Most writings on leadership focus on competencies – that is, individual skills or characteristics that allegedly produce better results. Leading Across New Borders focuses primarily on specific tasks that leaders like Ingrid, Alan, and Huang must accomplish. It answers the question: What does each of them need to do in order to succeed in cross-border contexts, with many stakeholders and little or no “command and control” authority?
Global leaders have to carry out their tasks within several contexts: self and other, team, and organization. Subsequent chapters will examine standard best practices for each task, point to the limitations of current leadership models as the world changes, and offer new ideas and approaches. Each leadership task – displayed in Table 1.2 – must be handled with an awareness of how we can alter pre-existing paradigms to reflect new realities.
TABLE 1.2 Global Leadership Tasks
About This Book
Close examination of these key tasks provides a useful road map for learning to lead in a global context. Although there is still value in learning about protocol or general paradigms for cultural awareness, this book goes beyond these familiar nostrums. Recommendations provided in each of the chapters to follow are based on contemporary examples and wisdom gleaned from practical, hard-working people in real companies. We will introduce leaders from many industries and locations, the work of scholars from various countries, and fresh data from our own proprietary tools.
Aperian Global, the authors' firm, delivers consulting services and learning programs every year to in excess of 15,000 people in more than 15 languages and 60 countries. We have served corporate audiences in many of the world's largest companies (including one-third of the Fortune 100) and in all major industries for over 25 years. This has provided us with deep knowledge and experience in addressing global business issues pragmatically, without getting mired or lost in complexity. Readers will have temporary access to the GlobeSmart ProfileSM, a personal inventory backed by strong research that will allow them to quickly assess their own cultural patterns based on five dimensions of culture and to compare themselves with others. We will introduce aggregate data gathered from recent users of this profile, a part of the GlobeSmart® web tool that has had over 800,000 registered users to date. In later chapters, we will also provide revealing new data gleaned from analyzing thousands of responses to two other proprietary surveys, the GlobeSmart Teaming AssessmentSM, and the GlobeSmart Innovation AssessmentSM.
An Invitation
Successful global leaders take on their jobs with eyes wide open to the rich variety of markets and employees that exist around the world, blending their hard-won prior experience with fresh insights and a willingness to experiment with new approaches. They are constantly alert to ways in which the world is changing, as their daily choices have crucial strategic and bottom-line implications.
Along their respective paths, people in leadership roles are also compelled to make tough ethical choices that push them to widen their frame of reference and to consider others' (often fervently held) ethical perspectives. They may even begin to include previously invisible participants in their considerations, such as the migrant farm workers who spray pesticides on crops in the field and drink water from the pump nearby, or the animals that live there as well. As Mother Teresa once stated, “The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.”
Leading Across New Borders is an invitation to take a journey shared by people in an ever-increasing number of professions from all parts of the globe. The path is different for everyone; yet there are common dilemmas that leaders face as the center shifts and their personal circles widen. Some may be just embarking on this journey, while others are likely to be well on their way. Readers at every level of experience will find this book to be a game-changing guide to the rugged terrain ahead.
CHAPTER 2
GLOBAL TALENT: BEYOND OUTSOURCING
Rethinking Talent
Many organizations have realized that if they still hope to be relevant in the near future, they need to radically adjust their thinking about where they are located, how they do business, what they produce, and who will lead them. While the need for change is glaringly apparent, the path to success in this new global playing field is often elusive. The transformation to a global talent management model is a high-stakes endeavor fraught with difficulties and well-intentioned strategies gone awry. As the world shifts, some approaches to talent will produce far greater success than others.
Allergic to Outsourcing
Sohail is a mid-level manager for a global pharmaceutical conglomerate that has invested millions in its sprawling Hyderabad campus and has aggressive hiring plans to fill the site with Indian talent. The break room where we meet resembles a Moroccan riad, an open courtyard in the center of the white building with light pouring in from a glass roof. Well-spoken, whip-smart, and sharply dressed, Sohail leans forward with his elbows on his knees and uses his hands to talk.
“I'm actually part of a new team in Hyderabad. We used to be in a BPO [business process outsourcing] relationship with the company, but now we are part of an integrated global business services [GBS] center. The organization takes major decisions based on our input.”
Sohail bristles when asked to further explain the company's former BPO setup. He seems allergic to the word “outsourcing.”
“Actually, we even had trouble with the word ‘services’ in the transition to the global business services model. This service mindset was still associated with low-level outsourcing work, so we needed to hear how it was going to be positioned differently at GBS than with an outsourcing model. People felt these words were demeaning and associated with low-end, disjointed processes and tasks. The company actually had to invest a lot of time in communicating that this was a significant change – that we would be doing the same GBS work as a colleague in Europe or the United States. We needed to see how our work fit into the bigger context of the organization. They told us we would now be driving the process, taking on leadership roles to drive excellence across the global organization.”
From the pharmaceutical industry to the software, finance, and manufacturing sectors, strikingly similar transitions are described. An executive at a major management consultancy comments,
We are in the process of moving the global end-to-end solutions architect team to India. It will eventually be entirely driven by our team here. Currently, our European solutions architects handle the client interface and solution development, and then hand over instructions for the India team to implement the designed solution. But this will all change within the next 18 months. The team in Bangalore has been responding to requests from Europe, but now they will need to lead projects themselves.
In many places in India, “outsourcing” and “BPO” are becoming terms used with ridicule and disdain. Infosys, once the shining beacon of India's globalization, has become the brunt of sarcastic slurs in the Indian papers: “Why is Murthy [former Infosys CEO] talking about Infosys and global leadership excellence in the same breath? It's just a BPO.”
In Mumbai, some bankers have a visceral response to the suggestion that their work is “back end.” An outspoken Mumbaikar (resident of Mumbai) quickly corrects the mistake: “Actually, you misunderstand our organizational structure. The term you use does not relate to our situation since we are not a BPO.”
India is in the middle of an identity shift, and the original stepping stone into the world of multinational corporations is now passé – even despised. India's growth has bred an elite generation of globally savvy bright-young-things with little tolerance for any whiff of second-class corporate citizenship as well as a reticence to identify with humble BPO beginnings.
For captive BPOs, the talent is actually integrated into the organization but retains