Very interesting experience.

I wonder how is possible to shape consense in critical issues when deadlines are running ?.

In my personal experience I frequently seen within artist communities a high level of egocentrism, selfishness, and low will to accept another's ideas, perhas this is a natural feature of artist talents, I wonder if it is the case in all the creative sector.

Great topic. You can add to the difficulties historical enmities between countries and, when researching, the requirement to clear several ethics committees. I also find it interesting to see how different nationalities treat deadlines.

The project manager is crucial as is an overarching goal that all parties agree to. I would also add an upfront agreement on how various (and predictable) difficulties will be managed. For example, if one party does not meet deadlines or disagree with a majority decision.

There are two skills that project managers need to master in managing diversified cultural projects: influencing skill and assertiveness skill. Project managers need to influence the stakeholders to come to a common decision by managing their expectations, interests and requirements. Project managers must also learn to say "NO" diplomatically if the stakeholders' demands and requirements are unrealistic or might have big impacts to the schedule, cost, scope and quality of the project.

From the experiences, if you know that certain party is likely to cause headache or delaying the project, add more buffers to the particular task in the project plan in the first place. Always have a contingency plan (Plan B) if certain party does not meet deadlines. eg. allocate more resources, changing scope, outsource to third parties etc.

Lastly, all team members need to be aligned with the common goals and objectives so that they are aware of the project deadlines and committed to them. To avoid last minutes surprise, to have more regular project meetings to keep track of the progress status.

Multi-cultural Project Team Management:

A very diversified environment, it can make complexities if following areas does not addressed properly:

1. Cultural aspects of different stakeholders.

2. Educational background and academic level of the group.

3. Social and religious background of the group.

4. Historical relationship among the group (national, religious and motivational).

5. Address individual priorities rather go for consensus.

Multi-Cultural Project Team Management can be successful only in case when world population would start to transfer into united (single) World (Earth) community of Earth citizens. Such Earth citizenship is also the only way to protect Humanity from self-destruction and to solve together the world problems and challenges of nowadays. See the project in details at - http://wpf.unesco-tlee.org/eng/wcitiz.htm

Unsustainable if seen by the current selfish approach to market development. Multi-Cultural Project Team Management to work must have "one strong leg to command" and it sounds like an imperialistic movement anyhow. Agreeing with Professor Kondrashin we must not to persuade the stakeholders for a common sense but find socially, culturally, economically and, (why not to say), respectfulness for the differences among different cultures. Idealistically speaking it sound a great challenge. In a real world sounds truly unequal one way or the other.

I wouldn't know where to start but it's not impossible. The main thing is for everyone to keep the objective in mind and that everyone is aware of the different cutures involved. Probably frequent teleconferences would have to be carried out to put a face to a voice or an email. An intercultural bursiness course is essential for all involved. It must be emphasised that the project is seen positively specifically becuase of it's cutural diversity and in this way there's a whole lot of learning experiences to come out of it. Obviously it is very challenging and needs everybody's efforts.

Meeting individual differences and expectations while aligning to the common goals and objectives. I can imagine we need project managers with very strong leadership skills in diversified cultural environment.

I think in big organizations top management has to provide all support to project teams. Otherwise it is recipe for failure.

Yes, unless and until the Project manager have a clear picture on the different cultures that is followed and an excellent communication system to provide easy communication, such scenarios are difficult to manage.

I not see any problem, only a few difficulties with easy form to resolve. The cultural and socila groups (gender included) is a interesting problem, ofcourse not is a problem into a project is a problem out a project. However, Im interesting in your way because I have a same way. Pleas can you contac with me, I need know if do you want to participate in a macro-project.

Multi cultural doesnt have to be multi-national. I have project teams made up of similar ethnic groups with different languages and differing ethnic groups with common and different languages. There is a potential for historical enmity and there is a marked difference in idiom. Different abilities in common languages and sometime quite different cultures adds to the potential for offence. One learns to be a diplomat and to respect other cultures whilst at the same time being supportive to ensure that the job gets done. Common ethical values also helps immensly.

One crucial point I am missing so far is the fact that people rarely end up in multi-cultural teams by accident. This usually brings a certain level of willingness to cooperate and accomodate the views of the others - which in turn makes the intra-team communication much easier than it sounds. However, when it comes to outside stakeholders, the project leader needs to be willing to listen to team members from the respective environment, and allow them to give guidance when needed. Especially project leaders from Western backgrounds are often afraid that taking such behavioral advice would be seen as weakness and a contradiction to "leadership skills". In my experience that creates a lot of entirely preventable problems.

In some Asian cultures, people tends not to raise up comments and issues of the projects in the meetings. We need to have alternate approaches to consolidate feedbacks beside project meetings. For example, project status reports via email. Project Manager could also try to speak to the individual team members to gather more information.

