Global Mindset

A global mindset prepares the HR practitioner to complete necessary due diligence, ask the right questions, and prepare and support the organization and its employees. Specifically, the presence of a global mindset brings a number of key operational benefits to the organization, including:

-A more compliant approach to policies and more culturally sensitive practices. -Smoother coordination of complementary functional activities distributed across borders. -Faster rollout of new product/service concepts and technologies. -More rapid and efficient sharing of best practices across operational units. -A lower failure rate of employees' international assignments.

To develop a global mindset, or to really achieve any change in behavior, three elements must be in place:

-Appropriate knowledge, skills, and understanding -Desire and motivation on the part of the employee to change -Support from systems and management Once these requirements are in place, employees can increase their global business knowledge and enhance development of a global mindset in different ways.

Key Global HR Skills:

-Develop a strategic view of the organization. -Develop a global organizational culture. -Secure and grow a safe and robust talent supply chain. -Use and adapt HR technology. -Use and adapt HR technology. -Develop policies and practices to manage risks.

Study and understand global business trends and forces.

-Read books on global business for a larger picture of business models. -Read periodicals with a global focus (e.g., The Economist, The New York Times Global Edition, Bloomberg Businessweek). -Stay current with international business and world events. -Select a global organization or competitor and compare that organization to your own. -Learn about global legal and social frameworks impacting business and industry practices. -Create opportunities to personally interact with global customers, colleagues, and collaborators.

Promote a global mindset within your organization.

-Recruit staff with cross-cultural and language skills. -Provide opportunities for cross-cultural learning and language building. -Promote cross-border mentoring -Emphasize long-term relationship building as well as short-term task accomplishment.

Study and understand your own culture and how it relates to others.

-Take courses in world history, culture, economics, politics, or international affairs. -Become aware of stereotypes that people have about your culture and that you have about theirs. -Travel globally to gain firsthand foreign experiences. -Learn a foreign language. -Join an international organization or a global professional organization (e.g., The Conference Board). -Volunteer for global task forces. -Create opportunities to personally interact with those from other cultures (e.g., host an exchange student).

From a strategic perspective

HR must be able to balance the priorities of headquarters and subsidiaries. They must understand and appreciate their disparate businesses and identify critical success factors related to talent, which will vary considerably from Malaysian plant workers to European hospitality employees to highly trained scientists in a competitive talent environment. How should they distribute their resources?

Transfers

The transfer experience is an intense immersion into another culture and can have a strong and lasting impact on individuals' relationship development and cross-cultural management skills as well as their acquisition of a global mindset. Again, the skills and experiences gained from immersion in another culture are then transferrable to workplace encounters with employees from other cultures.

Travel

Effective organizations recognize the value of travel in developing cultural awareness and appreciation. Of the respondents in the Black, Morrison, and Gregersen study, 80% stated that working and living abroad was the most influential development activity they had ever experienced. Short-term travel assignments (to be part of meetings, teams, launches, negotiations, and other events) may help managers and employees gain experience, expand awareness and appreciation of different places and cultures, and become more visible and valuable within the organization. Some experts, however, question the effectiveness of short-term assignments in developing a global mindset. They believe that the experience of culture shock and the opportunity to learn to cope with cultural differences takes time—and multiple experiences in different cultures. One must learn how to live in another culture and enjoy it.

Secure and grow a safe and robust talent supply chain

Ensure a supply of leaders who are globally competent. Monitor the workforce potential in developing countries. Select employees who can best assist in meeting the organization's goals. Be aware of demographic trends that affect talent supply. Develop a strong employer brand.

Additionally, a global mindset makes the organization:

More proactive with respect to benchmarking and learning from product and process innovations that take place outside its domestic borders. More alert to the entry of nontraditional (e.g., foreign) competitors into its local market. More open to the concept and fact of diversity within the organization. This will create benefits of its own.

Develop policies and practices to manage risks.

Provide for the health, safety, and security of employees. Protect the physical assets of the organization. Protect the intellectual property of the company, such as copyrighted material or patented devices or processes. Protect intangible assets such as: -Relationships with internal and external stakeholders (including employees, customers, communities, governments, institutions). -Reputation of the company. Audit the organization's policies and practices to make sure that they are compliant and effective and are being enforced. Monitor breaches of compliance: -Financial (violations of law related to corporate governance) -Ethical (environmental or consumer safety regulations) -Employment-related (discrimination laws, requirements to inform workforces)

Develop a global organizational culture.

