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The material presented here is based on the intellectual output of PhD Rikke
K. Nielsen
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Why is global mindset important and for whom? Global mindset also comes at a cost. (global
mindset is not for everybody)
Global mindset is more than a managerial competence, because:
1. We become more international/global and not less so. YET, even the best and most
experienced are still humbled by the challenges of creating the right kind of organization,
i.e. acquiring, retaining, and motivating a global workforce, entering new markets, using
global assets to foster innovation and not being held back by the added complexity of
operating in different markets with their different cultures, laws and regulations.
2. Traditional boundaries have disappeared and competition springs from every corner of
the world. This provides unprecedented opportunities but also major challenges. MNCs
have to create globally integrated systems to satisfy diverse customer needs in diverse
and complex global markets. In such environments predicting the future is impossible and
rigid control counter productive. The ability of MNCs to operate and compete effectively
depends to a large extent on their success in getting employees, managers, and
executives to understand and adapt to such a diverse, complex and globalized world.
Leaders who can bring a global mindset and experience to the table are in high demand
and lack of such talent present a major barrier.
3. Having a pool of talented global leaders that possess a global mindset is not sufficient in
itself if the organizational structures, processes and culture do not support the same
principles. And particularly headquarter organizations are key in this regard. A global
mindset at the organizational level refers to the extent to which a global company has
learned to think, behave, and operate in global terms. This in turn means that a global
mindset has become collectively held and embedded in routines, operational practices,
and social relationships.
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Objectives:
• Provide state-of-the-art knowledge on the concept of global mindset as an
effective lever for international collaboration and strategy execution
• Offer inspiration from company-specific global mindset perspectives, i.e.
how they unfold in practice and their organizational contribution
• Clarify the potential contribution when working with global mindset in own
organization
• Identify enablers and barriers in form of practices and behaviors that either
contribute or hinder the development of global mindset in own organization
Overall goal:
Strengthen your collaborative agility
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The presentation focuses on the above mentioned 4 points.
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Let’s get started with point 1 on the agenda: Why global mindset, what is
global mindset and finally presenting the strategic global mindset capability
model.
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Based on McKinsey Quartely article: Understanding your ‘globalization
penalty’ (July 2011) by Martin Dewhurst, Jonathan Harris, and Suzanne
Heywood
Strong multinationals seem less healthy than successful companies
that stick closer to home. How can that be?
The rapid growth of emerging markets is providing fresh impetus for
companies to become ever more global in scope. Deep experience in other
international markets means that many companies know globalization’s
potential benefits—which include accessing new markets and talent pools and
capturing economies of scale—as well as a number of risks: creeping
complexity, culture clashes, and vigorous responses from local competitors, to
name just a few.
Less obvious is a challenge identified by our latest research: global reach
seems to threaten the underlying health of far-flung organizations, even highly
successful ones. In particular, we have found that high-performing global
companies consistently score lower than more locally focused ones on
several critical dimensions of organizational health—direction setting,
coordination and control, innovation, and external orientation—that we have
been studying at hundreds of companies over the past decade.
Understanding this threat, and its causes, is a first step toward diminishing its
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impact.
Weaknesses
The data to support this finding come from McKinsey’s organizational-health
index database, which contains the results of surveys of more than 600,000
employees who assessed the health of nearly 500 different corporations.
Within this database, we identified 20 “local champions,” which had
outperformed their industries over the previous ten years, and 18 “global
champions,” which had likewise outperformed their industries and met our
composite criteria for full globalization.1 1.We compared the degree of
globalization using four metrics: the proportion of sales originating outside a
company’s home geography, the proportion of employees working outside a
company’s home region, the geographic diversity of a company’s top
management team, and the proportion of shareholders residing outside a
com-pany’s home region. Of these, we weighted the source of sales and the
location of management most heavily.
We then compared these companies across the elements of organizational
health, which we define as the ability to align around a strategy or change
program, to execute, and to renew a company faster than its competitors can
(exhibit).2 2.For more, see Scott Keller and Colin Price, “Organizational
health: The ultimate competitive advantage,” mckinseyquarterly.com, May
2011. Highlights of this analysis included the following:
High-performing global organizations are consistently less effective at setting
a shared vision and engaging employees around it than are their local
counterparts.
