Case: The Jamming by Dragan Z. Milosevic, Peerasit Patanakul, and Sabin Srivannaboon

SCENARIO 1: JAM WITH THE COUNTERPART

An executive five - member team was formed to manage a small but global company. Because they were allowed to choose where they wanted to live, the team spread across Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and England. Although each member was multilingual, they spoke in English during their weekly teleconference. Every month the team met at one of the company ' s divisional headquarters and spent the next day with the managers from that division. Members were encouraged to be part of every discussion, although their individual roles were very clear, so that interaction on a day - to - day basis was unnecessary. Even though the team never went through a formal team - building process, its emphasis on an agreed team mission, shared business values, and high-performance goals for all members made it a true model of a well - jammed multicultural team.

SCENARIO 2: THE NPD GAME

When the team members first went to work on a product development project in a small high - tech company in the United States, it appeared that they would forever be at odds over every aspect of managing a project. A few projects and many fights later, however, a German, an American, a Mexican, and a Macedonian looked as cohesive as any other team. As they marched through their projects, they acquired an in - depth knowledge of each other ' s cultures and project management scripts. Not only did they know each other ' s religious holidays and eating habits, but they also reached a point of accepting American concern for cost tracking, German obsession with precise schedule management, Macedonian dedication to team spirit, and Mexican zeal for interpersonal relationships. The road to their masterly jamming was not paved by deliberate actions. Rather, it evolved from patient learning, many dead ends in their interactions, and the need to be successful in their work.

JAMMING

The situations described here can be called " jamming, " - a strategy that suggests the project manager and the counterpart improvise, without an explicit mutual agreement, and transform their ideas into an agreeable scenario for their work. In this sense, they are like members of a jazz band following the loose rules of a jam session. " Jazzers " jam when they begin with a conventional theme, improvise on it, and pass it around until a new sound is created. This strategy implies what is apparent in the executive team (scenario 1) - all team members are highly competent. Such competency enabled them to fathom the counterparts ' assumptions and habits, predict their responses, and take courses of actions that appealed to them. Another condition was met for jamming to work with the executive team, in particular, understanding the individuality of each counterpart. A counterpart ' s fluency in several scripts clearly meant that he or she might propose any of the scripts ' practices. Knowing the individuality then meant anticipating the practices. That the counterpart was analyzed as a person with distinct traits, and not only as a representative of a culture, was the key to successful jamming. However, there are intrinsic risks in the use of the jamming strategy. As it occurred in the initial phase of the high - tech team (scenario 2), some counterparts did not read the jamming as recognition of cultural points, but rather as an attempt to seek favor by flattery and fawning. Although the team never faced it, it is also possible that jamming may lead to an " over personalisation " of the relationship between the project manager and the counterpart, characterized by high emotional involvement, loss of touch with and ignorance of other team members, and reluctance to delegate. Jamming ' s basic design may not be in tune with all cultures and may not even be appropriate for the execution by teams composed of members with varying levels of competency in other people ' s project management scripts. While in its early stage of development the high - tech team members ' varying levels of competency were a significant roadblock, their further learning and growth got them over the obstacle. Still, the number and intensity of cultural run - ins that the team experienced before maturing supported the view that this strategy tends to be shorter on specific instructions for implementation and higher in uncertainty than any other unilateral strategy. However, its plasticity may be such a great asset to multicultural project managers that many of them view it as ideal in the development of a culturally responsive project management strategy.

Question :

1. In what situation would the jamming approach work well?

2. What are the pros and cons of the jamming approach?