Tsedal Neeley (@tsedal) is a Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at the Harvard Business School. She is course head of and teaches in the required MBA course LEAD. She has taught in both the MBA (Leading Teams in a Global Economy, Field Global Immersion) and in numerous executive education programs including Leading Global Businesses, Harvard Business Analytics Program and Program for Leadership Development (PLD). Professor Neeley is a recipient of the HBS Charles M. Williams award for outstanding teaching in Executive Education.
With her award-winning book, The Language of Global Success: How a Common Tongue Transforms Multinational Organizations (Princeton University Press), Professor Neeley's research focuses on the challenges that global collaborators face when they work across national boundaries. Successful global collaboration can enable firms to capitalize on the promise of their global reach. For example, firms can draw on their diverse intellectual capital to meet customer demands the world over, giving them a competitive advantage in a range of marketplaces. The scale and complexity of global collaboration, however, makes its promise often hard to realize. Companies now span more languages, geographies, and cultures than ever before, making it more imperative and more difficult for workers to communicate effectively if they are to meet performance targets. To examine the communication challenges that global collaborators face, as well as potential solutions to those challenges, professor Neeley has identified key determinants of effectiveness in global work.
Professor Neeley has also published her work in leading scholarly and practitioner-oriented outlets such as Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Management Science, Journal of International Business, Strategic Management Journal and Harvard Business Review. Her research has been covered in many media outlets such as CNN, Financial Times, NPR, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist.
Prior to her academic career, Professor Neeley spent ten years in industry working for companies like Lucent Technologies and The Forum Corporation in various capacities including strategies for global customer experience, 360 degree performance software management systems, sales force/sales management development, and business flow analysis for telecommunication infrastructures. With extensive international experience, Professor Neeley is fluent in four languages.
Professor Neeley received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Management Science and Engineering specializing in Work, Technology and Organizations. Professor Neeley was a Stanford University School of Engineering Lieberman award recipient for excellence in teaching and research as well as a Stanford Distinguished Alumni Scholar.
Featured Work
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Make Tools Like Slack Work for Your Company
Tsedal Neeley, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Paul Leonardi, a management professor at UC Santa Barbara, talk about the potential that applications such as Slack, Yammer, and Microsoft Teams have for strengthening employee collaboration, productivity, and organizational culture. They discuss their research showing how effective these tools can be and warn about common traps companies face when they implement them. Neeley and Leonardi are co-authors of the article “What Managers Need to Know About Social Tools” in the November-December 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review.
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The Language of Global Success: How a Common Tongue Transforms Multinational Organizations
by Neeley, T. (2017) Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
For nearly three decades, English has been the lingua franca of cross-border organizations, yet studies on corporate language strategies and their importance for globalization have been scarce. In The Language of Global Success, Tsedal Neeley provides an in-depth look at a single organization—the high-tech giant Rakuten—in the five years following its English lingua franca mandate. Neeley's behind-the-scenes account explores how language shapes the ways in which employees who work in global organizations communicate and negotiate linguistic and cultural differences.
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Global Collaboration Simulation: Tip of the Iceberg
This online simulation teaches students about the difficulties in cross-cultural communication and managing global teams. Communicating via chat, teams of 4 or 5 students race against the clock to prepare a VC presentation. Students are assigned the role of a native English speaker or a nonnative English speaker at their organization. The simulation constrains the ways in which the native and nonnative speakers can interact, and the resulting experience replicates communication patterns in real globally diverse and distributed teams. As their team struggles to collaborate, students experience first-hand how communication challenges can interfere with work goals.
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WORKING KNOWLEDGE Cold Call PODCAST: How to Fix a Broken Global Team
Increasingly, almost every team is a global team in some capacity. This presents a difficult challenge for managers everywhere, and especially for high-potential leaders who want to take their careers to the next level: how do you bring together a team whose members are geographically and culturally dispersed? Professor Tsedal Neeley discusses her case of a real-life executive charged with corralling a hugely diverse, underperforming group and leading it back to success on a global scale.
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Global Teams That Work
From the October 2015 Issue of Harvard Business Review
To succeed in the global economy today, more and more companies are relying on a geographically dispersed workforce. They build teams that offer the best functional expertise from around the world, combined with deep, local knowledge of the most promising markets. They draw on the benefits of international diversity, bringing together people from many cultures with varied work experiences and different perspectives on strategic and organizational challenges. All this helps multinational companies compete in the current business environment.