Provide training that improves cultural awareness and adaptability. Develop processes to promote communication and the capturing and sharing of knowledge and experiences.

Develop meaningful metrics.

Take a systematic and disciplined approach to measuring and operationalizing strategic goals. Align human capital to achieve strategic goals. Demonstrate the value HR brings to the global enterprise.

Characteristics of a Global Mindset

They drive for the bigger, broader picture. They look for context and strive to understand the full set of issues. They scan the horizon to learn more about markets, products, technologies, and competitors. Leaders have broader business skills and knowledge of global structures, strategies, and trends. They accept contradictions. Global managers know how complex life is. They accept uncertainty and understand how to use conflict management as opposed to one-sided resolution through imposition or acceptance. They are not frustrated by having to localize practices. They trust the process to solve problems. They look to process rather than organizational structure to solve problems. Process includes the systems, procedures, and norms of the organization that enable people to respond quickly. They value multicultural teamwork. Teamwork and interdependence are fundamental tenets of the global mindset. People with such a mindset are sensitive to cultural contexts and differences. They are good communicators. They view change as opportunity. Global minds are comfortable with change, unpredictability, and ambiguity. They are confident that they can create order out of seeming chaos. They are open to new ideas and continual learning. They are always looking to improve themselves, others, and the company. They are accepting of others' views and are open to new ideas and approaches. They are inclusive, not exclusive. Excluding people, ideas, cultures, and viewpoints is contradictory to the world view of the global mindset.

Training

Training in other cultures can broaden employees' awareness and challenge their ethnocentric definitions of cultural norms. This type of training does offer some unique challenges, however: -Programs will be more effective if they focus on cross-cultural challenges that employees have reported experiencing in the workplace—for example, giving and receiving criticism or varying levels of participation in group discussions. Including opportunities to role-play and practice recommended skills will make the training more practical and decrease employee indifference to "yet another training course." -Programs should focus on congruence (how cultures are similar) and differentiation (appreciating what different cultural values can contribute while maintaining one's own cultural values). Indirect approaches to communicating these differences can reduce tension and resistance and gradually build a sense of familiarity and comfort. Some organizations ask employees from different cultures to participate in informal "lunch and learns." -Ironically, it is also critical that trainers be aware that employee responses to training will differ based on their individual diversity profiles (cultural preferences and values, cognitive and learning styles, etc.). For example, cultural differences can affect attitudes toward authority, influencing the willingness to learn from a trainer. Cognitive and learning style differences can affect how readily employees learn from lectures versus team activities.

HR has four powerful tools at its disposal that can be valuable strategies for creating a global mindset and enhancing the multicultural awareness of leaders and senior managers: the 4 Ts:

Travel, Teams, Training, Transfers

Develop a strategic view of the organization.

Understand how the entire organization creates value, participate in organizational strategy development, and develop an HR global strategy. Determine ways to benefit from globalization. Understand the external context in which the firm operates. Constantly scan the environment to identify global and local trends and identify new skills and tools that the organization will require. Identify and take steps to mitigate or manage potential risks.

Use and adapt HR technology.

Use technology to increase the efficiency of HR programs and integration with the organization's information systems. Move HR technology from domestic to global operations, keeping in mind different input requirements, attitudes toward and regulation of employee data and privacy, differing technology platforms, and cultural issues.

Teams

Working on culturally diverse and/or international teams and projects is another highly effective way to help employees develop cross-cultural management skills. Team assignments can be functional or cross-functional, depending on the situation.

From a tactical perspective,

the group must find a way to focus their separate disciplines and professional backgrounds to develop programs that can deliver measurable success and that can work in different cultural and sociopolitical contexts. Because of the globalization of trade and the mobility of workforces across borders, these HR professionals are increasingly involved in issues like visas, different taxation and pension schemes, workforce quotas, and different workforce relations laws and practices. Some are focused on developing a talent pool of potential global assignees—employees who can be sent on temporary or long-term assignments across borders. Some are struggling with hiring local employees with the right qualifications in tight employment markets. Others find that they are spending a significant amount of time dealing with cultural issues—for example, blending the organizational culture of the Malaysian multinational with its new foreign acquisition or trying to help local managers who are faced with a suddenly diverse workforce due to an influx of third-country nationals.