These global leaders also find maintaining professional standards and
encouraging innovation of all kinds more difficult.
Because they do business in multiple countries, they find it more challenging
than local leaders do to build government and community relationships and
business partnerships.
Read more on
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/understanding_your_globalizat
ion_penalty
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This is a collection of statements from the participants during a workshop on
the importance of global mindset.
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In an article by Karl E. Weick co-authored by Karlene H. Roberts (1993) the
concept of “collective mind” (also some times referred to as “group mind” or
“organization mind” in the article) is advanced as a notion of collective or
aggregate mental processes.
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Global does not equal globetrotter, UN
AND IF we move along to see look at only organizationally facilitated
opportunity for enacting and development global mindset, you might speak of
global mindset as a governance metaphor. I have tried to illustrate how global
mindset governance is placed along a continuum of the classical poles of
standardization-integration and localization-differentiation. (This is also
sometimes referred to as the global vs. local dilemma (but since I operate with
a somewhat different conceptualization of global than is assumed in this
dichotomy, these are not poles here).
I have chosen to contrast global mindset governance with what I call a global
values governance style characterized by a strive for similarity through
common values, synthesizing across operations and formulation of a ‘third
way’. This is because this is open construed of as an alternative to 100%
standardization as a principle (Disney, McDonald’s) or total differentiation
such as a conglomerate or diversification view. IKEA would be an example of
a strategy, where they are openly dedicated to diversity, ‘come as you are’party, BUT you are supposed to then integrated into the IKEA way of doing
business.
I see global mindset-governance as being different in that there is no ideal of
homogeneity, rather cooperation when needed to counter complete
fragmentation is the ideal. Alignment is not top-down harmonization, but rather
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button up knowledge sharing on demand; middle managers are not
implementing strategy formulated at the top, but they are strategy cocreators. There is no overall simplification, without amplification – that
acknowledging complexity and heterogeneity when deciding what to simply
and what not.
Global values/’group values’
Homogeneity
Simplicity
‘One company’
Ideal: Similar interpretation of values
Alignment as harmonization
100%
‘Third way’, synthesis, compromise
Hierarchy /HQ-subsidiary
Simplification
Global mindset/’group mindset’
Heterogeneity
Complexity
A group of similar businesses /
a community of communities
Ideal: Flexible cooperation through disciplined agility
Alignment as knowledge sharing on demand and voluntary best practice
proliferation
‘Just-enough’ cooperation
Ambiguity, interim agreement, parallels
Connectivity and network
Simplification and amplification
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First, I argue that global mindset is a meta-competence.
Examples of typical meta-competences are change readiness, learning
capacity, skill in working with others, knowledge of foreign languages and
cultures or creativity. In the following, the theoretical concept of global mindset
is seen as a meta-competence in that its generic version is transferable
across organizations. As will be argued at a later point, the concrete
application of the global mindset as a meta-competence may, however, be
context-specific.
Competence: Work-related competences are ‘the composite of human
knowledge, skills, and aptitudes that may serve productive purposes in
organizations.” (Nordhaug, 2003, p. 50). The term ‘competence’ is used to
describe performance-enhancing abilities at the individual level (Holt Larsen,
2010).
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4 perspectives on global, and global mindset as a meta-competence
1.
The global collaborator as intercultural co-worker
2.
The global collaborator as bridge builder and boundary commuter
3.
The global collaborator as knowledge broker, networker and social
capitalist
4.
The global collaborator as paradox navigator
1. Global mindset is a meta-competence in that it assists and facilitates the
enactment of other competences.
2. Next, it is a meta-competence, because it contains a variety of perspectives
on global leadership competencies in it. A matrix-mentality. As I have tried to
illustrate in this figure, global mindset combines several of the in-roads to
global leadership in extant literature/ Different views on managing across
borders and boundaries.
I argue that global mindset is not just another word for cross-cultural
leadership or intercultural competence.
