We had some wonderful sunshine in London this past weekend, and like any good Londoner would, I joined a group of friends for a picnic at our local park. As we were sitting and chatting about subjects from careers to our world travels, it struck me that in my group of six, we had six different nationalities (or dual ones sometimes!). Now, living in London you don’t really pay much attention to how many international people are around you, and one easily forgets that this multicultural society wasn’t very common a few decades ago. But, as companies operate in more and more countries and hire more and more diverse workforces, multiculturalism has become standard in today’s workplace.
For us in Communications, this presents an exciting, yet difficult challenge, namely coordinating and managing communications efforts & messages in our global companies. In dealing with employees across multiple countries, cultures, and languages, how often have you struggled with questions like:
- How do I reach global employees that are remote from headquarters and sit in four different time zones?
- What language do I use to communicate with them?
- How do I empower local teams to manage those communications without creating a mess/PR nightmare?
- Who are my communicators in each country?
For many companies that are already global, these are daily challenges. Even if your organization isn’t global yet, your company is probably looking for new growth frontiers in emerging markets and you will need to think about setting up communications for those new markets.
As we at the CEC explore the challenges of managing a global function, I would love to hear how you approach this issue — what tactics have you found helpful in coordinating communications globally and facilitating idea sharing among local teams across markets?
Meanwhile, some global communication themes that I have been thinking about include:
- “Culture fluency” (i.e. improving the cultural sensitivity of teams and leaders): As companies expand into emerging markets, the cultural differences between countries become more acute, and a sensitivity to these differences is important. Gert Hofstede’s five dimensions of culture provide useful context for thinking through how receptive employees in different cultures will be to your messaging. For example, would people from countries with a high power distance (i.e., the extent to which less “powerful” members of organizations accept that power is distributed unequally) accept change initiatives at face value and comply? Or can we encourage them to enthusiastically embrace changes and look for opportunities to do their job better / suggest improvements? How would we go about this?
- The tension between headquarters and regional teams: An HR executive, who is a member of our sister program, the Corporate Leadership Council, recently posted a discussion forum question about how he/she had observed bitterness and distrust from local leaders outside headquarters. Members say that often this tension is born out of lack of awareness about the local country’s customs, cultural differences, and operating environment. In theory, if communicators are culturally fluent, this tension will be a lot easier to manage and prevent.
- Communicator-to-communicator idea sharing tools: Finally, we at the CEC talk a lot about peer to peer sharing tools for employees, but what about social networking for within your Comms teams in various countries and geographies? Figuring out who your communicators are in different locations and the best channels to help them connect with each other (recognizing that language and technology capabilities will vary from region to region) is important in getting the different markets to own communications proactively (rather than the central team creating all the tools and messages).
These are only a few of the complexities that come from operating in a global environment, but I’m sure you are dealing with many more! As you think about the issues you’re struggling with (coordination across teams, channel management, message consistency, different cultures, etc.), I would love to hear where CEC’s research would be most helpful. Please comment here to share your thoughts!
Related blogs:
Related CEC research:
on 14 April 2011
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Time issues are, of course, a challenge when trying to pull together global on-line time meetings with team members spread around Europe, Asia and the Americas. Early mornings in the Americas work for all, but do burden Asia team members with giving up more evenings. To help offset this, I do individual discussions with team members in India, Singapore and China at night my time so those discussions are during their normal work day.
On a more substantive level, it is critical to decide what elements of the brand visual imaging and positioning are non-negotiable and which elements can be adapted locally — and to ensure this clarity is maintained as people change roles over the years. It is also important to clearly communicate where you are headed strategically and to be extremely responsive when local communicators ask for input on something they are doing. If you make it easy for your global team to get input from you, they will be more likely to reach out for your thoughts.
This is a critical topic and I appreciate any insights you can share.
on 15 April 2011
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Hi Mike,
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comments. You make two very good points. The time zone issues remain a challenge across the board, both from a time and language perspective. We have heard some members starting to think about virtual networking solutions as an alternative to conference calls.
The brand positioning issue is an interesting one because it adds the complexity of being culturally sensitive about what certain symbols and images mean in various countries, and adapting as needed. As you say, it is critical to have a good system in place for gathering and giving feedback to teams locally. I would love to continue the conversation and share ideas as we progress with this research!
Best,
Arlinda
on 19 May 2011
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[...] Email Print This Post Tweet You might recall that I blogged about the complexities of managing a global comms function a few weeks ago. I have spent the past several weeks speaking with our members who either work [...]
on 20 July 2011
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You’ve highlighted many factors that pose a challenge; the “hard” issues in terms of technology and logistics as well as the “soft” issues in terms of tone, style etc. Trying to hit just the right pitch that appeals to all cultures across the group is perhaps the biggest challenge. While some of our geographies prefer the warm, fuzzy and to be coaxed into the topic, others just want you to get to the point.
Another internal challenge is the use of visual elements that support communications. Certain markets felt the style of a cup we used to be offensive! It’s a delicate line and one of the ways that we’ve worked around it was to create a core group with representation from the different markets that vet all campaign elements.
With regards to messaging, we’ve created a tiered messaging system. All messages from group are in English
(business language) and go through the line untouched. Each business unit or geography then has the opportunity to follow through with comms from the country head in the language of preference in support.
As Mike mentioned there are the negotiable and the non-negotiable and these need to be clearly defined at the start.
Having had the privilege to deal with so many different markets, a key suggestion would certainly be to take the time to have the conversations. A blanket approach is never the best one – it all boils down to empowerment and respect.
on 25 July 2011
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Hi Thirona – many thanks for sharing some of the things you are doing to get around these issues. Very interesting! You are absolutely right that a blanket approach will not work, just create more distrust among communicators (and audiences) in the local markets. The key is to set some guardrails within which to operate, so that local communicators know when and how to act. We created a framework to clarify some of those ambiguities in terms of central/local partnerships, which you can access (together with some tips/tricks and tools for what to do) on the CEC website: https://cec.executiveboard.com/Members/ResearchAndTools/Abstract.aspx?cid=100737841&source=rss . Please let us know if you would like to discuss this further!
on 18 January 2012
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[...] Managing a Truly GLOBAL Communications Function [...]