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| ‘GLOBALIZED’ HEADQUARTERS |
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Patricia Shafer, President |
| Compel Organizational Excellence Alliance, Ltd., and a Global Management
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pshafer@compelconsulting.com
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Increasingly diverse teams mean multinational perspectives are present at home and abroad. Games and simulations surface views and integrate decision-making.
In the last three years, our company has decided to set up an integrated model in three parts of the world. A few people have been appointed to set up the Asia/Pacific area. [The person] leading this organization is an American born in India. Two Japanese are doing all of the planning and support. We have one American woman doing training and strategy, another doing marketing, and I am doing all of the operations support. I am French. I implement all of this in 15 countries from Japan to Australia.
These are the words of a manager I interviewed in 2005 for a research initiative in multinational corporations on five continents. His role included responsibility for achieving an effective business model in the Asia/Pacific region – one that blends Western and Asian approaches.
As his quote demonstrates, this manager is particularly astute about cross-cultural diversity – aware that moving a business forward in a multi-cultural environment calls for equal parts task and relationship.
He described passionately his admiration for the American sense of innovation, detailed Japanese planning, and the patience of the Chinese. He talked about valuing these strengths to develop an improved regional headquarters operating plan.
I suggested he is a model of The New Hybrid Leader – a manager with the attitudes, skills and behaviors required to be a truly global leader.
At the time, my attention focused on the importance of a global outlook for managers posted to international assignments. I was in the habit of thinking about burgeoning business centers like Dubai, Mumbai and Shanghai as crossroads where a multinational perspective is most important. That was a myopic view on my part. In the age of globalization, we can’t forget that a multinational mentality can be just as relevant in the offices and meeting rooms of one’s own headquarters.
Today, multinational companies come in all shapes and sizes and can be located almost anywhere. The Miami metro area alone has more than 750 multinational headquarters. Many are for U.S. companies; others are North American subsidiaries of parent companies elsewhere. So, a manager doesn’t necessarily and absolutely have to go global to need global leadership skills.
CONSIDER THE CASES
• Case #1:
The customers of a large U.S.-headquartered financial institution are primarily American. But a division led from the U.S. manages global credit products and trade services supported by more than 500 people in offices around the world. According to one of the group’s directors, “Our primary human resource challenge is to help our headquarters leadership team welcome global points of view when the rest of the company is so U.S.-centric.”
• Case #2:
A U.S.-based company specializing in data analysis for thousands of clients in nearly 100 countries is proud of its global presence. But the HR manager for diversity and inclusion suggests, “We have so many nationalities right in our headquarters that we look like the United Nations. But we tend to take it for granted that we all have the same perspectives.”
• Case #3:
One of the world’s leading consumer products companies requires an international assignment as one milestone in its leadership development program. But the manager of a U.S.-focused product line says she’s just begun to consider the implications of her team being comprised of managers from Latin America, Europe and Asia. “I thought of us as a U.S. team. It didn’t occur to me that we might have very different ideas about the business.”
PROMPT NEW PERSPECTIVES
The looming question is how best to develop global leadership skills – or at least awareness and recognition – when today’s business environment seems perpetually short of time and resources.
In a recent edition of Global HR News, I mentioned an international hotel and hospitality company that brings managers from around the world to an annual planning meeting. In one recent exercise, participants were invited to solve a business challenge from their perspectives and shed light on why their solutions made sense in cultural context. No approach was deemed right or wrong, better or worse. One manager reported that his eyes were opened to the challenge of establishing global policies while making room for locally-sensitive adaptations.
Personally, I’m a believer in games and simulations that invite a global exchange. The vast majority of organizations are in the early stages of shifting from being aware of the world to having a worldly outlook. Games and simulations are forms of guided dialogue that surface divergent and convergent views and can be incorporated into a conference or teambuilding workshop. Used strategically, they are mechanisms to help managers re-conceptualize “their world” in reference to the big, wide world.
When people’s perceptual maps expand, they are better equipped to identify attitudes and structures for global success. Any process that broadens horizons is consistent with
THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE concept of building a learning organization. As author Peter Senge proposed, human and organizational intelligence evolves when managers can see as systems thinkers, develop personal mastery, and restructure mental models in collaboration with others.
And I would add – that applies both abroad and at home.
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Edwin Cohen
Publisher & Editor
GLOBAL HR NEWS
www.globalhrnews.com
phone: +1.619.297.5700
email: news@globalhrnews.com |
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