This article derives from a presentation at the Product Marketing Summit Sydney, in November 2022. Catch-up on other presentations using our OnDemand service.

You might be wondering exactly what this article’s going to be about. Based on the title, you’ve probably guessed that time zones are going to come into it. That's true. Whenever we’re running global teams, we have time zones to consider.

We also have languages to consider, and perhaps even more than that, we have personalities to consider too. Plus, all of that is compounded by the role of Zoom over the last two to three years.

Those are really important factors to consider even before we start to talk about how operationally efficient these teams are to begin with.

In this article, I'll be discussing:

  • The joy of getting to know your teams in-person
  • Getting everyone on the same page
  • Aligning with sales leaders
  • Coaching your product marketing team to work together
  • Cultivating connectivity and motivation

To start with, let's take a team in EMEA – how well are they operating already within their own remit, geography, and subset? Do they have a good leader there? Do they have good stakeholder relationships? Are they operating well without the need for oversight?

Managing teams that check all those boxes is markedly easier than having to come over the top and start thinking about how to optimize teams with all their languages and time differences. Not to mention that there's another layer of cultural and socio-economic differences on top of all of this.

All of these factors have a multiplier effect on each other, so you're acutely aware of them every time you're engaging and trying to get the best out of these teams.

Zoom fatigue comes up all the time too. If your team is anything like our team here at Adobe, you might be going through a back-to-work initiative. We’re encouraging people to get back in the office but stay flexible, so it can be a little bit confusing.

Some people are really embracing it; some people are very resistant. You have this hybrid, flexible, semi-in-the-office thing going on, but there's a lot of fatigue around that.

The impact on teams has been enormous and continues to linger in ways. The single biggest missing component that I see in terms of team success is getting team teams together in person.

It's great being back in person, but it's even better being with your colleagues, customers, partners, and internal key stakeholders. That's without question one of the biggest X factors in terms of enabling great teams.

The joy of getting to know your teams in-person

Getting teams together face-to-face is awesome for planning, workshopping, and problem-solving. We also can't discount the social element that's been missing over these last few years.

Here are a couple of pictures of my Asia Pacific team. We recently got together for the first time in three years. I've been at Adobe for three years, based in Sydney, and it's the first time I've met a third of that team in person. It's the first time they've ever been together all in the same place.

Getting teams together face-to-face is awesome for planning, workshopping, and problem-solving. We also can't discount the social element that's been missing over these last few years.

You might notice an interesting element in that picture on the left – our colleague based in Beijing, for understandable reasons, couldn't travel, so she appears as a computer face with a big smile in our team photo. Although we missed having one of our colleagues in the room, we over-indexed to make sure that she felt included

One of the greatest outcomes of that two-and-a-half day off-site wasn't just that we tackled some difficult situations and did some planning – it was about getting to know each other for real.

In fact, I’d say 60% of the agenda was team building. We were getting to know each other, opening up, and creating an environment of psychological safety, which was fantastic. The ongoing effects of that have been incredible.

It's great to have everyone in the room for a day or two, but what's the shelf life of that? How do we make sure that those teams package up that energy, take all of that goodness back to their respective regions, and keep it going?

We know it's not reasonable to be able to do this all the time, and depending on how you work with your teams and how dispersed those teams are, it could be even less likely, so how do we ensure this has an ongoing impact?

I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the best practices that I've seen to help make sure that all that great stuff that happened in the room carries over to your global teams in the long term.

Getting everyone on the same page

Let’s take a step back and look at a challenge that you can probably relate to. What I’ve noticed throughout my career, even in the best-run companies, is that there's often an “us versus them” mentality between headquartered teams and regional or remote teams.

Product marketing has got to be the number one recipient of that dynamic. We build the comms, the messaging, the value prop, and the competitive differentiation, and package it up ready for launch.

Then we’re in the field as regional experts to make sure that the product-market fit is right and the launch works. This “us versus them” dynamic affects not only the relationship side of our work but also our effectiveness, so it’s really important that we turn it around.

For this situation, I find it helpful to level-set expectations with stakeholders. We need to, get in early, establish those relationships, and make sure that there's a level of understanding of what everyone does.