■ Going for the Green—With Groups of All Sizes

THE SOFTER SIDE OF GLOBAL TEAMS

Throughout this book, you’ll get many ideas about ways to create and manage teams successfully. But here’s something to consider if you’re working with global teams: different cultures have different expectations about relationships and communication, so if your new team member is from an Asian country, trust might build more slowly— and you might need to lay more groundwork—than when you begin to work with a new teammate from Canada.

In “Tips for Working in Global Teams” (which you can find at www.ieee.org), author Melanie Doulton describes “high-context” and “low-context” countries. In high-context cultures—Indian, Arab, Asian, or Latin—relationships with family and colleagues is paramount, the entire relationship provides the context for communication, protocol is valued and followed, and decisions are made slowly and are often based on relationships. In low-context cultures such as North American, Germanic, and Scandinavian cultures, communication is based less on relationships and more on facts. In other words, the message carries the meaning, whereas in higher context cultures, the relationship sets the stage for the way the message is received. For this reason, be aware that when you’re working with team members from different cultures, they might hear what you’re saying differently than you think. Take time to build trust and establish relationships with your global team members and, when in doubt, check it out.

One of the best aspects of cloud computing is the way it uses—and conserves— resources. Instead of using millions of computers on desktops that are tied into hundreds of thousands of servers that are purchased, maintained, and repaired by thousands of individual companies, cloud computing offers a scalable alternative. Because applications used in cloud computing are web-based, the number of servers used increases as more are needed to support the demand. The additional servers then return to rest when they’re no longer needed. This share-the-load approach, on a large scale, saves electricity, reduces the need for hardware components, and increases the efficient use of the resources used to provide the services.