .Therefore the cultural diversity and lack of interaction with
James gives the Indian team little opportunity to dispel their stereotypes for
their propensity for informational technology.

Diversity also played a role in the time that James able to allocate with
each team. This is due to both timezone and geographical issues. James has
more quality face-to-face time with the US team compared to the other
teams. The other teams, India and the UAE in particular, feel that they only
get time at the end of email conversations after decisions are already made.
According to the concept of procedural justice, employees are more satisfied
with their jobs when they have a voice. Because the other teams are getting
the back end of decisions, they are not satisfied with their jobs. Time zones
provide a problem for the India team. The Indian employees have excessively
long hours because of the conference calls and briefing. Doing business in
Dubai generally takes a long time and the team size of India is 16 whereas
the French team is the smallest team.
The communication between James and each team is not the only
issue. The different teams should be able to easily communicate with each
other as well. This will allow Sun Microsystems to be more cohesive.
However, this is difficult as the different teams are from all around the world.
To solve these, there can be scheduled conferences in which delegates from
each team can go to the main base in Paris to have a meeting with each
other and Greg James as well in person. However, the solutions to these
problems are difficult because they commonly come with being a part of a
global collaboration.
On the plus side, an advantage of diversity and global collaboration is
that James can find talent around the world, allowing him to choose from the
best of the best to work for Sun Microsystems, Inc. Because there are offices
all around the world, Sun is able to hold a 24-hour schedule. According to
Lawry, teams come online as the sun rises in their region and take over
projects from areas where the sun is setting.

5. What should James do in the short term? What should James do in

the long term?

Greg James main problem is that his teams have too many internal
conflicts to be able to cooperate with each other. Each country has different
opinions of each other, such as the French team thinking that the American
team responds slowly. Some of the other countries, such as the Indian team,
believe they are not being utilized and have boring work. Also, some teams
feel James favors some teams over than others. The lack of communication
creates more problems when looking into the Open Work program. Since
employees are not required to work in the office and plan their own hours,
some hours may have many people working, while other hours could have
virtually no people working, which could be a problem if another team needs
to contact that team, since proper communication protocols were not put
into action.
In order to resolve some issues in a short run projection, James should
start by apologizing to his teams for any favoritism or neglect they may have
faced or seen. In doing so, he takes the responsibility for the crisis off the
teams and acknowledges each teams predicaments. From there, he should
start addressing other problems that each team has raised.
Since the French team believes the American team is being slow and
inefficient, James could try to motivate the team to respond quicker to
messages. He could also require a minimum number of people in the office
at all times to try and make sure people are working at all times, as well as
create and check the communication protocol to make sure it works before
another issue arises. In the case, Nick Elliot was reported to have his cell
phone off during the emergency. Although he had pointed out each engineer
could still contact him from his home number, it is not the easiest way to get
in contact with Elliot. James should have the managerial staff to create an
emergency contact document with the easiest ways to contact each
manager. This document should be shared between all teams in order to
contact each manager and the managers have to be able to respond quickly
if they are contacted through the information provided in the document. This

will allow each manager to be contacted quickly and should help

communication during an emergency.
Another issue brought up that could be fixed immediately was the
queue for accounts with missing contract numbers. To fix this and ensure
future projects did not fail for the same reasons, James could hold a meeting
with all of the management staff to discuss tasks and goals that he wants
each team to accomplish. He needs to make it clear of what he wants out of
each project to all the teams.
Since the each team is in completely different time zones, it could get
confusing for teams to adjust for the time difference if something was
scheduled on a quick notice. To address this, meetings and conferences
between teams should be scheduled at least a week in advance to allow
people to adjust for the time change.
James also needs to fix problems in the long term. The Open Work
program is a good idea, but needs to have rules and regulations for it. James
should implement some rules that make it mandatory for a minimum number
of people to be working at their respective office at a time. This allows each
team to ensure that they could contact each office at any time.
Since each culture is so different, it is hard for each team to
understand the other teams reasonings behind doing projects a certain way.
A potential solution would be to start implementing collaborative projects
between teams of different branches. This will allow more team building as a
whole and allow each team to understand the culture and differences of the
other team, which could also help with a problem the Indian team brought
up. They felt their assignments were not as interesting or creative as some of
the other teams. With the collaborative system, their team members can
work on more interesting and exciting projects with other teams.
James should also work out the payment system better. The issue
brought up with the payment system was the American team was getting
paid more for the same work. The American team fought back stating the
French team enjoyed job security in a way they could not. James needs to

think of a system to calculate the values of the differences in cultures. Once

this is done, he can have a justification for the payment of each team.
A key feature that could have prevented this incident could be the train
the employees on how to handle an emergency, giving them a guide of who
to call and what to do.
Jamess ultimate goal should be to implement better communication
methods between all the branches. Once that is complete, his team will be
stronger and more efficient.