It’s good to be back from holiday! Actually it is not, I am trying to sound positive but I think I have a huge natural talent for relaxation – anyone want to sponsor me?
Sitting around the pool in Penang I came across several expatriates who work in large organizations.
Talking to them reminded my of a great piece of advice I got from a French HR Director of a multinational oil exploration company. I was working on a project for my company on how to develop international managers and I thought I would start by asking companies who had been doing it for years. I asked the HR Director what was the “secret”?
He told me “No secret, there are just 2 simple steps.
- First you recruit people around the world in proportion to your business, if 10% of your business is in Nigeria, 10% of your managers should be Nigerian
- You mix them up, if they never leave their homes they never become international managers, send them on visits, expatriate assignment, put them in international teams and projects so they mix with their colleagues and learn.”
“What next” I asked
“Nothing” he replied “If you do these 2 things, in no more than 50 years you will have an international management group.”
It as still one of the best answers I ever got to my question – though my boss was not happy when I told him it could take 50 years!
It takes time to develop a truly global mindset and management capability and, for companies relatively new to working internationally it can be a whole management generation before people with this capability work their way through to the top of the organization in sufficient numbers to really make a difference.
I think we can accelerate the process with the right international management training and exposure to international experiences – but a lot of management training continues to carry a very mono-cultural view of the world (usually Anglo-Saxon management theories).
How does your company help you develop as an international manager?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Joe Espana // Aug 14, 2008 at 10:53 am
A core component of international management training has to focus on just being able to operate successfully day-to-day in different cultures. There are many so-called cultural training programmes that companies employ, but ultimately the best training is to be immersed in a culture though an international assignment.
Our experience has shown that when the international mamagement training is aligned to a 6 -12 month assignment in a different country, the learing impact and benefit can be much greater.
When consulting with clients we help to structure a training programme which has fundamentally three components: The preparation; the assignment (this is usually structured so that there is continued support and coaching); the evaluation and learning extrapolation. The prepartion phase is important in order to help the individual to aclimatise quickly to their assignment and it would cover many of the usually observed elements of doing business in the target country, cultural sensitivity training and maybe even language support. The assignment phase is critical in that all the real learning taskes place in this phase. This is when reality strikes. An overseas assignment but be a real job with real targets and outcome expectations. They are there to contribute not to immerse themselves in the culture as if it were a holiday. This phase however, needs on-going support and coaching so that the individual becomes conscious of their successes and failures and is able to learn from both. This conscious learning while operating in real work situations is critical to the last phase. The last phase while short is important and can have a significant impact on others who may be beginning an international assignment. Often we has individuals in their evaluation and extrapolation phase to present their findings so that the accumulated knowledge remains in the company. We also ask them to become coaches to those who might follow them, but importantly, they have to review the whole assignment and the results of their performance and contribution. this enables them and others to extrapolate conclusions about the assignment that can be put to best use in future international business scenarios.
2 Kevan Hall // Aug 14, 2008 at 11:21 am
Thanks Joe, good points.
I know of a couple of orgnaizations who work hard to collect expats experences in text and audio and this learning is really useful for people moving overseas for the first time.
I agree that an immersive experience is the best way to learn this stuff – but at the same time we see a big rise in the number of regualr business travellers and people who manage people in several counties.
They need something fast and can’t afford the time to immerse themselves in a number of cultures – it’s a real challenge
3 Management Training - Online Resources - Best Management Training Blogs for the Week of August 16 // Aug 16, 2008 at 2:46 pm
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