Summary:
Second excerpt from "The Quest for Global Dominance," by Anil Gupta, Vijay Govindarajan and Haiyan Wang. Companies that want to be market leaders need to cultivate global mindset in all its employees. Importance of selection, demographic makeup, promotion decisions. (03/04/2008)
Notes:
- Global mindset obviously needed for employees managing activties that span borders (e.g. global product manager, employees facing foreign customers/suppliers/colleagues) Greatest value added by/highest return from global mindset at senior levels.
- However, even employees with purely local responsibilities need global mindset. Even assembly workers should develop own "global learning communities"
- Global mindset in every employee needed for creation of global learning organization. Does not need to equally strong across entire spectrum of employees.
- If company's goal is to capture and sustain global market leadership in its industry, necessary to regard development of global mindset as a goal encompassing all units and all employees.
- Global mindset needs to be cultivated, ceaseless journey. Cultivating curiosity and openness about the world.
- Company's greatest degree of freedom lies at the point of selection, managing its demographic makeup and promotion decisions.
- "Promotion decisions to senior executive levels that place high value on global experience and global mindsets also have a corollary effect in terms of sending strong signals regarding the increasing criticality of openness to and curiosity about diverse cultures and markets."
- Market opportunities, critical resources, cutting-edge ideas and competitors not just lurking around corner in home market, but increasingly in distant and often little-understood regions of the world. Cultivating global mindset essential for company to exploit these opportunities and tackle accompanying challenges.