But managers who actually lead global teams are up against stiff challenges. Creating successful work groups is hard enough when everyone is local and people share the same office space. But when team members come from different countries and functional backgrounds and are working in different locations, communication can rapidly deteriorate, misunderstanding can ensue, and cooperation can degenerate into distrust.
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The ‘Promotion’ That Makes You Feel Bad
HBS Working Knowledge Article from July 27, 2015
Receiving an unexpected professional status bump doesn't always feel good, especially if it wasn't really earned. Companies need to be aware of potential problems with unearned status gain, and be ready with solutions, says Tsedal Neeley.
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Getting Cross-Cultural Teamwork Right
Harvard Business Review Blog from September 10, 2014
People struggle with global teamwork, even though it's essential to success in multinational firms. Despite their efforts to nimbly manage differences in time zones, cultures, and languages, cross-border collaborators often fail to reach shared understanding or common ground. They face conflicting group norms, practices, and expectations — all of which can cause severe fracturing along cultural lines.
So how do you negotiate those differences and discover common ground? Through extensive research on global organizations and teams, I've found that learning, understanding, and teaching are three critical factors — on both sides.
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What’s Your Language Strategy?
Language pervades every aspect of organizational life. It touches everything. Yet remarkably, leaders of global organizations, whose employees speak a multitude of languages, often pay too little attention to it in their approach to talent management. As we have observed in countless organizations, unrestricted multilingualism creates inefficiency in even the most dedicated and talented workforces. It can lead to friction in cross-border interactions, lost sales, and a host of other serious problems that may jeopardize competitiveness (see also “Global Business Speaks English,” by Tsedal Neeley, HBR May 2012). Developing a comprehensive strategy for managing language can help transform that vulnerability into a source of competitive advantage.
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Global Business Speaks English
Why You Need a Language Strategy Now
Ready or not, English is now the global language of business. More and more multinational companies are mandating English as the common corporate language—Airbus, Daimler-Chrysler, Fast Retailing, Nokia, Renault, Samsung, SAP, Technicolor, and Microsoft in Beijing, to name a few—in an attempt to facilitate communication and performance across geographically diverse functions and business endeavors.
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Language Wars Divide Global Companies
An increasing number of global firms adopt a primary language for business operations—usually English. The problem: The practice can surface dormant hostilities around culture and geography. Tsedal Neeley discusses her research in this story from HBS Working Knowledge.
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Firsthand experience in global collaboration
For a manager to assume that they can conduct all of their global work without any face-to-face contact is a mistake. In this leadership insight, Professor Neeley discusses how traveling to meet colleagues in other countries not only gives you direct knowledge of what they're doing, but also a better understanding of how they perceive you.
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It's Not Nagging: Why Persistent, Redundant Communication Works
(Top Ten Popular Article of 2011)
CEOs of global companies increasingly mandate that their employees learn English. The problem: these workers can experience a loss of status and believe they aren't as effective in their learned language, says Assistant Professor Tsedal Neeley.
Publications
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Book
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2017
The Language of Global Success: How a Common Tongue Transforms Multinational Organizations
Tsedal Neeley
For nearly three decades, English has been the lingua franca of cross-border organizations, yet studies on corporate language strategies and their importance for globalization have been scarce. In The Language of Global Success, Tsedal Neeley provides an in-depth look at a single organization—the high-tech giant Rakuten—in the five years following its English lingua franca mandate. Neeley’s behind-the-scenes portrayal explores how language shapes the ways in which employees who work in global organizations communicate and negotiate linguistic and cultural differences.
