3. Environmental Complexities

The work and international office environment consisted of personnel with multi-cultural back grounds and language barriers. In addition, just about every market expected different product marketing support materials. And the organization in its multi-national markets functioned and communicated about 90% by internet and intranet emails. The rest of the 10% correspondence took place in person and by telephone.

The main reason for the majority of communication having been by internet was the time differences from Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, New York, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Sidney, Munich, London, and Moskow, and other market areas. English was the main correspondence language between employees, but language understanding varied from country, culture, education levels, position type, and experience. And the electronic correspondence and communication methodology appeared sophisticated and therefore preferable.

There was also a barrier between management levels. Bureaucracy dictated in one market to go through specific communication channels rather than communicating directly regardless of rank or position. Other markets were in support of, and requested direct communication. This created conflict between some organizational structures and departmental teams because higher management levels felt they were left out of the communication loop.

Communication became increasingly complex keeping usually more than 10 stakeholders in the loop, sending them a carbon copy of the email correspondence. Including stakeholders in the loop in internet email correspondence can quickly lead to massive email chains. As a daily rule, it was not uncommon receiving more than 200 emails. And the complexity of work increased because now more than 10 stakeholders were copied in with the correspondence.

The stakeholders did not all have a perfect understanding of the entire organizational collaboration between departments and each department’s role, or their job descriptions / responsibilities. To one hand some expectations from known stakeholders where too high. To the other hand other not-so-known stakeholders were left out from the correspondence that should have otherwise been included in the email chain.

When not-included stakeholders found out they were not included at all or made aware of a process change during an advanced stage a conflicting situation arose. Stakeholders had to be updated of what was already achieved and likely changes were made, then including suggestions of the stakeholder. And these stakeholders were also put into a negative situation, affecting, perhaps even possibly sabotaging the change project.

A massive email chain of demands, requests, and opinions changed hands, always with time-gaps of a day before one could respond, at times delaying projects by weeks. And different opinions based on cultural differences, feelings, back grounds, education, language barriers, and country-specific regulatory affairs requirements invoked a chain reaction of constant change. People became irate because work progress came to a halt and requests were not fulfilled according to expectations, and countries were threatened running out of product.