COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA 257-11
COURSE TITLE: Global Teams
UNITS OF CREDIT: 2 units, 10 weeks (Start 1/26, End 4/6 with Spring Break)
INSTRUCTOR: Homa Bahrami
EMAIL: bahrami@haas.berkeley.edu
MEETINGS DAY/TIME: Saturdays, 9:00AM-12:00PM
PRE-REQUISITE(S): EWMBA Core Courses
CLASS FORMAT: Workshop, discussion, guest speakers, lectures
REQUIRED READINGS: Course reader
BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Class participation, individual assignment, team project
ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES
This course is about
effective teamwork and collaboration in global companies. We will focus on the
most challenging and complex forms of collaboration; teams that operate across
cultures, disciplines, geographies and time zones. Recent surveys of global business
leaders and entrepreneurial founders cite distributed teamwork and cross-silo collaboration
as a critical success factor and a major source of competitive advantage. This
is hardly surprising. As technology and globalization have transformed the
business landscape, global teams have become the enterprise backbone. They
drive innovation, execution, and employee
satisfaction. The
course focuses on new trends, communication challenges and effective
practices in global teams. We will focus on profiles of effective teams, what it takes to juggle
different priorities, create trust and alignment, interact with diverse
stakeholders, and perform under time pressures and resource constraints. The
new leadership challenge is how to drive teamwork and deliver results in
complex, geo-distributed, fast-moving and unpredictable global contexts.
The course is
designed to link theory and practice. You’ll learn about the latest field
research as well as what it takes to apply the ideas, using practical tools and
actionable techniques. Invited guests from different industries will share
their team experiences, and present us with “live” challenges and real-time
case studies.
Topics include:
a.
The new world
of business: Global teams & geo-centric organizations
b.
Profiles of
effective and ineffective global teams & team members
c.
Diagnostic
tools for assessing a global team’s health & impact
d.
Acquisition
integration and global teams
e.
Organizing
global teams for innovation
f.
Setting (and
re-setting) priorities in global teams
g.
Building
trust and creating alignment in global teams
h.
Effective
interactions & use of diverse communication tools
i.
Stakeholder
management & conflict resolution
j.
Effective
Leadership and critical competencies in global teams
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Dr. Homa Bahrami is a Senior Lecturer at the Haas
School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, a
Faculty Director at the Haas Center for Executive Education, and on the Board
of the Haas Center for Teaching Excellence. She is the co-author of a leading
textbook (with Harold Leavitt, Stanford) "Managerial Psychology: Managing Behavior
in Organizations", published by the University of Chicago
Press, and translated into many languages. Her latest book “Super-Flexibility for Knowledge
Enterprises”, published by Springer (co-authored with Stuart Evans from
Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley) focuses on practical approaches for
strategizing, organizing and leading knowledge workers in today’s dynamic
world. Homa serves on several boards in Silicon Valley and Europe and is active
in executive education, executive development, and executive coaching in the
US, Europe, and Asia. She works with executive teams on complex
re-organizations, team effectiveness and enterprise transitions, and with HR
professionals on executive development and learning interventions. She is the
Faculty Director for the new executive program “Boot Camp for Experienced
Managers: Driving Teams for Innovation and Growth” as well as the “New Manager
Boot Camp for Engineers and Scientists”; both programs are offered by the Haas
Center for Executive Education.