Bringing together 650 interviews conducted across Rakuten’s locations in Brazil, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States, Neeley argues that an organization’s lingua franca is the catalyst by which all employees become some kind of “expat”(someone detached from their mother tongue or home culture). Through her unfettered access to the inner workings of Rakuten, she reveals three distinct social groups: “linguistic expats” who live in their home country yet have to give up their native language in the workplace; “cultural expats” or native speakers of the lingua franca who struggle with organizational values that are more easily transmitted after language barriers are removed; and finally “linguistic-cultural expats” who, while neither native to the lingua franca nor the organization’s home culture, surprisingly have the easiest time adjusting to language changes. Neeley demonstrates that language can serve as the conduit for an unfamiliar culture, often in unexpected ways, and that there are lessons to be learned for all global companies as they confront language and culture challenges. Examining the strategic use of language by one international corporation, The Language of Global Success uncovers how all organizations might integrate language effectively to tap into the promise of globalization. Keywords: Communication;
Residency;
Corporate Strategy;
Globalized Firms and Management;
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues;
Brazil;
France;
Germany;
Indonesia;
Japan;
Taiwan;
Thailand;
United States;
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Article
| Organization Science
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Forthcoming
Head, Heart or Hands: How Do Employees Respond to a Radical Global Language Change Over Time?
Sebastian Reiche and Tsedal Neeley
To understand how recipients respond to radical change over time across cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions, we conducted a longitudinal study of a mandated language change at a Chilean subsidiary of a large U.S. multinational organization. The engineering-focused subsidiary aiming to facilitate cross-border interactions embedded language acquisition experts to transition all employees from Spanish to English full time. We gathered survey data and objective fluency scores from the language change recipients at five points over a period of two years. Using variable and person-centered exploratory analyses, our results suggest that recipients’ negative affective responses to the language change precede their cognitive responses or self-efficacy, predicting their current language learning. Further, we find that recipients’ cognitive and affective responses over time differentially influence two future behavioral outcomes: intention to leave the organization and willingness to adopt the change. While cognitive rather than affective responses over time drive recipients’ intentions to leave, affective responses influence recipients’ willingness to adopt English. Finally, we show that change recipients followed three trajectories of cognitive responses and two trajectories of affective responses over time. We discuss theoretical and practical implications to the literature on organizational change, emotions, and language in global organizations.
Keywords: language;
Communication;
Change;
Employees;
Attitudes;
Emotions;
Globalized Firms and Management;
Citation:
Reiche, Sebastian, and Tsedal Neeley. "Head, Heart or Hands: How Do Employees Respond to a Radical Global Language Change Over Time?" Organization Science (forthcoming).
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Article
| Harvard Business Review
What Managers Need to Know About Social Tools: Avoid the Common Pitfalls So That Your Organization Can Collaborate, Learn, and Innovate
Paul Leonardi and Tsedal Neeley
Workplaces have adopted internal social tools—think stand-alone technologies such as Slack, Yammer, and Chatter, or embedded applications such as Microsoft Teams and JIRA—at a staggering rate. In an ambitious study of 4,200 companies, conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute, 72% reported using them to facilitate employee communication. We have studied internal social tools in various work settings, including banking, insurance, telecommunications, e-commerce, atmospheric science, and computing. The mounting evidence is clear: These tools can promote employee collaboration and knowledge sharing across silos. They can help employees make faster decisions, develop more innovative ideas for products and services, and become more engaged in their work and their companies. Over the past two decades, organizations have sought some of these benefits through knowledge management databases but with limited success. That’s because determining who has expertise and understanding the context in which it was created are important parts of knowledge sharing. Databases do not provide that type of information and connection. Social tools do. But we have found that companies that try to “go social,” as many of them call it, often fall into four traps. In this article, we look at those traps and share recommendations for capitalizing on the promise of social tools.
Keywords: leadership;
management;
social tools;
Social and Collaborative Networks;
Knowledge Sharing;
Performance Improvement;
Management;
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Article
| Strategic Management Journal
Enacting Knowledge Strategy Through Social Media: Passable Trust and the Paradox of Non-work Interactions
Tsedal Neeley and Paul Leonardi
Despite the recognition that knowledge sharing among employees is necessary to enact knowledge strategy, little is known about how to enable such sharing. Recent research suggests that social media may promote knowledge sharing because they allow social lubrication and the formation of trust. Our longitudinal and comparative analysis of social media usage at two large firms indicates that users who participate in non-work interactions on social media catalyze a cycle of curiosity and passable trust that enables them to connect and share knowledge. Paradoxically, the very non-work related content that attracts users to social media and shapes passable trust can become a source of tension, thwarting a firm’s ability to encapsulate knowledge in the form of routines and to use it to enact its strategy.