Sometimes it helps to carefully select team members to compliment stakeholder cultures and reduce the likelihood of conflict and misunderstanding. Sometimes it is essential to create a team that clearly shows to stakeholders our commitment to affirmative principles.

From my experience working in multi-cultural teams brings challenges, but also opportunities. People tend to be more open-minded once they realize that their peers can think in different way than they do. In the end we get better results with multi-cultural team.

I think the most important parts are tolerance as well as respecting the other person and his/her culture. Further it is important to have good knowlege of the cultures involved in the project, e.g. different ways of communication, of problem solving, dealing with deadlines, etc.

From my own experience from culture research and leading/participating in Pan-Europrean but also German-Korean projects, communication is the key to success. In order not to only state a buzz-word, let me go a bit into detail. It may appear that I sound a bit "heartless" but this is not the point in project management: The project needs to work and deliver good results; as a project leader, this, and nothing else is your first duty. If you are a really good project leader, your partners will be happy/satisfied/proud of the results in the end and want to do another project with you.

But however, you cannot make everyone happy and from time to time, you will have partners, you may not choose again for a project.

Understanding other partners' culture sounds fine but consequently respecting other partners' culture (in the meaning of tolerating consequences) is just possible to a particular extent and/or within very small projects where all participants frequently can physically (f-2-f) come together: As a project leader, you cannot treat partners differently just because they have a different cultural background. Of course the individuals you have to deal with are different from each other, and you need to be aware of that fact; but cultural stereotyping does not work at all. Forget about the idea of a national culture: There are too many exceptions of the "culture rule". When dealing with people, you deal with individuals. The concept of national culture is fine to get an impression of what conflicts you may expect but however, it finally refers to empirical values that base on majority principles. If 51% of a society feel the need to strictly keep deadlines (typical German virtue), it does not mean that the other 49% also have the same need (means, you also can meet Germans who do not care for deadlines).

Thus, everyone in a project needs to follow the same rules and regulations; else, you sooner will have a rebellion in your project than you can imagine. As a project leader/coordinator, you need to define and communicate such strict rules. As larger a project is, as more detailed rules you will need. At its best, such rules are jointly set up in agreement of all partners, but if this is not possible (the partners have too diverse ideas of working or there are too many partners to bring them all together), finally, you are the project leader/coordinator and they agreed the partnership.

In terms of leading an international project, you first of all should abstract from individuals (persons) and focus on partners (institutions). Sure, you communicate with individuals but those actually are representatives of a partner institution (company, university, association, ...). You always should think twice if the text in an e-Mail could be misunderstood or be too harsh. Written words always are dangerous because there is too much time to read between the lines and there are no mimic/gestures that show how you meant what you said. Avoid any kind of sarcasm or irony in e-Mails if you do not have a personal relationship to the particular recipient. Always be friendly but still, clearly show borders. However, with your partner institutions, you have a written agreement, which should include a clear definition of responsibilities. Bad performance of individuals leads to consequences for the partner institutions. This always must be clear for everyone who works in the project.

When clear words are required because of underperformance of a partner, not stating those because you think the individual could feel bad simply is wrong and dangerous. How do you want to explain such a "favoritism" against the other partners who put the required effort into the project? Why should one partner follow a defined rule when the other partner does not need to do so? This will never work. However a partner feels when being criticized, underperformance, misbehavior, or late delivery are nothing you ever should or can accept.

Right now, I am responsible for the internal Quality Management (QM) of an European project with 51 partners from 20 countries ("Open Discovery Space"). This project is the largest project ever launched by the EC in the context of e-Learning. Each partner has explicitly been selected because of special skills and good experiences in the past. However, from beginning, we already knew there will be conflicts. In such a huge project with so very different partners (cultural, as well as regarding their professional fields), making differences in expectations ("tolerance") because of understanding and respecting each ones culture would lead to an unmanageable chaos. If someone delivers late or does work that is not appropriate for the project, clear statements are required. This is what I meant with "communication is the key for success".

What makes a good project leader/coordinator is knowing about cultural differences and finding a middle course between respecting different cultures and insisting on strictly following rules.

Two aspects have not yet mentioned ... the communication in most international projects often is limited to electronic communication. Regarding understanding ... face to face meetings are required. In my experience, if people have directly talked to each other, they are able to forget about a lot of "unpleasant" things. If they only communicate via e-Mail, they focus on reading between the lines because have no idea how the person on the other side may have meant something. Further, if you suspect that a conflict is upcoming, take the telephone and do a personal call before the conflict is a problem. Implement an intensive scenario of Quality Management in a way that not just the work-progress is monitored but also the level of satisfaction of the participants. Ask your participants what they think that could be done better and follow their suggestions if it is possible (else explain why it isn't). This gives them the feeling that they play a meaningful role, that they have influence, and particularly, that they are respected as professionals/experts. Be aware that international projects are no Kindergarden. You deal with professionals and they expect you being treated on this level.

