Fostering a Global Mindset Culture in Your Organization

A recent “Idea Watch” article in Harvard Business Review reported on some new research that Carol Dweck and her colleagues are conducting.  As some of you are aware, Dweck popularized the concept of “growth mindset” (versus a fixed mindset).  People with a growth mindset, according to her early research, enjoy challenges, strive to learn and consistently, and see potential to develop new skills. 

Now she has been exploring the idea whether organizations can have growth or fixed mindsets. So far, her research seems promising.  She and her team have developed a survey that has been implemented among employees at seven Fortune 1000 companies.  Employees rate the extent to which they agree with a series of statements, such as “When it comes to being successful, this company seems to believe that people have a certain amount of talent, and they really can’t do much to change it.”

Dweck concludes that there is a great dal of consensus about what the prevailing mindset is in these employees’ organizations with regard to growth.  Her research shows that employees in growth mindset companies are:

·      47% likelier to say that their colleagues are trustworthy

·      34% likelier to feel a strong sense of ownership and commitment to the company

·      65% likelier to say that the company supports risk taking

·      49% likelier to say that the company fosters innovation.

Similarly, I believe that organizations can be assessed on whether it has a global mindset culture, above and beyond the presence of employees who have the traits or qualities of an individual global mindset.  Of course, hiring and developing such individuals in your company is helpful, but can be inefficient since it may take companies a long time to reach the critical mass needed.  Another approach therefore is to develop an overall strategy to build or improve the organization’s global mindset culture.  The first step in developing this strategy is to diagnose your company’s current state with regard to its global mindset culture.  So here are eleven key indicators that will help you assess your company’s current global mindset culture.

1.     Top management commitment to building a global mindset culture.  How regularly do the senior executives in your company reinforce the importance of thinking globally and recognizing the importance of markets other than the home market?  How often do executives travel overseas to learn about the importance of these markets – especially from their overseas subsidiaries?  How frequently do managers and executives from overseas subsidiaries come to headquarters to participate in meetings?  Are key executives from overseas represented in important task forces and corporate initiatives?

2.     Structures and processes for global alignment and coordination.  What formal and informal mechanisms has your company put in place to facilitate efficient and effective coordination across countries where your company does business?  How well defined are your company’s formal structures, such as matrix relationships, global and regional roles, and roles and responsibilities of headquarters and subsidiaries?  When global teams are created, how well represented are subsidiaries from relevant countries?

3.     Infrastructures for global communication.  Has your company invested in the necessary technologies to enable efficient communication across countries?  And how much training and support is being provided so employees can take advantage of these new tools?

4.     Assessment of global mindset potential.  How important does your company consider global mindset in selecting internal or external candidates for positions that will require cross-cultural interactions?  Is cultural fit one of the criteria used before assigning individuals to global roles?

5.     Use of development assignments to build global mindset.  When setting development plans for individuals who may have high potential, what opportunities are provided for them to learn and acquire experiences in working across different markets and cultures?

6.     Reducing the headquarters ‘center of gravity.’  Has your company considered relocating some key functions out of headquarters into one of its key markets overseas?  Are at least some of your company’s centers of excellence or expertise located overseas?  Are regional heads and their staffs still based in headquarters or have they moved out to the regions?

7.     Cross-cultural awareness and sensitivity as a key element in the company’s learning strategy.  How available and accessible are resources for employees to improve their cross-cultural awareness (e.g., on-line courses on doing business in different cultures, reimbursement for language training, etc.)?

8.     A global talent pool.  How inclusive is your company’s global talent management process?  For example, when considering internal candidates for key positions, does the slate of candidates include highly qualified employees from different locations?

9.     Recognition and rewards for those with global mindsets.  How valued are those individuals who have proven themselves in overseas assignments, not just in improving business results but also in being recognized as someone who has worked effectively with different cultures?  When these individuals complete their assignments, to what extent does your company leverage their experience?  Does your company’s competency model and performance evaluation system include global mindset behaviors as a key element?

In a recent study by Price Waterhouse Coopers (Wang, 2014). 4,108 return migrants from 81 countries of origin who had spent between three months and two years in the U.S. at some point during the years between 1997 and 2011 under a category of the J-1 visa designated for professional training completed a survey.   These respondents all had bachelor’s or master’s degrees, and had work experience in many industries with companies such as Google and JPMorgan Chase, as well as thousands of small startups and midsized companies.