Keywords: Knowledge Sharing;
Strategy;
Social and Collaborative Networks;
Employees;
Interactive Communication;
Trust;
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Article
| Academy of Management Journal
Unearned Status Gain: Evidence from a Global Language Mandate
Tsedal Neeley and Tracy Dumas
Theories of status rarely address unearned status gain—an unexpected and unsolicited increase in relative standing, prestige, or worth, attained not through individual effort or achievement, but from a shift in organizationally valued characteristics. We build theory about unearned status gain drawing from a qualitative study of 90 U.S.–based employees of a Japanese organization following a company-wide English language mandate. These native English-speaking employees believed that the mandate elevated their worth in the organization, a status gain they attributed to chance, hence deeming it unearned. They also reported a heightened sense of belonging, optimism about career advancement, and access to expanded networks. Yet among those who interacted regularly with Japanese counterparts, narratives also revealed discomfort, which manifested in at least two ways. These informants engaged in “status rationalization,” emphasizing the benefits Japanese employees might obtain by learning English, and predicated on whether the change was temporary or durable, a process we call “status stability appraisal.” The fact that these narratives were present only among those working closely with Japanese employees highlights intergroup contact as a factor in shaping the unearned status gain experience. Supplemental analysis of data gathered from 66 Japanese employees provided the broader organizational context and the nonnative speakers’ perspective of the language shift. These findings expand our overall understanding of status dynamics in organizations and show how status gains can yield both positive and negative outcomes.
Keywords: Status and Position;
Equality and Inequality;
Spoken Communication;
Organizations;
Japan;
United States;
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Article
| Harvard Business Review
Global Teams That Work
Tsedal Neeley
Many companies today rely on employees around the world, leveraging their diversity and local expertise to gain a competitive edge. However, geographically dispersed teams face a big challenge: physical separation and cultural differences can create social distance, or a lack of emotional connection, that leads to misunderstandings and mistrust. To help global team leaders manage effectively, the author shares her SPLIT framework for mitigating social distance. It has five components: Structure—If a team is made up of groups with different views about their relative power, the leader should connect frequently with those who are farthest away and emphasize unity. Process—Meeting processes should allow for informal interactions that build empathy. Language—Everyone, regardless of language fluency, should be empowered to speak up. Identity—Team members must be active cultural learners and teachers to understand one another's identity and avoid misinterpreting behaviors. Technology—When choosing between videoconferencing, e-mail, and other modes of communication, leaders should ask themselves if real-time conversation is desirable, if their message needs reinforcement, and if they are opting for the technology they want others to use.
Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management;
Groups and Teams;
Performance;
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues;
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Article
| Harvard Business Review
What's Your Language Strategy?: It Should Bind Your Company's Global Talent Management and Vision
Tsedal Neeley and Robert Steven Kaplan
Language pervades every aspect of organizational life. Yet leaders of global organizations—where unrestricted multilingualism can create friction—often pay too little attention to it in their approach to talent management. By managing language carefully, firms can hire and develop the best employees, improve collaboration on global teams, and strengthen the company's footing in local markets. Language proficiency—either in a lingua franca, or shared language, or in a local language—does not guarantee high performance. Recruiters may favor fluency over other capabilities. They may rely on external hires with language skills rather than grooming internal candidates with the capacity and motivation to learn new languages. And leaders may give expatriate assignments not to the best candidates but to people who speak certain languages. To hire and promote the best people, firms may need to provide training to meet global and local language needs. Fluency in a language also does not equal cultural fluency. For leaders, understanding the cultural background of each team member and customers is as essential as learning to conjugate new verbs. The same can be said for employees at all levels: even when they are fluent in the lingua franca, a lack of cultural understanding can cause significant misunderstandings. To prevent such rifts, language training must include cross-cultural education.
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Article
| Journal of International Business Studies
Language as a Lightning Rod: Power Contests, Emotion Regulation, and Subgroup Dynamics in Global Teams
Pamela J. Hinds, Tsedal Neeley and Catherine Durnell Cramton
Through an ethnographic study comprised of interviews with and observations of 96 globally distributed members in six software development teams, we propose a model that captures how asymmetries in language fluency contribute to an us vs. them dynamic so common in global teams. Faultlines, formed along the dimensions of asymmetries in the degree of fluency of team members, location, and nationality, were associated with subgrouping in some, but not all of the teams. Our findings suggest that divisive subgroup dynamics only occurred in teams that also suffered from power contests, suggesting power contests activate otherwise dormant faultlines. Language asymmetries further acted as a lightning rod such that team members' emotional responses to them were constant reminders of subgroup differences on these teams, which further fueled negative emotions. Our findings extend theory on subgroup dynamics in global teams by adding language as a potential faultline, showing how power struggles activated faultlines and were, in turn, reinforced by them, and documenting the emotion regulation processes triggered by subgrouping and enacted through language-related choices and behaviors.
