My Time or Yours

MY TIME OR YOURS? MANAGING TIME VISIONS IN GLOBAL VIRTUAL TEAMS
The use of Global Virtual Teams (GTVs) is increasing among organizations, to help them accomplish their goals.
• Increase communication
• More productive, bridge across global time zones so they can be more productive.
• Overnight feedback. As for feedback in NY at night from Tokyo, and have a response first thing in the morning
• However, can create coordination difficulties due to differences in time.
What is time?
• Different perceptions across cultures.
• Very subjective, varies across continents, countries, time zones.
• Hard to explain, psychologist try to explain it as “objective” time and “subjective” time
• Can be lost, spend, or wasted following western perceptions
• Helps employees get paid. Tool for production. Time is a constraint in the production process.
Event
• Event time vision perceives time as cyclical, continuous, and epochal.
• Example: Two minute exchange of business cards between Japanese executives meeting for the first time.
Regions where Hinduism or Buddhism predominates tend to adopt the timeless notion of time. Also, view synchronization as critical aspect of time
In contrast, harmonic is the sense of time (timelessness) in Confucianism and Taoism. Promote a time vision based in harmony.
Time Vision and Organizations
• Depends among societies and work organizations
• Time vision of time of individuals is shaped by society. So, it varies across societies
• Organizations know how to determine time constraints and know when to expect actions to happen.
Virtual Teams and Time Visions
• Managers try to reconcile time vision differences among participants in GVTs
• Different time visions affect the performance of a GTV.
• GTV members hold a time vision in terms of completion of a series of activities.
• GTVs have to agree in time for deliverables. Be clear about it.
• Synchronizing time. Achieve a team rhythm
• GTVs need to maintain rhythm around intense face-to-face interaction
• Toyoda Kiichiro, founder of Toyota view synchronization importance
• Allocating time. Performance measures. Time is accounted to measure labor costs, estimates. Time measures activities with predictable durations, sequencing, and interactions.
• All described above, has to be well managed.
• Scheduling and synchronizing may be linked to deadlines. This calls for managing time focus and allocation. Place priorities and values first.
• Create awareness of time among GTVs. Team members whose views of time differ a lot from those in the other side of the communication line, may exhibit withdrawal behaviors such as low satisfaction, absenteeism, and turnovers. When developing timelines, managers have to consider different time synchronization among members.
Developing and Facilitation of time visions
• Facilitating the development of team norms, so everybody is in the same page. GTV leaders should lay the groundwork for developing norms, with the help of the team interaction
• Matching technology with time visions is very important, because is the bridge used for communication. Automated scheduling tools such as GANTT and PERT charts, make team members, especially members with cyclical time visions, aware of the team schedules.
• Avoid time language traps that can be hard to interpret to different cultures. “I’ll be there in a minute”, “wait a minute”, “I’ll be with you in a minute”. These can be confusing to a non-western. Specify the latest an activity can start, the time before an activity may not start, the earliest an activity may cease, the latest and activity must be completed. Also, time writing has to be clear: 1:59:55, 2 p.m., 2:01, be there before 2.
GTVs challenges
• Create awareness of the different time visions among team members
• Facilitate the development of time-related team norms
• Create an intersubjective time vision
• Avoid time languages traps
• Apply multiple, appropriate performance measures that reflect sensitivity to differing time visions.