What did they find?  While almost all of the respondents reported having learned about practices overseas that they could implement in their home countries, only 67 percent reported having shared any of this knowledge upon their return. And only 48 percent reported having shared knowledge and then having seen this knowledge implemented.   The study concludes:  This means that on average, for every two workers with international experience hired by a given firm, only one will successfully share knowledge from overseas at some point during his or her tenure.

Interestingly, countries like China, India and Brazil are creating incentives to entice their foreign-trained nationals to return.  A recent Wall Street Journal article described the emergence of these “sea turtles,” the term used for a Chinese native who is returning home after several assignments in the West.  The article mentions several such Chinese businessmen who, after working for multinationals like Coca-Cola and Nike in the U.S., have decided to return to China, often in much larger roles and with much greater compensation than they had in their former companies’ headquarters.  Aside from these considerations, there is the perception that the opportunities with a Chinese company are greater, as are the psychic benefits.  For example, Guo Xin, a sea turtle who joined a Chinese recruiting firm, said, “You’re making global decisions rather than having these decisions made for you” by Western headquarters. 

10.  Support for individuals on overseas assignments.  Does your company provide ongoing support for individuals on overseas assignments – before, during and after the assignment is over?  In Ernst & Young’s Global Mobility Effectiveness Survey (2013), they found that on average, 16% of assignees left the company within the first two years after repatriation, and a further 41% returned to their pre-assignment position.  Does your company require some form of cultural training for the individuals and their families prior to an overseas assignment.  For example, BASF works with an outside vendor that helps international assignees adjust to their new surroundings.  The vendor also provides “cultural attaches” who will help BASF employees with the day-to-day logistics of settling in a new country, e.g., finding apartments, completing mandatory state registrations, setting up bank accounts, etc. 

In another company, I helped develop an expatriate mentorship program whereby international assignees were assigned to senior executives as mentors, with the condition that these senior executives had to be outside these individuals’ functions.  For example, the CIO volunteered to mentor two individuals in Marketing and two managers in Finance who were all in overseas locations.  He kept in contact with them throughout their assignments, and helped facilitate their transition back to their next assignments.

11.  Formal and informal processes for sharing best practices globally.  When he was CEO of GE, Jack Welch was relentless in promoting knowledge management, and he held people accountable to make sure that they were proactive in communicating and sharing best practices.  How much sharing of information and best practices goes on internally in your company, and are there formal and informal mechanisms for facilitating the dissemination of these best practices?  Somewhat belatedly, for example, GM has just begun to implement this.  In an interview with the Wall Street Journal (November 2, 2014), President Dan Ammann described what the company has started to do:

“A couple months ago we brought about 25 of the top sales leaders from around the world together in Charlotte, N.C.  We conducted workshops where each discussed the tactics they are using in their home markets to drive sales, work with dealers and interact with customers.  This is the first time anyone can remember that happening.”

      Perhaps next time they should meet in Beijing, Sao Paolo, or Mexico City.

Once you’ve done your assessment, then you’ll have a better understanding of where the gaps are, and your organization can begin to prioritize actions to narrow these gaps, taking into account the organization’s overall strategic goals and where the best payoffs are.  For example, if the organization is planning a major expansion into China over the next three to five years, then assessing cultural fit among high potential employees (#5) and establishing an office in one of its cities (#6) should be high on the list of actions.

Bennett, J.  (2014).  GM’s Ammann Drives for Change.  Wall Street Journal, November 12.

Chu, K. and Lublin, J.  (2014).  Chinese firms bring more natives home.  Wall Street Journal, September 3.

Gupta, A. and Govindarajan, V.  (2002).  Cultivating a Global Mindset.  Academy of Management Executive, 16(1), pp. 116-126.

Idea Watch.  (2014).  How Companies Can Profit from a Growth Mindset.  Harvard Business Review, November, pp. 28-29. 

Thin Slicing Across Cultures

In his book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the term ”thin slicing”, and this is how he described it:

“(Thin-slicing)… is a central part of what it means to be human.  We thin-slice whenever we meet a new person or have to make sense of something quickly or reencounter a novel situation.  We thin-slice because we have to, and we come to rely on that ability because there are … lots of situations where careful attention to the details of a very thin slice, even for no more than a second o two, can tell us an awful lot.”

