Split Up the Overall International Business Project (part 4): Barriers

Why don’t all or more international projects follow the above approach (see part 1, part 2, part 3)? Well, there are cultural and political barriers. First, project leaders may not want to force people in different locations to work together due to distance, culture, and other factors. They feel that this increases risk. Actually, it reduces risk.

What about time zones and culture? You are going to assign joint tasks between people in different locations within each subproject. Then you want the individuals to work out how they will deal with time and culture. The project leaders can help, but you want the people to gain experience and lessons learned from doing it for themselves.

Another reason is that many times the project is organized along the same lines as the organization. This often reflects faulty logic since you tend to have greater success using a matrix approach by going across locations.