Keywords: Equality and Inequality;
Communication Intention and Meaning;
Groups and Teams;
Software;
Emotions;
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues;
Power and Influence;
Information Technology Industry;
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Article
| Organization Science
Language Matters: Status Loss & Achieved Status Distinctions in Global Organizations
Tsedal Neeley
How workers experience and express status loss in organizations has received little scholarly attention. I conducted a qualitative study of a French high-tech company that had instituted English as a lingua franca, or common language, as a context for examining this question. Results indicate that nonnative English-speaking employees experienced status loss regardless of their English fluency level. Yet variability in their self-assessed fluency—an achieved status marker—was associated with differences in language performance anxiety and job insecurity in a non-linear fashion: those who believed they had medium level fluency were the most anxious compared to their low and high fluency co-workers. In almost all cases where they differed, self-assessed rather than objective fluency determined how speakers explained their feelings and actions. Although nonnative speakers shared a common attitude of resentment and distrust toward their native English-speaking co-workers, their behavioral responses—assertion, inhibition, or learning—to encounters with native speakers differed based on their self-perceived fluencies. No status differences materialized among nonnative speakers as a function of diverse linguistic and national backgrounds. I discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for status, achieved characteristics, and language in organizations.
Keywords: Organizations;
Status and Position;
Loss;
Spoken Communication;
Emotions;
Attitudes;
Behavior;
Globalization;
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Article
| Management Science
Reflected Knowledge and Trust in Global Collaboration
Mark Mortensen and Tsedal Neeley
Scholars argue that direct knowledge about distant colleagues is crucial for fostering trust in global collaboration. However, their arguments focus mainly on how trust accrues from knowledge about distant collaborators' personal characteristics, relationships, and behavioral norms. We suggest that an equally important trust mechanism is "reflected knowledge," knowledge focal actors gain about the personal characteristics, relationships, and behavioral norms of their own site through the lens of their distant collaborators. Based on surveys gathered from 140 employees in a division of a global chemical company, we found that direct knowledge and reflected knowledge enhanced trust differentially. While both enhanced feelings of closeness with others, results indicate that direct knowledge increased focal actors' understanding of their distant colleagues, while reflected knowledge promoted feelings of being understood. We discuss implications of reflected knowledge to theories of trust and interpersonal dynamics in globally distributed collaboration.
Keywords: global work;
organizational studies;
Knowledge;
Trust;
Cooperation;
Global Range;
Relationships;
Behavior;
Personal Characteristics;
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Article
| Organizational Dynamics
The (Un)Hidden Turmoil of Language in Global Collaboration
Tsedal Neeley, Pamela J. Hinds and Catherine D. Cramton
Companies are increasingly relying on a lingua franca, or common language (usually English), to facilitate cross-border collaboration. Despite the numerous benefits of a lingua franca, our research reveals myriad challenges that disrupt collaboration and contribute to process decrements and productivity losses, many of which are hidden from leaders' attention. Through a series of field studies with global companies, we document language dynamics among global workers. Most notably, we found that both native and nonnative English speakers suffer anxiety when faced with conducting business in English. Nonnative English speakers respond with anxiety-mitigating strategies, such as avoiding English-only speakers or reverting to their native language, thus passing the problem like a "hot potato" to their native English-speaking colleagues. Native English speakers respond with strategies to reduce their own anxiety, such as exiting meetings and demanding that English be spoken, which passes the burden back to their nonnative English speaking colleagues. This back-and-forth dynamic often occurs because the feelings and experiences of native and nonnative co-workers are hidden from each other. Empathy arrests this cycle, leading to more sensitivity and accommodation of language diversity. Based on the insights from our research, we present lessons that global managers and collaborators alike can employ to halt the "hot potato" cycle and minimize productivity loss in global collaborations.