I remember many years ago, when I was doing research on the interviewing process, about studies that indicated that interviewers in an employment setting generally make up their minds about a candidate during the first few minutes of an interview.  In a current human resources management textbook (Gomez-Mejia et al.), here is what the authors have to say about interviewers and first impressions:

“Perhaps the most consistent research finding is that interviewers tend to jump to conclusions – make snap judgments – about candidates during the first few minutes of the interview (or even before the interview starts, based on test scores or resume data).  One researcher estimates that in 85% of the cases, interviewers had made up their minds before the interview even began, based on first impressions the interviewers gleaned from candidates’ applications and personal appearance.”

At about the same time period when I was doing my research, a non-technical book with the self-explanatory title “The First Five Minutes” was published that also described the impact of first impressions.

So we do judge a book by its cover, I thought.  And nothing that I have read or experienced since (through numerous interviews with executives and managers) has contradicted this simple but powerful hypothesis about our human tendency.

Perhaps it’s a result of our hardwired behavior from the Pleistocene era, where our ancestors had to judge very quickly whether a person from another tribe was a friend or foe.  Over the past several years, I have worked with executives to help them identify and develop potential talent in their organizations, and if anything, I find that many executives not only make these judgments very quickly, but also seem to make them very confidently (not surprising for them, of course).  A manager who they may remember texting during a meeting, or another manager who made a less than stellar presentation – these are samples of behavior that executives generalize very quickly about, and can sometimes de-rail otherwise fine talent.  In addition, the research on interviewing shows that interviewers are more influenced by unfavorable than favorable information about candidates.  In my many years of working with executives on talent identification and succession planning, I would say that this is also true about executives who are making judgments about potential candidates for succession.

Ambady and Rosenthal actually coined the term “thin slicing” many years before Gladwell popularized it.   And more recent studies have simply reinforced the power of thin slicing.  For example, Todorov at al. did studies of people’s judgments.  They showed potential voters pairs of black-and-white headshots of candidate who were completely unfamiliar to them.  After exposing these shots for one second, the participants made judgments about the competence of the candidates that predicated pretty accurately the outcome of the elections – over 70% of the winning candidates in several U.S. senatorial seats, and about 68% of those sitting in Congress.  They have replicated this research in elections held in other countries (e.g., Mexico, Germany).

According to neuroscientists (Pinker, p. 241), the ability to pick up emotional cues evolved in the amygdala.   So the challenge for many managers working globally today is to beware of these thin slices when interacting with people who are members of different cultures.  People from different cultures not only look different, they talk differently (even when conversing in English), and interact differently, even in a business setting.  So the potential for creating unfavorable first impressions is significant.

In cross-cultural settings, I believe that there are at least two kinds of biases we may fall prey to.  First is the “lack of similarity” bias that is created when we meet people who are not like us.  The relevant dimensions of dissimilarity or difference may differ by situation.  For example, in the workplace setting, gender is sometimes not as relevant as functional background.  Marketing people tend to refer to those finance guys concerned only with numbers, while sales people tend to refer to those engineering guys who overdesign their products with little regard for consumer needs.   In cross-cultural situations, our unconscious bias favoring people who are like us, or not favoring those who are not like us, can kick into high gear very quickly.  The dimensions of similarity or dissimilarity might include physical appearance, body language (e.g., the way someone shakes your hand or expresses himself or herself), and thinking style.

The second type of bias is when we fix on superficial – and sometimes irrelevant - characteristics that lead us to jump to hasty conclusions.  One example that I have seen on many occasions is the bias executives hold with regard to the ability of non-native English speakers to speak English well.  In my experience, many executives visiting other countries will place undue emphasis on locals who speak English well, especially those who understand the nuances and idioms of the English language.  English verbal skills may have little to do with local managers’ performance or their competence, but it inevitably impresses many executives who should know better.  In their Harvard Business Review article, Neeley and Kaplan point to this as a blind spot by many executives, and I concur. 

Here are three pieces of advices for avoiding these biases and withholding our first impressions (difficult as this may be) when interacting with a business colleague from another culture:

1.    When you are about to engage with someone from another culture especially for the first time, step back for a moment and ask yourself what assumptions you might be making about that person or group.   For example, suppose that you are getting ready to meet with a Russian manager in Moscow.  From what you have read about Russian businesspeople and about the Russian culture, you will certainly have certain expectations about the person you are about to meet.  You expect to meet someone who is most probably an ethnic Russian, who is rather formal (both in terms of attire as well as interaction), who does not use much body language or non-verbal communication, and who prefers to get down to business almost immediately.   What information do you already have, or can you get, about this person to test these assumptions?    

