Working on a team that is globally distributed is a great experience which also presents opportunities for deeper analysis and understanding. Since SPS is a multi-national, and thus multi-cultural, company, I will be writing eight individual blog posts which follow the eight scales of cultures outlined in Erin Meyer’s book, The Culture Map. For my Minnesotan and Canadian colleagues, don’t run away after reading this, but this post will focus on how different cultures provide negative feedback (coined Evaluating in The Culture Map).
Like many companies, we are still predominantly in a Work from Home state, but SPS has put in many precautions and safety measures to allow team members to work from the office safely if they desire to do so (only in areas where it is considered safe to do so). One of our team members was in the Minneapolis office recently and shared these images. Before Covid-19 required us all to move our work to our home ‘offices’, this area was known as the “Creation Station” where team members could come together for a break from work to do some coloring, word games, play Battleship, or most often, work on a puzzle together.
Working on a team that is globally distributed is a great experience which also presents opportunities for deeper analysis and understanding. Since SPS is a multi-national, and thus multi-cultural, company, I will be writing eight individual blog posts over the coming months which follow the eight scales of cultures outlined in Erin Meyer’s book, The Culture Map. This post will cover the Communication scale of The Culture Map.
Much of this content is either directly taken from, or is a summary of, Chapter 1 of The Culture Map, with some examples added for clarity.
SPS Commerce is headquartered in Minneapolis, MN and we have technology teams that span the globe in the following locations: Minneapolis, MN (USA), Little Falls, NJ (USA), Toronto, Ontario (CAN), Kyiv, Ukraine, and Melbourne, VIC (Australia) along with contracted teams in additional locations (India, Bulgaria, Mexico).
These team members are a blend of interns, part-time employees, full-time employees, and contracted team members. Some teams here work entirely within their local office, some have team members that span across a couple of locations and others span numerous geographic locations.
Who says you can’t have a team outing during quarantine / social isolation? I just had a great time connecting with my Melbourne, AUS team members through a virtual “team outing”. We successfully worked our way through The Midnight Express escape room! Luckily, we made it to the end, and with 0 hints :)
Jon Beattie