Be a Global Manager

TO SURVIVE in the new global knowledge economy, all organisations must develop a global mindset. They must also understand national cultures and the ways of doing business in different nations.

Managers in Singaporean companies must possess the following five competencies to function effectively in the new global marketplace.

Cross-cultural competence

Understanding other cultures is the key to success. This is also critical for "thinking globally and strategically". Some of the world's greatest brands have paid a tremendous price for overlooking this basic fact. Wal-Mart, which has succeeded in China, struggled to "connect" with Japanese consumers. Coca-Cola had a steep learning curve in Japan. India remains a great challenge.

The clash of national and organisational cultures of Germany's Daimler and the US' Chrysler was a principal reason for the failure of Daimler-Chrysler. In the world of international relations, understanding the other culture should always be a top priority.

It is critical that organisations develop cross-cultural competence - the ability to understand, respect, listen and learn from other cultures - in their managers.

Relationship skills

In most of the world, business and international relations are based on personal relationships. Connections, or guanxi as the Chinese call it, are critical. Managers of Singaporean organisations must be able to connect with and build close personal relationships with decision makers in the other countries.

A manager can have all the technical and financial expertise, but if he or she does not have the patience and competence to establish and develop genuine personal relationships and trust, the individual and organisation will not succeed in the local context.

In many parts of the world, western contracts and agreements mean little or nothing. Trust is key. A person's word is often the bond that makes things happen.

Language

English is the language of global business. But Singaporean managers must understand that some knowledge of the local language of the country in which a company wants to do business goes a very long way. It is amazing what can happen when a local national sees that the "foreigner" is attempting to speak in the local language.

Multilingualism is an asset that an organisation should look for in its search for talent.

Given the nature of the new global economy and the major players in it, a knowledge of Cantonese or Mandarin, Japanese, Spanish, English and a major Indian language can give one a real edge.

Collaboration

Little can be accomplished in the new global economy without collaboration across national boundaries. In hiring managers to effectively compete in this new economy, companies must look for individuals who thrive on team work and global collaboration. In the 24/7 world where time zones really don't exist, virtual teams are running the world!

Facebook, Google Talk, Yahoo Instant Messenger and the Internet have revolutionised the world of business. People are getting to know each other without even meeting physically, and collaborating on tasks and projects, across boundaries. There are no age, gender or racial barriers in this new world of global collaboration. And you have the ability to solve problems, get things done and sell products and services anytime, anywhere.

Global marketing

In the final analysis, everything has to be sold. To be truly effective in the 24/7 time-zoneless world, companies should hire managers who are above all exceptional marketers and salesmen. Nothing happens in any organisation anywhere unless a product or service is sold. No one gets paid.

Listening to customers everywhere on this planet, bonding with them and helping them achieve their dreams, is what distinguishes the winners from the losers.

Financial, supply chain and technology systems must exist to focus totally on the customer. In the words of the father of management, Peter Drucker, "The purpose of a business is to create a customer". Little has changed. Today's challenge is to retain and multiply them.

Article contributed by Gerard D. Muttukumaru, visiting faculty member of Training Edge International and founder/chairman, Centre for Global Leadership Worldwide. He has served on the faculty of several undergraduate, MBA and international executive education programmes of leading universities in the US. His participants include senior and mid-level managers from prestigious companies such as Intel, Hewlett Packard and Walt Disney.

Website: www.trainingedgeasia.com

For more information on our training programmes , please  contact us at 63365804.

What Followers Want

OVER the past 30 years, there has been increasing data to suggest that leadership has a lot more to do with inspiration and vision, rather than straightforward technical competence.

Leadership is now recognised as a transferable skill that can be developed by continued learning and development.

By contrast, the Great Man theories of leadership and cults of personality are now seen as largely irrelevant.

Research carried out by the Department of Trade and Industry in the United Kingdom confirms that today's workforce is more diverse, informed and sophisticated than ever before.

Ultimately, people are still looking for something different and better in organisational leadership.

Managers demand inspirational and visionary leaders who win not only results, but also the trust and respect of their teams.

Followers will respond to leaders who tell them that what they do is important and that it makes a difference.

There exists, unfortunately, an inspirational gap.

Research suggests that over half of managers are working for organisations which have apparently not yet fully evolved to meet the needs of today's high performing workplaces.

Too many experience excessive bureaucracy and command and control behaviours, which have a tendency to inhibit, rather than improve, individual and organisational performance.

Inspiring others

For Singapore to maintain its competitiveness, there is a growing need for companies to adopt strategies that will enable a greater level of innovation and deliver higher value goods and services.

Significant changes in what is required of good leaders have been observed over recent years.

High-performance, innovative organisations require "inspirational leadership" more than ever before if they are to survive and prosper in a world where the only certainty is uncertainty.

Inspirational leadership requires six essential elements. Such leaders:

* Genuinely care about their people,

* Involve everybody,

* Show lots of appreciation,

* Ensure work is fun,

* Show real trust, and

* Listen a lot.

To discover how these elements can be better realised in practice, a comprehensive research project was designed to look in more detail at the qualities of inspirational leaders.

A series of in-depth qualitative interviews with leaders who had been selected by peers for achieving exceptional results revealed common themes in terms of their most prevalent leadership characteristics.

