Being Global. Gregory Unruh

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СКАЧАТЬ in which people working in one sector tend to ignore the effects their actions have on the others. Greenhouse gas emissions offer a case in point. When, in 2007, the European Union set the laudable goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it estimated that some reductions would come through increased use of biofuels in cars. In response, the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia permitted developers to clear virgin rainforest to make way for palm plantations that would produce palm oil to sell to the EU as a biofuel. The conversion of rainforests to agricultural land, however, is a major source of greenhouse gases in its own right, nullifying the impact of the EU policy. A local solution exacerbated a global problem.

      Global leaders are able to avoid unintended zero-sum courses of action because they are able to see the world's problems in their complexity. Their solutions may address only one aspect of a problem, but they function in a system of parallel, disaggregated efforts that collectively drive toward a more sustainable and inclusive world. For business, many of those solutions will represent significant commercial innovations that employ thousands and earn millions. Others will belong to society or government. Most, however, will require collaborative efforts by all three sectors.

      Global Leaders Connect, Create, and Contribute

      Global leaders become who they are by cultivating particular ways of looking at the world, thinking about problems and opportunities, and acting with integrity to pursue solutions. The individuals who best master these challenges have invested the time and effort to develop three global leadership competencies. Global leaders, in short, have developed a global mindset, global entrepreneurship, and global citizenship. Their global mindset allows them to connect with others across boundaries, their entrepreneurship enables them to create value through those connections, and their citizenship motivates them to seek a positive contribution.

      Global Mindset

      Leaders who possess a global mindset are able to interpret, analyze, and decode situations from a variety of perspectives to identify the best route to successful collaboration in a multicultural environment. A global mindset arises through the development of three different types of personal capital: global psychological capital, global intellectual capital, and global social capital.

      Leaders with significant global psychological capital have the cognitive ability to analyze situations from multiple, even competing, points of view. They have a driving interest in learning about other people's perspectives and are capable of suspending their own judgment in order to more subjectively understand a particular situation.

      Global intellectual capital develops in leaders who dedicate time and effort to learning about different parts of the world. Leaders with such capital have strong knowledge of economic and political issues around the world, and they can grasp the inherent complexities of international affairs from multiple national perspectives. Global leaders also recognize how these international trends and events have an impact on their industry and are aware of the major risks and potential rewards involved in operating in various regions.

      Global social capital accrues to people whose social networks of friends, colleagues, and contacts stretch beyond one nation or region. Those in possession of strong global social capital display an unusual ability to connect emotionally and communicate effectively with individuals from different cultural backgrounds. They have tact and know how to listen and assimilate multiple viewpoints when making decisions.

      Global Entrepreneurship

      A global mindset is critical for global leaders' success in building bridges across cultural boundaries, but its true benefit comes when they act as global entrepreneurs and leverage that mindset to create value. That value may come in the form of an innovative new product, a new mode of operation, new forms of financing, or solving existing problems. Global entrepreneurs are both social and political innovators, reaching across boundaries of place and sector to forge value-creating partnerships among business, government, and civil society. They are boundary spanners and “bridgers.”¹³

      Entrepreneurship may take place in new start-ups or within big companies; it might be a social innovation or a hit product. Value, in our definition of entrepreneurship, is not limited to financial returns for investors but includes other forms of individual, organizational, and social benefits.

      Global entrepreneurs create value in many ways. They can tap commonalities, or convergence, between markets and cultures. Conversely, they may tap differences, or divergence. More often than not, they do both. They may rely on convergence around certain technologies to gain access to new markets, while leveraging divergence to adapt their supply chain to the available resources of each country.

      Global entrepreneurs may also create value by tapping networks that allow solutions to more widely scale across geographies and sectors. Networks can be as literal as the telecommunications or transportation systems that allow ideas and goods to travel long distances. Or they can be as figurative as the business platforms that allow companies in one place to connect with complementary firms in another. Where the networks do not yet exist, a global entrepreneur may create value by building them.

      Global Citizenship

      Global leaders are not defined just by their mindsets or by the entrepreneurial opportunities they seek out and create, but by how they contribute to the improvement of the context in which they operate. An individual may leverage his global mindset to build a hugely profitable organization that captures divergent value across borders, but if it exploits local people, destroys indigenous resources, or engages in corrupt practices, that individual is not a global leader. Global leaders act as citizens of the world, pursuing challenges and opportunities in a way that brings benefits to everyone involved.

      Global citizenship is probably the most difficult leadership characteristic to master because the business environment often encourages leaders to put private gain ahead of personal integrity. Business leaders in particular are under so much pressure to deliver results for shareholders that they often find themselves able to justify all forms of behavior, such as paying bribes to win contracts, cutting corners in employee safety, or loosely interpreting environmental standards.

      Global leaders do not play on the edge of the law. They are moved instead by a true desire to make a positive contribution. Some even pursue a social mission as part of their business. Rangina Hamidi, for instance, describes her textile handcraft company, Kandahar Treasure, as employing “women artisans from the Kandahar area in order to develop an economic base for the province and support the advancement of women throughout Afghanistan.” Shai Agassi calls his company Better Place to embody a vision of sustainable personal transportation. Daniel Lubetzky, an entrepreneur who created Kind Healthy Snacks and PeaceWorks Foods, feels so strongly about the social purpose of his ventures that he has registered the phrase “not-only-for-profit.” Business for these leaders is not a zero-sum game with winners and losers. Profit is an outcome from contribution and service.

      Even companies that do not have an overt social mission still play a part in transmitting a set of values. Sam Palmisano, chairman of the board and former CEO of IBM, describes his company as a “globally integrated enterprise” in which specific types of work gravitate to where they can be done best, in terms of quality, speed, or cost. In order to coordinate this web of processes, IBM, like other multinationals, promotes a set of core values and standards that hold across geographies. It may globally ban a practice that it considers offensive or unacceptable in one location. While it may seek the path of least resistance in order to minimize costs, it raises levels globally when it comes to values. The idea that one's responsibilities transcend geography or political borders is at the heart of global citizenship.¹⁴

      Conclusion

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