2.    As you meet with and engage with the person (or group), refer to those assumptions and adjust them to see whether they are justified or not.  Some of your thinking and adjustments might be done “in the moment.”  For example, on meeting the Russian manager, you realize that he is younger than 30, and he informs you that he has only been in Russia for five years, having been raised in Ukraine.  Furthermore, he got his MBA at IMD Business School in Switzerland.  These are bits of information that you get to pick up as you interact with your Russian business partner, and it might change the approach you might take with him.  For example, you might then decide to take a somewhat less formal approach and engage in some informal topics to break the ice and establish rapport. 

3.    After the interaction, reflect on your behaviors.  How did you adjust your approach, and did you feel that it was effective?  What would you do differently next time around?  If appropriate, ask for feedback (not about yourself, but you could ask about how the meeting went for him, for example), although keep in mind that you might not necessarily get honest feedback, especially if you are in a position of higher authority than the person or group you are interacting with.

There is another approach that has worked for many, including myself.  And that is to take the time to explore commonalities between the two of you.  In some cases, this may be a love of sports, cars, certain movies or certain books or video games.  In other cases, this might be around common experiences or common values, for example, having children of about the same age, having parents who may not be well, etc.  Finding “common ground” is an effective way to reduce your unconscious bias and in many cases helps to establish an effective relationship with your colleague cross-culturally.

Ambady, N. and Rosenthal, R.  (1992).  Thin Slices of Expressive Behavior as Predictors of Interpersonal Consequences.  Psychological Bulletin, 111(2).

Gomez-Meija et al.  (2012).  Managing Human Resources (7^th edition).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Prentice-Hall.

Mitchell, M. with Corr, J.  (1998).  The First Five Minutes.  New York:  Wiley.

Neeley, T. and Kaplan, R.  What’s Your Language Strategy?  (2014).  Harvard Business Review, September, pp. 70-76.

Pinker, S.  (2014).  The Village Effect.  New York:  Spiegel and Grau.

Todorov, A. et al. (2005).  Inferences of Competence from Faces Predict Election Outcomes.  Science, 308.

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Global Managers' Moments of Truth

Many years ago, while consulting with the Customer Service unit of a consumer products company, I came across a book by Jan Carlzon, then president of Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), called “Moments of Truth.”  This phrase, which has now entered the business vocabulary, described the contact between a customer and a company representative that can profoundly impact the customer’s impression of the product and/or the company.  In the book, this is how Carlzon described it:

“Last year, each of our 10 million customers came in contact with approximately five SAS employees, and this contact lasted an average of 15 seconds at a time.  Thus, SAS is ‘created’ 50 million times a year, 15 seconds at a time.  These 15 million ‘moments of truth’ are the moments that ultimately determine whether SAS will succeed or fail as a company.  They are the moments when we must prove to our customers that SAS is their best alternative.”       

Those of us working globally have many interactions with different stakeholders coming from different cultures.  They include customers, vendors, subordinates, bosses, and colleagues in the various places where we do business.  Some of these interactions could certainly be described as “moments of truth,” when the outcomes of these interactions can lead to a more positive path and ultimately a productive and effective relationship – or its opposite.

I’ve identified nine such sets of interactions or “hot spots” where your cultural intelligence will be put to the test.  Your ability to handle these interactions effectively will help you to survive and thrive as a global leader. 

Here’s the list.  These are not sequential, although clearly the first two can make or break a potential relationship you are trying to establish.  Some of these interactions are one-on-one, others are with a group.  The specific tactics you use will also depend on the characteristics of the person or group you are interacting with; for example, greeting a male senior executive in Japan will be different than greeting a young female professional.

 

1.     Greeting someone

2.     Establishing rapport

3.     Leading a team

4.     Conducting a meeting/participating in a meeting

5.     Providing instructions or guidance; coaching and teaching

6.     Resolving disagreements and conflicts

7.     Negotiating

8.     Motivating others

9.     Giving and receiving feedback

For example, Lucy Kellaway, the acerbic columnist of the Financial Times, wrote a column recently about the challenges of greeting people from different cultures.  She was giving a talk primarily to Asian women at a conference in Singapore and she was at a loss as to how to greet the various attendees at the conference:

“In the old days, the principle was when-in-Rome. So when actually in Rome you kissed on both cheeks anyone you knew reasonably well. In Holland, it was three cheeks. In Russia you might expect a crushing bear hug, in Japan a nod and in India hands clasped and a namaste. In the US and Germany you could look forward to a bonecrusher of a handshake, in the Middle East something more like a limp fish.