They identified their own strengths as:

* Strong communication - storytelling and listening,

* Passion for learning and intense curiosity,

* Focus on developing people,

* Having fun and very energised,

* Strong self-belief, coupled with humanity and humility,

* Committed to giving something back and to making a significant difference,

* Clarity of vision and ability to share it with their people,

* Dogged determination, often "relentless",

* Very strong focus on priorities,

* Not afraid to show some vulnerability,

* Regular use of reflective periods,

* Almost universal dislike of jargon, and

* Passion for and pride in what they do.

Desirable traits

Not surprisingly, many of the leadership qualities desired by the followers surveyed also reflected the views of both exceptional leaders and the findings from best practice case studies.

They valued leaders who showed:

* Genuine shared vision,

* Real confidence and trust in their teams,

* Respect for employees and customers,

* Commitment to developing people,

* Clear standards of ethics and integrity, and

* Willingness to take risks.

Managers confirmed that individuals and teams who were inspired and enthused would operate at a different level from the competition.

Around one-third of followers admitted that they had never worked for, or been motivated by, an exceptional leader in their lives.

Over 60 per cent of followers reported that their leaders were out of touch with how people were feeling. This remoteness and distance had a negative impact on morale and motivation levels.

Giving people space and responsibility, and recognising and believing in their abilities, remain the most effective and powerful ways to motivate followers.

Participative, rather than command and control cultures, tend to encourage these behaviours.

This finding is probably linked with another: that followers do not, on the whole, see their leaders creating a feeling of energy, fun and excitement in the organisation.

About 93 per cent identified this as a key leadership attribute, yet only 32 per cent experienced it.

Article by Chris Fenney, director of  Training Edge International. He has more than 30 years' experience in training and management development gained in commercial organisations in Europe and the US.

Email  : chris.fenney@trainingedgeasia.com  

Website: www.trainingedgeasia.com

For more information on our training programmes , please  contact us at 63365804.
 

Get Fresh

SIMPLY put, creativity is about coming out with something new. Being creative may not make you another Michelangelo, but new ideas are certainly necessary for today's fast changing world.

As Edward de Bono, the world's foremost authority on lateral thinking and innovation, said: "It is no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems. Businesses need creativityto make the shift from administration to true entrepreneurship."

You can also use creativity in your daily life. You can look at what you are doing and find alternative ways to improve. Problems become opportunities for you to use your creative thinking.

Critical versus creative

Our brain's left hemisphere is all about logical, rational and sequential thinking while the right brain hemisphere is concerned with intuitive, random and subjective thinking.

Schools tend to concentrate on boosting the left brain in "scholastic" subjects and right-brain activities such as creativity and aesthetics tend to be downplayed. As a result, many people end up being more critical than creative.

Stimulating the right brain can be done by attempting tasks that require imagination and a fresh approach. The human brain has the ability to create an infinite amount of ideas. Unfortunately, most people use only 2 to 3 per cent of their brain capacity.

As a technique for generating ideas, take a look at a classical method called Scamper, an acronym for a collection of seven techniques. There are success stories for each of these techniques:

Substitute: The Russians failed to market vodka in the United States in the 1930s because clear alcohol was not popular. Heublein bought the rights, and looked for other ingredients (substitute) to colour the drink. Moscow Mule, Screwdriver and Bloody Mary were born and caused vodka sales to rise from 6,000 cases a year to 38 million in 1988.

Combine: Customers of American gas company Arco asked if they could walk over to the adjacent convenience store to pick up a hamburger and a quart of milk after they had pumped their gas. As a result, customers can now do all three (combine) all at the same petrol kiosk.

Adapt: William Durant, the founder of General Motors, had great ideas but could not run the company profitably. He was replaced by Alfred Sloan, who was able to take many of Durant's ideas and turn them (adapt) into reality.

Modify: 3M's advertisements to sell Post-It pads did not cause sales to pick up. Its general sales manager, Joe Ramey, noticed that people who used the pads could not stop. He convinced the company to modify its marketing approach by giving away free samples. Since then, the Post-It has become one of 3M's all-time champion products.

Put to other uses: A toilet tissue manufacturer discovered a carload of paper that was too thick to be made into tissue. Unable to return it, he asked himself what else could be done with the paper?" (put to other use), and paper towels were born.

Eliminate: Before 1836, mail charges were paid by the addressee, with the fees computed according to distance and weight. This made correspondence expensive and slow. Rowland Hill proposed that postage be uniform regardless of distance (eliminate), and that this fee be prepaid by buying and affixing a stamp.

Rearrange: Xerox's first copier was priced at $4,000 and few companies were willing to make such a capital investment. Xerox understood this and began selling what they produced: copies. At 5 cents a copy, company staff could pay for the documents from petty cash (rearrange).

Taking up a hobby is a good start to being creative, and magic is one hobby that requires a lot of creative input. Since magic tricks rely on illusions, it takes a lot of creative effort to make something that is not real appear believable.

You will find that the process of conceiving a magical idea and communicating it to the audience through a performance is a creative process.

Contributed by John Teo, a senior consultant with Training Edge International, who has more than 25 years of experience in senior management and more than a decade of training, management development and facilitation experience. He is also the President of International Brotherhood of Magicians (Singapore Chapter) and he frequently uses magic in his workshops presentations to bring out important learning principles in a fun way. 

For more information on our training programmes , please  contact us at 63365804.