Keywords: Strategy;
Loss;
Spoken Communication;
Performance Productivity;
Research;
Global Range;
Problems and Challenges;
Diversity;
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues;
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Article
| Organization Science
How Managers Use Multiple Media: Discrepant Events, Power, and Timing in Redundant Communication
Paul Leonardi, Tsedal Neeley and Elizabeth M. Gerber
Several recent studies have found that managers engage in redundant communication; that is, they send the same message to the same recipient through two or more unique media sequentially. Given how busy most managers are, and how much information their subordinates receive on a daily basis, this practice seems, initially, quite puzzling. We conducted an ethnographic investigation to examine the nature of events that compelled managers to engage in redundant communication. Our study of the communication patterns of project managers in six companies across three industries indicates that redundant communication is a response to unexpected endogenous or exogenous threats to meeting work goals. Managers employed two distinct forms of redundant communication to mobilize team members toward mitigating potentially threatening discrepant events-unforeseen disruptive occurrences during the regular course of work. Managers with positional power over team members reactively followed up on a single communication when their attempt to communicate the existence of a threatening discrepant event failed, and they determined that a second communication was needed to enable its joint interpretation and to gain buy-in. In contrast, managers without positional power over team members proactively used redundant communication to enroll team members in the interpretation process-leading team members to believe that they had come up with the idea that completion of their project was under threat-and then to solidify those interpretations. Moreover, findings indicate that managers used different types of technologies for these sequential pairings based on whether their motivation was simply to transmit a communication of threat or to persuade people that a threat existed. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory about, and the practice of, technologically mediated communication, power, and interpretation in organizations.
Keywords: Communication;
Media;
Information;
Groups and Teams;
Projects;
Management Style;
Power and Influence;
Motivation and Incentives;
Technology;
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Article
| Academy of Management Proceedings
Affective, Cognitive and Behavioral Trajectories of Change Recipients in Global Organizations
B. S. Reiche, T. B. Neeley and N. Overmeyer
Research rarely addresses how change recipients respond to radical change across affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions over time. We examined a radical change in a recently acquired subsidiary of a U.S.-based global organization over a two-year period. With the aim to standardize communication across borders, the subsidiary changed its native working language from Spanish to English. External experts were embedded to support the acquisition by ensuring that all employees learn English. Using latent class growth modeling, our results suggest that change recipients followed distinct trajectories in their demonstrated ability, efficacy and affect. Further, we show that affective states—more so than demonstrated ability or efficacy—influence change recipients’ willingness to adopt the change. By contrast, change recipients’ turnover intentions are driven by their levels of demonstrated ability and efficacy rather than their affective states.
Keywords: Change;
Spoken Communication;
Globalized Firms and Management;
Behavior;
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues;
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Chapter
| Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, Volume 6: International Management
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2014
The Language of Global Management
Tsedal Neeley
Over the last two decades, organizations seeking global expansion have been mandating an English lingua franca, or common language to facilitate global collaboration regardless of the country location of their headquarters. This article explains why stipulating a lingua franca for employees has replaced the exclusive use of language brokers. In the era of a business lingua franca, nevertheless, gives rise to the phenomenon of native and nonnative speakers. While a lingua franca can unify a nationally and linguistically diverse workforce, nascent research reveals challenging dynamics among speakers of various levels of lingua franca fluency. In-depth studies at the micro-, macro-, and meso-levels can shed important light on this nascent field of research.
Keywords: Networks;
Governance;
Technology;
Management;
Ethics;
Emerging Markets;
Innovation and Invention;
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Case
| HBS Case Collection
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June 2019
Eric Hawkins Leading Agile Teams @ Digitally-Born AppFolio (A)
Tsedal Neeley, Paul Leonardi and Michael Norris
Eric Hawkins, director of engineering at AppFolio—a digital technology firm that offered cloud-based business software to small and medium sized companies—was shocked by an unusual request from his senior leadership team. Could Hawkins and one of his agile teams build a check scanner feature inside their management software? AppFolio’s founders had instructed to never build a check scanner; providing technologies to help businesses move into the digital era was a primary company goal. A scanner for paper checks would contradict the hard-won culture of software innovation and project self-selection that AppFolio and Hawkins’ teams lived by. Hawkins also worried that creating a new team to work on the check scanning project would cause workload and morale issues. But the sales team believed that this technology could close deals with larger, more complex property management companies, some with managers who wanted the check scanner feature. Several large-scale deals were on the line. Hawkins quickly assembled an agile market validation team and considered two options: hold fast to the company’s values and refuse to build the check scanner feature or capitulate and build a basic check scanner with minimum functionality. Engineers would likely consider this a “loser” project, yet sales might get a boost that could open a new revenue stream. Hawkins had to make his decision quickly.