“Global business has made matters more complicated. We no longer know whose culture trumps whose. Is it the host country’s? Is it the majority in the room? As no one seems to know, what tends to happen is a general confusing, embarrassing free-for-all. We live in a permanent state of hello hell.”

She then adds:

“Now an even more unwelcome form of greeting has arrived: the hug. This is how young Anglo-Saxons routinely greet each other outside work, but now they have started doing it in the office too. The hug represents far too much touching for my liking, but is also devilishly hard to get right: there is the full hug, the side hug, and the hug accompanied by a slap on the back.

“In my other job as a non-executive director, hello hell has got so bad that I find myself dreading the start of every meeting. Diversity might be a good thing on a board, but diversity of greeting is deplorable. My European colleagues are confident and enthusiastic kissers, as is one of the British women non-execs, while various of my male colleagues seem to dislike it as much as I do. Which means I often end up kissing some of the directors but not others – which seems very wrong indeed.”

Rather tongue-in-cheek (I think), she proposes a Global Greetings Protocol, where the only permissible greeting in a business setting would be a handshake.  If it were only that simple. 

Given the research on our subconscious biases and first impressions, thinking through your approach to greeting people from other cultures is, I believe, enormously important, and deserves a great deal of thought on your part on how to approach and greet someone from another culture.

Greeting someone, of course, is just one of the key interaction hot spots (see above) that can make or break your effectiveness as a global leader.  I have three pieces of advice on how you can benefit from these interactions.  First, understand what your “default mode” is in each of these situations.  Most of us have a preferred way of approaching certain interpersonal situations based on our experiences and our own natural inclinations.  Keep in mind that your preferred way may also be influenced by cultural assumptions and norms.  For example, Americans and Germans like to resolve conflicts by being very direct and raising issues in a straightforward way – to “cut to the chase,” as the expression goes.  So what’s your typical modus operandi when you’re trying to resolve a conflict or disagreement? You might be thinking, it depends on who the person is.  Yes, of course, and that is a reasonable response; nonetheless, you are likely to have a preferred approach, one that you use other things being equal. 

Second, consider the cultural background of the person or group you will interact with.  As mentioned above, most of us will recognize that we will need to adjust our approach depending on the specific characteristics of the person or group we are interacting with (e.g., their age, gender, position in the organization, educational level).  What I am suggesting is that you include culture as another dimension to consider.  For example, Hannah is a manager of a global IT consulting company who was recently appointed to lead a team of Indian consultants in Bangalore.  Hannah has a reputation as a good leader who likes to empower and delegate.  But aware of the cultural expectations of her Indian staff, Hannah has had to adjust her style to make sure that she is more directive and explicit about her communication, at least initially.

Third, adjust your approach so that it is culturally appropriate for that person or group.  What this means is that you will have to develop a repertoire of approaches, and not always rely on your default mode, difficult as that may be at times.  We naturally gravitate to behaviors that either come naturally to us or that we have been used to because we have been doing it for a long time.  The challenge for many global leaders is not only to stop and think about other cultures, but also to go into manual mode and use those behaviors that are most appropriate for that culture.  For example, this may mean that you don’t always look a person directly in the eye in a culture where doing this with very senior executives may not be considered appropriate.

This also means that you may have to practice some new behaviors and, as Molinsky so eloquently describes in his book Global Dexterity, expand your personal comfort zone.  It’s not always easy to do this, but you can make a conscious effort by practicing some new behaviors incrementally. 

For example, Feng was a Chinese student in my class who was not used to speaking up in the classroom.  In China, students are not expected to raise hands, nor are class discussions encouraged.  As a result, when she signed up for her MBA classes, she felt overwhelmed and intimidated.  In advising her, we worked out a goal of being a more active participant in the class.  She started out by writing down a question beforehand that she would ask the professor.  So when, towards the end of a lecture, the professor would ask if there were any questions, she would raise her hand and ask a question.  Eventually, as she became more comfortable in asking questions, she then wrote down a couple of points she wanted to make about whatever was being discussed that day, and raised her hand to offer her opinion when her professor asked for comments.  By the end of the semester, she was a more active participant although she still cannot just “jump in” to a discussion – at least not yet.

Carlzon, J.  (1989).  Moments of Truth.  New York:  HarperBusiness.

Kellaway, L.  Do we hug?  Kiss?  Shake hands?  Bow?  Financial Times, September 22, 2013.

Molinsky, A.  (2013).  Global Dexterity.  Boston:  Harvard Business Review Press.