Building and Managing Global Organisations

The essential goal of development in an organisation is to achieve the best possible fit between the aspirations of its people and the organisation’s needs, culture, and requirements for change, says FC Kohli

MICHAEL Porter, in his book Competitive Advantage of Nations, identified four constituent elements of a successful enterprise. They are: factors of production, demand conditions, domestic rivalry, and servicing of products.

• Factors of production comprise skilled staff, means for their training and continued education, technology, infrastructure, and continuous up gradation of both technology and infrastructure.
• Demand conditions refers to the importance of the internal or the domestic market. If an organisation plans to go global, it must have a strong presence in the domestic market. This is because it is in the domestic market that an enterprise builds its processes, quality concepts, and cost containment or reduction. An established presence in the domestic market also provides a buffer to market variations like downturns abroad. Further, outsourcing within the domestic market can increase yields on businesses. Therefore, a growing and significant presence in the domestic market is a prerequisite to be a successful global player.
• Domestic rivalry is a situation in which an enterprise has, within its own country, another organisation which can serve as a benchmark. This benchmark could be in terms of market share, quality, operations and cost, and could lead to a review of processes as well as gauge the level of innovation. Markets need to be built for healthy rivalry. Marketing starts with the setting up of a marketing information system within an organisation. The system should carry data from all market sources and get continuously updated so as to keep the organisation alert to emerging market forces.
• Servicing of products entails after sales servicing and continuous interaction with clients and users. This enables thinking and planning for next generation of products.

Building people for a global enterprise
In a global setting, it is all the more vital for an organisation to pay special attention to the development of its human and intellectual capital. This underlines the importance of building professionals who can bring excellence and innovativeness in whatever they do, who are committed to continued self learning, can adapt to team and group work dynamics, and can take up responsibility for their own individual development. In other words, a global organisation needs to have the best people, who are academically qualified, have a natural curiosity to keep on learning, and are mature enough to relate to the organisation’s growth and goals. Some of the requirements are outlined below.

Technical skills
Professionals are built through training and appropriate work opportunities. There are two aspects that determine the responsibility of an organisation towards its people: The first is its commitment to training the people at the entry level. The second is the continuing education of the people after they are placed in a working environment.

Soft skills
Besides the enhancement of knowledge and skills, the building of people involves the development of a certain level of maturity. An organisation therefore needs to develop its people’s soft skills like reading, writing, listening, speaking and grooming. Reading is a basic skill, and it enables people to. become proficient in other skills. Such development programmes must extend to coaching on performance improvement methods and techniques, advanced skills, and the systems approach in thinking.

Mentoring
An organisation must provide counseling at various levels to advise and assist its people in personal decision-making. A modem organisation ought to be structured for institutionalised mentoring. Mentors are not people to whom an employee reports on work-related matters. They are experienced people who are specially trained to care, share and to help people in their relationships, while at the same time, focusing on their needs.

Work environment
Organisations need to provide a work environment that ensures accelerated professional growth of its people. They can do this by giving them assignments that are challenging and which stretch their capabilities. People may also be moved from one assignment to another; which increases their knowledge and experience.

Team and group work settings synergise the individual’s abilities remarkably towards attaining an organisational goal. Teamwork is essentially a cooperative relationship among a number of highly educated people trained in varied disciplines, and with different attitudes and outlook. It is through teamwork that people are able to develop fully and bring creativity to their work.

A successful organisation is skilled in building high• performance teams, in teaching its people to work in these teams, and in making the teams responsible for results. Such an organisation acquires the adeptness to form, manage, and reform teams as per its requirements.

Performance appraisal
An organisation must recognise and reward the contributions, merits and the learning initiative of its people. This calls for a complex and comprehensive appraising. Appraisals take place at three levels: self, peer, and supervisory. In a simple situation, a person reports to one supervisor or project leader, who conducts the appraisal. In a matrix organisation, there can be multiple appraisals, as the person being appraised may have worked under two r three supervisors during a single appraisal period-either successively or concurrently.

Appraisals are useful in assessing individual performance in current and past assignments, and in determining compensation and incentive. However, if an organisation is progressive, with. a global outlook, its appraisal systems must go further and serve as pointers for the  future, in terms of future assignments, career path, and self-development.

It is the responsibility of such an organisation to ensure that its appraisal systems serve to determine the advanced training and educational needs of its people, and also provide feedback to them in this regard.

Operating in global markets
A global organisation is essentially a global market player. While a presence in the domestic market is a prerequisite to entering global markets, it must be recognise that global markets are not mirror images of the domestic markets. Global markets differ in needs, features, quality, and in other attributes. They would, therefore, need a different approach. It is also important to realise that customers in global markets have many options available to them for meeting their requirements, and that their mindset is different.

As competition increases, the relative success in supplying complex technology services and products to global markets will become more important for the supplier. Products impart the image of a global player and the distinction that goes with it.

Global players also gain many advantages in forecasting trends, building collaborations and associations, and integrating with the domestic market. This leads organisations to learn about reverse engineering, innovation, creativity and differentiation.

Excerpt from the chapter ‘Building and Managing Global Organisations’ by FC Kohli, in ‘An Executive Handbook: World-Class Quality' by Suresh Lulla; Tata McGraw Hill Publicaitons