Keywords: digital transformation;
values;
Agile;
vision;
corporate culture;
Leadership;
Values and Beliefs;
Organizational Culture;
Decision Choices and Conditions;
Technology Industry;
United States;
California;
Citation:
Neeley, Tsedal, Paul Leonardi, and Michael Norris. "Eric Hawkins Leading Agile Teams @ Digitally-Born AppFolio (A)." Harvard Business School Case 419-066, June 2019.
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Case
| HBS Case Collection
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April 2019
(Revised June 2019)
From Globalization to Dual Digital Transformation: CEO Thierry Breton Leading Atos Into 'Digital Shockwaves' (A)
Tsedal Neeley, JT Keller and James Barnett
Thierry Breton, chairman and CEO of IT company Atos, faced a pivotal juncture. After spending eight intense years scaling the company globally to over 100,000 employees in 70 countries, he was ready to take the next crucial step. Breton was convinced that rapid digital shockwaves would cause transformative disruption and become key to competitiveness for companies, including his own. To take the digital leap, Breton needed Atos to undergo dual digital transformation—defined as redesigning the underlying processes and competencies of an organization to become more adaptive using digital technology, from artificial intelligence and machine learning to the Internet of Things, while simultaneously guiding customers through the same changes. Breton had also struck a high-profile partnership with Google to deliver cloud design and artificial intelligence to customers. But now that the deal had been announced, Atos had to deliver. The firm's top leadership was split on how to equip Atos' large workforce for its digital transformation. In one view, Atos needed to motivate the majority of its employees to voluntarily complete digital certification programs. In another view, on-the-job learning was the best way to train both technical and non-technical employees in the digital skills relevant to their respective roles. Breton had to determine which approach would be the fastest and most effective way of upskilling his workforce to meet the demands of dual digital transformation.
Keywords: dual digital transformation;
Transformation;
Disruption;
Employees;
Competency and Skills;
Training;
Decision Making;
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Teaching Note
| HBS Case Collection
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April 2017
Global Leadership in a Dynamic and Evolving Region: Molinas @ The Coca-Cola Company (A, B, C, D)
Tsedal Neeley and Nathan Overmeyer
Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 417-068, 417-069, 417-070, and 417-071.
Keywords: functions;
structure;
centralization;
Decentralization;
diversity;
experience and expertise;
crisis management;
country of origin effects;
global contextual intelligence;
Leading Change;
Crisis Management;
Organizational Structure;
Experience and Expertise;
Situation or Environment;
Central Asia;
Turkey;
Citation:
Neeley, Tsedal, and Nathan Overmeyer. "Global Leadership in a Dynamic and Evolving Region: Molinas @ The Coca-Cola Company (A, B, C, D)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 417-084, April 2017.
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Case
| HBS Case Collection
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April 2017
Global Leadership in a Dynamic and Evolving Region: Molinas @ The Coca-Cola Company (A)
Tsedal Neeley and Esel Çekin
Galya Frayman Molinas, President of Coca-Cola's Turkish business and a 20-year company veteran, is unexpectedly asked to take the helm of a newly expanded territory with operations across eight additional countries in Central Asia: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. With seemingly competing instructions to accelerate growth, while not diluting focus in Turkey or Central Asia, Molinas must decide how to balance change versus continuity across functions and country locations. In the meantime, tensions arise among the newly combined members of her business unit, as some fear being sidelined or losing their autonomy. Molinas wonders whether her team's leadership is too homogenous to manage this diverse and disgruntled group across emerging markets. Centralizing, decentralizing, or creating a hybrid structure is now Molinas' first priority. On top of these pressing organizational issues, shortly after assuming her new role, domestic and international events suddenly derail her unit's 17 consecutive months of record-breaking performance. Molinas and her largely female and Turkish senior leadership team grapple with the significant financial impact of massive protests in Turkey, the rise of anti-American sentiments, growing national health concerns, the reduction of the U.S. Fed's financial stimulus, and capital flight from emerging markets. While Turkey's revenue is in a precipitous decline, Molinas needs the Central Asian region to help alleviate the financial gap during this turbulent time. Molinas questions whether her unit's structure and her homogenous senior team's background are too narrow to help her counteract the external crises.