... just some thoughts I had when reading the original post and some of the responses ...

Two further comments ...

I fully agree with Jakub: Managing multi cultural teams (I prefer "international" instead of "multi-cultural") is a challenge but the results such different perspectives make possible are worth every minute of stress.

Anthony: I made the experience in South Korea that individual meetings help in order to reach a certain level of agreement and understanding. However, the people physically working in a project often are not the same people who take the decisions (different to e.g. Europe). Thus, at least in the South Korean context (maybe this is valid for Asia, but I am not sure if the extreme hierarchical structure is the same in all Asian enterprises/institutions), it sometimes is absolutely necessary to not only focus on the persons who are directly involved but also include their supervisors. Else a friendly smile and understanding are the results of a f-2-f conversation but no consequences in behavior or outcome follow.

Thomas, thanks for the comment. "finding a middle course between respecting different cultures and insisting on strictly following rules." is a good strategy in managing diversified cultures.

The key, as I see it, is very good planning before the project even begins. Clears goals for the project. First, the organization must have a clear focus on who is the customer or client and what it his/her the problem. Second, the organization should have a clear focus on what solution it is offering (product and/or service) as the solution to the problem.

All of the issues raised can be addressed in the planning process to design the organization's value chain based on the customer focus, and not solely on the efficiency of each part. In many cases, the whole DOES NOT equal the sum of the parts but something less.

Building a shared corporate culture, recruiting person to fill appropriate the statuses and roles within the organization who share a professional ethic appropriate to their role, and then training, acculturating, and indoctrinating the recruits in the corporate culture are the steps that will minimize the influence of the diversity you describe.

I'd agree with Barry on the need to factor cultural risks in when planning. That would include customer and team cultural risks. As to indoctrination, that isnt always possible and smacks of being too "Eurocentric". One rathers needs to motivate according to cultural values and gain acceptance.

Indoctrination, as used here, means that everyone is reading from the same script so that the organization's position and values are made clear to the organization's members and its image is projected with some high level of consistency to the outside world. Any "Eurocentrism" is a value judge in the eyes of the critic. Indoctrination is a cultural process, the content is culturally determined. e.g. Christianity (Catholic vs Protestant), Muslim (Sunni vs Shiite), politically (Communist vs Capitalist).

The indoctrination process is designed to integrate members of the organization into a functioning and efficient producer of the desired results so that everyone knows their job and responsibility like a well trained soccer team.

Let me add briefly some obstacles I observed in communication when I worked for a subsidiary of a Japanese company in Hungary:

- most of the Japanese (with some notable exception) do not like to communicate in English. The problem is not only with the level of language knowledge but the uneasy feeling that they do not feel at home in this lenaguage environment. (Neither do I bu I do not lose face if I cannot express myself properly). Sometimes I had to write 8 e-mails before I got some answer (very brief, sometimes needing deciphering). I had very good relations as well (prompt and detailed communication - but this was rare).

- Japanese culture is a high context culture (as defined by E.T. Hall) therefore most of the backgorund knowlegde is assumed to be known and relied on. If you work thousands of miles away from the mother company, you do not necessarily have the needed background information (the technical information, let alone the cultural one). I frequently felt that the task is under-defined and I was supposed to find out what the team manager really wants. I submitted a program, did the work together with my colleagues, and sometimes it turned out that this was not what the really wanted. It did not show up during the work either.

- The systematic evaluation of the work was not done, or at least was not communicated with the team members. If they were satisfied with the results, the projetc was prolonged or we obtained new problems.

- Almost always a Japanese group was working parallel with us on the same problem - seometimes we felt that we were not completely trusted.

- In some cases the real reason to do the research work was communicated to us only afterwards - which was a pity as we might have contributed to solving the real problem instead of that presented to us.

- Japanese engineers attack the technical problem completeyl differently from us. If I have to develop a product, first I try to to selct a material (togetheter with the proseccing technology), characterize them, then buy a processing machine and try to implement the production technology. The Japanese collegues frequently attacked all points of the development chain simultaneously, sometimes by buying a processing machine first (!) - which is quite contrary to our ideas. Nevertheless I would not say they are less successful - sometimes this is the faster (but not necessarily the cheaper) method.

Nevertheless it was an exciting period in my life, I had many Japanese friends, learnt a lot form them and about the Japanese culture.

Thank you for your insights. I am working in Japan and I am going to use the idea of a cross cultural project for an assignment in the doctoral programme!