3. It is a meta-competence, because global mindset is a paradoxical hybrid of
both universalist and contextualist views of the world (best practice/’one size
fits all’ vs. culturalism, comparative/institutionalist and MNC views). Both
generic and situation-specific.
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1. Global mindset is a meta-competence in that it assists and facilitates the
enactment of other competences.
2. Next, it is a meta-competence, because it contains a variety of perspectives
on global leadership competencies in it. A matrix-mentality. As I have tried to
illustrate in this figure, global mindset combines several of the in-roads to
global leadership in extant literature/ Different views on managing across
borders and boundaries.
I argue that global mindset is not just another word for cross-cultural
leadership or intercultural competence.
3. It is a meta-competence, because global mindset is a paradoxical
hybrid of both universalist and contextualist views of the world (best
practice/’one size fits all’ vs. culturalism, comparative/institutionalist
and MNC views). Both generic and situation-specific.
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Where competences are individual, i.e. in this project held by the individual,
capabilities are organizational and thus collective.
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Conclusion: global mindset is individual, organizational and strategic
The view that global mindset is strategic, a meta-competence as well as a
capability is summed up in the strategic global mindset capability-model in this
slide. The use of the word ‘strategic’ in connection with global mindset refers
to the idea alignment of business strategy objectives, and management
practices are seen as facilitators for the achievement of business objectives
and performance.
Global mindset as an individual meta-competence and organizational
capability is a bridge between international strategy, strategy execution and
potentially achivement of stategic objectives is depicted in the keyhole. In
order to achieve the strategic objectives and thus desired company
performance it requires individual and organizational enablers, and the
resulting behaviours and supporting governance structure which facilitate
enactment and development of global mindset.
This model serves as the theoretical backdrop for the empirical analysis of
global mindset.
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After an introduction to why global mindset and what is global mindset, we will
now present the enablers and barriers to global mindset development with
examples from practice.
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Examples of enablers and barriers for global mindset: Results from the
PhD case study
The analysis of data in the case company, both field notes from participant
and participating observation of action, quantitative data, archival data as well
as interviews with managers is summed up in a force field analysis-inspired
diagram shown here. Forces driving global mindset, enabling global mindset
on the left hand side, and restraining forces of barriers of global mindset in the
right hand side.
NB! Please remember – this is a middle manager take; this is not to say that
there are no other factors or dimensions that are relevant, but these are the
ones that they have pointed to. HR or top management probably would have
come up with a different list.
At this point, I would particularly like to highlight….
1) Imagined communities: Corporate vs. common? Language &
communication
English skills – actually not a barrier, but effectively a stiffler
2) Corporate monopolization vs. going native – and the challenging conquest
of ‘both-and’
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3) Quality of interaction
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The two American professors are among those who have worked most
intensly with mindset. Based on their research, they point to four different
areas that cultivate global mindset. As you will notice, only few of these can
be influenced only through a corporate university (Leadership Academy) such
as for instance Solar Business Academy (the PhD case company). It requires
a greater all-round effort where specific skills and HRM interventions generally
only a part of the wider portfolio.
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This part focuses on your own organizational pratice, where we ask you to
reflect on your own practices, enablers, barriers and behaviors.
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The outline of tomorrow’s workshop: Give examples from the panel debate
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This is the final part of the presentation reflecting on what is global mindset
and how can it contribute to global leadership and collaboration. Concluding
with who needs global mindset in the organization.
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Sources:
#1: (Govindarajan & Gupta, 2001, p. 124)
#2: Gertsen, M. C., Søderberg, A.-M. & Zølner, M. (2012): “Introduction and
overview”, s. 1-14 in: M.C. Gertsen, A.-M. Søderberg og M. Zølner (eds.),
2012: Global Collaboration: Intercultural Experiences and Learning.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, s. 3.
#3: no. 1: Pucik, V. (1998): Selecting and developing the global versus the
expatriate manager: a review of the state of the art. Human Resource
Planning, Vol. 21 (4), p. 41.
no.2: Pucik, V. (2006): Refraiming Global Mindset: From Thinking to Acting.
Advances in Global Leadership, Vol. 4, p. 88.
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