Post your analysis of the case study, specifically the factors related to effective leadership within a global, virtual organization. In your analysis, be sure to address the following questions:

Leading a Virtual Organization: Introduction

Leading a Virtual Organization: Introduction Program Transcript

NARRATOR: Dr. Craig Marsh is a business executive with over 25 years of experience in organizational leadership, development, and change across a number of industries. In this case study, Craig will present a real world leadership challenge based on his professional experience that will allow you to place yourself in the same situation and to explore in-depth some of the questions that inevitably arise. Would you have made the same decisions? What does the case tell you about the nature of the modern organization and its opportunities for value creation, as well as its limits? And what are the questions it raises for both senior and front-line leadership in the 21st century?

DR. CRAIG MARSH: Hello, I'm Dr. Craig Marsh. And I'm here to introduce you to a real leadership challenge that I was faced with four or five years ago. This leadership challenge was based on a structure, which was a virtual organization of an organization that was globally dispersed and an organization which I was taking over at the time.

At the heart of this situation were two critical constructs. And by constructs I mean an idea that has different meanings to it where the meanings themselves aren't entirely understood or established. And that'll become important in a couple of minutes to you. Those two ideas, or constructs, were employee engagement and also the idea of performance management.

Now, what's really important is that you read, in your classroom, the case study guide. What the case study guide will give you are my thoughts and my own research on these ideas that are going to present to you in the case. What it will also give you are some of the facts about the case because what I'm not going to do is spend my time talking to you about all of the details of the situation that I was presented with.

So once you've read those, you'll get an idea of what I call my own theory and use. So what I do is not only do I lead organizations, but I've also researched, read, and written about them. So I've developed my ideas and my constructs about what we mean by employee engagement, performance management, and leadership. And it's really important that you, as doctoral candidates, do the same such that when you're confronted with a situation you've formed your own ideas about what subjects such as leadership, performance management, and engagement really mean.

Four years ago, I took over a business unit that consisted almost entirely of people working virtually. I had nearly 500 people working for me, who lived all over the world and worked remotely. They were all directly customer facing. And most significant, they were not employed directly by my organization, but were contracted to us, mostly on a part-time basis.

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Leading a Virtual Organization: Introduction

To provide some context, our organization had grown rapidly over the previous four or five years and was confronting a classic consequence of that growth, a start-up culture now requiring scalable structures and processes to ensure that growth and service standards were maintained consistently. As a leader, I inherited very little structure other than some early attempts at putting in place performance indicators and some quality standards, as well as some established central units that supported me for monitoring service quality. I also had a small group of divisional directors reporting to me, each of whom were in charge of sub-unit of my structure with specific and differentiated customer value propositions.

So one of my biggest challenges was the very loose structure of contracted service professionals who provided the main value work to our customers. These service professionals were highly educated and experienced, multinational, and worked remotely from anywhere in the world. There were also mainly part-time and had a tenuous connection to the company. Legally, there were strict constraints on treating them as employees for fear of violating local tax laws.

Because of this, it was very challenging to promote employee engagement and build trust across the team, accurately evaluate performance for all staff, and establish an appropriate leadership structure for this unique situation. I faced a number of questions and set myself the following three key challenges. First of all, how do I introduce a culture of engagement? Secondly, how do I create an effective process for performance management? And then, thirdly, how do I build a leadership structure appropriate for my particular circumstances?

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Leading a Virtual Organization: Introduction

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