Keywords: functions;
structure;
centralization;
Decentralization;
diversity;
experience and expertise;
crisis management;
country of origin effects;
global contextual intelligence;
Leading Change;
Crisis Management;
Organizational Structure;
Experience and Expertise;
Situation or Environment;
Central Asia;
Turkey;
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Module Note
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February 2017
Leading Global Teams
Tsedal Neeley
This module aims to help students become effective leaders and members of global teams that must work together across national boundaries and toward a common goal. Students will learn to diagnose the challenges that global teams often face as well as strategies that they can employ to foster effective collaboration in those teams.
Learning to navigate the challenges associated with global teams is a critical component of today's MBA curricula. Students will emerge from their MBA programs to join companies that rely on employees from around the world to help the firms capitalize on the promise of their global reach and resources. Global teams, however, face significant challenges; physical separation and demographic differences can create social distance, or lack of emotional connection between groups, that then contributes to disruptive misunderstandings and mistrust. This module prepares students with the knowledge and skills necessary to address these challenges.
Keywords: Groups and Teams;
Leadership;
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues;
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Case
| HBS Case Collection
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August 2011
(Revised April 2013)
Language and Globalization: 'Englishnization' at Rakuten (A)
Tsedal Neeley
Hiroshi Mikitani, the CEO of Rakuten, (Japan's largest online retailer), is at the helm of an organization that is rapidly expanding into global markets. In a critical stride toward becoming the world's No. 1 Internet services company, Mikitani announces Englishnization—a highly publicized aggressive two-year English proficiency mandate for all 7,100 of Rakuten's Japanese employees. Mikitani's goal is not only to ensure the success of the organization, but also to break down linguistic and cultural boundaries in Japanese society. At the time, only an estimated 10% of the Japanese staff could function in English. The stakes are high: those who do not reach their target score by the deadline risk being demoted. As Englishnization progresses, loss of productivity, lack of time to study, and conflicted views among managers impede staff success. Some employees even question the relevance of Englishnization, particularly for staff working exclusively in Japan. Fifteen months since the announcement, the vast majority had not yet reached their target English proficiency scores. With the deadline rapidly approaching, Mikitani must decide how to proceed to ensure the success of Englishnization, the continued global rise of his organization, and even the future of Japan.
Keywords: Teaching;
Human Capital;
Change Management;
Transformation;
Social Enterprise;
Communication Strategy;
Internet;
Disruptive Innovation;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Strategic Planning;
Leadership;
Global Strategy;
Technology Industry;
Retail Industry;
Japan;
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Case
| HBS Case Collection
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July 2008
(Revised November 2009)
Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A)
Tsedal Neeley and Thomas J. DeLong
Greg James, a global manager at Sun Microsystems, Inc., sets out to meet with his entire 43-member customer implementation team spread across India, France, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America to resolve a dire customer system outage as required by a service agreement. Rather than finding a swift resolution to the rapidly escalating customer situation that motivated his trip, he finds himself facing distributed work, global collaboration, conflict, and management issues that are threatening to unravel his team.
Keywords: Customer Satisfaction;
Crisis Management;
Service Delivery;
Groups and Teams;
Conflict and Resolution;
Technology Industry;
India;
United Arab Emirates;
France;
United States;
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Awards & Honors
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Received the 2018-2019 Robert F. Greenhill Award for Outstanding Service to the HBS Community.
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Winner of the 2018 Axiom Business Book Award Bronze Medal in the International Business/Globalization category for The Language of Global Success: How a Common Tongue Transforms Multinational Organizations (Princeton University Press, 2017).
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Included in the 2018 Thinkers50 On the Radar list—a list of "emerging thinkers with the potential to make lasting contributions to management theory and practice."
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Received the 2015 Charles M. Williams Award for Excellence in Teaching.
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Honored as a 2013 Stanford Distinguished Alumni Scholar.
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Awarded the 2012 Marvin Bower Fellowship by Harvard Business School to support research by outstanding scholars.
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Received the 2006–2007 Stanford University Lieberman Fellowship award at the School of Engineering for excellence in teaching and research.
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