If manager want to succeed in today’s volatile global
economy, manager must be prepared to do business all around the world. International businesses have operations, partners, alliances and senior
managers representing virtually every global region.
Many have more than one “headquarters,” signaling the diversity of their thinking and perspective.
So, how do manager learn to conduct international
business effectively?
Manager acquires a set of skills that help work across
regional, national and sub national boundaries to propel your business forward.
Those skills include the following:
·
Overseas Experience - Many
global executives understand what doing business in a flat world is like
because they’ve lived overseas, sometimes for decades at a time. If you want to
become a successful international business leader, transcending your own
cultural perspective and learning how business is done in different contexts is
essential.
·
Deep Self-Awareness - Understanding
your beliefs and knowing where they might differ from others’ is critical to
global executive success. Without this key characteristic, you will not be able
to adapt to and tolerate the deep-seated beliefs of others — and business
opportunities will evaporate. Beware of the “I’m right; you’re wrong”
assumption.
·
Sensitivity to Cultural Diversity - Are you willing to eat raw fish? Snake? Raw monkey
brains? Can you adjust your eating and sleeping habits to match the local
executives’ routines and patterns? In other countries, seemingly minor things
can be off-putting, such as sticking your chopsticks in your rice or touching
someone with your left hand.
·
Much of this
insight comes from experience. You must have an intense interest in the lives
and cultures of others, recognizing that your culture and background are not
inherently superior, to master the global business arena.
· Global Strategic Thinking - When you have a global perspective, you think
strategically about managing business using the best people from around the
planet. Much of your ability to do this comes from a lifetime of networking at
the highest levels in global boardrooms and your aptitude for seeing how
various pieces of global industries play out internationally. To make strategic
decisions for your company, you need to understand how the business world works
on a global scale.
·
Well-Spoken - Given
the challenges of working via interpreters or fumbling through conversations in
more than one language, the ability to say clearly what you mean is a key
global business skill. If you converse with others in their native language,
you usually earn brownie points — however, if what you have to say is obscure
or unintelligible, you’ll quickly be in a deficit balance. Clear communication
is a powerful leadership trait to have on the global stage.
·
Good Negotiator - Doing
business across ethnic, national and regional boundaries requires strong
negotiating skills. If you can add these skills to an innate enjoyment of the
gamesmanship involved in negotiating, you will become a highly effective
negotiator.
·
Presence - A
certain charisma surrounds you if you are an influential global leader. Part of
it — but only part — is position or title. The bigger portion is dress,
self-confidence, energy level, interest in other people and comfort with the
challenges at hand. You may not want to believe these things matter, but they
do.
·
Knowledge competencies - Knowledge
competencies are concerned with factual information pertaining to a clear and
deep understanding of technology, business, and industry required to complete
tasks successfully. They are the basic building blocks for global managers’
journey towards a global perspective
·
Technology savvy - The
rapid onslaught of globalization has been largely due to advances in technology
interconnecting companies across the world. Goldsmith, Walt, and Doucet (1999)
see technology savvy as a key competency for global managers as it
significantly impacts the organization’s core business. Technology is not only
vital for communication, and effective information management, but also greatly
impacts the organization’s production processes. In the fast pace world of
technology certain products, processes and services can be outdated very
quickly. It is therefore necessary for global managers to not only be able to
use technology, information systems and telecommunications effectively but also
understand its impact by assessing and analyzing the affect it has on the
global operations of the firm. Technology solutions that may be pertinent to
the global managers include Business Intelligence tools such as the SQL Server
suite (Analysis Services, Reporting Services) and Oracle; and collaborative
tools such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Skype, Microsoft Groove 2007,
Google Apps, and instant messaging tools such as MSN
·
Cultural and cross-cultural awareness - This pertains to the understanding and appreciation of
the country and its society’s norms, beliefs, rites, rituals, symbols, behaviors,
motivations and stories. Effective global managers value and manage cultural
diversity and consider this diversity an asset not a hindrance state that many
inter-culture assignments occur on short notice thereby giving managers limited
time to learn about that particular culture, and intimate understanding of the
cultural diversity may be difficult due to geography.
Procter & Gamble will be mentioned again
to illustrate this issue in relation to business. Das (1994, 197-210) noticed
that the company had trouble selling Vicks Vaporub to Northern India, whereas
sales in the South were high. He decided to capitalize on the high market sales
in the South instead of attempting to correct the market in the North. The
company profited. Das later discovered that the reason for the poor sales in
the North was due to the fact that people in this region did not like to rub
things on their body. Had Das ignored the market trend and decided to expend
resources attempting to impose the product on the North, poor sales figures
would likely have continued as products would remain on the shelves.
·
Global risk management - Some of these risks include political, currency-exchange,
and corruption. Globalization provides many potential techniques to allow
global managers to improve the organisation’s bottom line, from the
productivity gains of operating in lower cost countries to the ability to
leverage global position in pricing negotiation with suppliers. Due to the
nature of their role, the global manager would need to have a higher risk
tolerance level to deal with uncertainty in the global market. However, there
have been cases where appropriate safeguards have not been taken to assess and minimize
risk.
_
Development Techniques
·
Rotate people through different jobs – Rotation in all the functional department like
Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, Research and Development etc.
·
Challenge them with unfamiliar jobs – Odd shift timing, long working hours, diversified team
etc.
·
Create mentoring programs – Training and development
·
Ensure participant gets frequent feedbacks
·
Build competencies –
Technical skills, communication skills, people management etc.
·
International exposure – on
job training, international training program etc.
