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We all want to retain the familiar, and that's fine. There has to be continuity through professional associations, family, hobbies, preferences, tastes. We are seeking 'evolution' not 'revolution' in our personal and professional lives.
Equally be open to being surprised, pack a sense of wonder and exploration with you, have the humility to 'empty your cup' as the Zen Buddhists would say. Be prepared for a different tempo of life, different intuitions on what is 'normal', the role of emotion and more.
People want your originality and innovation, as well as your respect and understanding. That's the quintessential balancing act for leaders and managers as they travel.
Your job is not to either pander to everything you find, nor is it to put everything you encounter through your own paradigm so it passes through a proverbial meat grinder and all comes out the same.
Finally, remember to crystallize what you distinctively bring to the party, and ask what you will leave as a legacy. How can you institutionalize some of your distinctive strengths and ideas, so the organization benefits from your leadership, not just your charisma, and so your successors have something tangible to build on?
Set yourself 3 to 4 key breakthroughs that will make the biggest impact on the organization, its profits, its customers, its team, its brand and its positioning in that market over a 1 to 3 year period. Anyone can have list of 20, the real leadership challenge is to peg the top 4 or 5. Do that and execute accordingly, and you'll leave, whenever you do, with a sense of real satisfaction of having moved the goal posts significantly forward.
"People want your originality and innovation, as well as your respect and understanding. That's the quintessential balancing act for leaders and managers as they travel."
- Omar |
The pros are a wider band of opportunity, the ability to take advantage of shifting economic tides, and the ability to strengthen your brand, even back home, as it becomes more globally attractive and compelling.
There can also be economies of scale relative to everything from supply chain to ad buys. Moreover, there are huge untapped markets in developing countries, or untapped niches in countries where your value proposition may not be as prevalent.
There aren't 'cons' per se, but there are challenges to consider in determining how much expansion makes sense.
Challenges involve the need to provide a seamless service; otherwise you dilute the original brand. Therefore your service challenge becomes more complex in multiple markets and management attention accordingly will have to be significantly heightened.
Moreover, you need to be able to induct a global team that expresses your corporate priorities, values and service ethos. That requires a talent strategy, as well as the ability to understand how to conduct business in different business, financial and legal frameworks. The business has to be structured to optimize these aspects, rather than be snagged by them.
Markets have to be assessed also on the basis of opportunity cost, both in 'hard' and 'soft' terms. Some markets may require so many infrastructures, set-up, hassle or other legalities, that if you don't need to be fully global, it may behoove you to be more selective rather than expand indiscriminately. You also have to understand how you will positively differentiate yourself from local or regional competitors who will try and offer a version of your offering at lower cost rates.
Two angles: if you wish to go the bigger firm route, then beware of getting bodies on the ground on foreign shores who haven't been vetted, prepared, supervised and nurtured by you at your main offices. Otherwise you have a 'phantom presence' but none of the savvy, insight, edge and professionalism for which you are hopefully known.
If you are a solo practitioner, or the head of a small firm, create a rock-solid niche that is globally relevant and will be sought. Make sure you build a brand around that niche, and create gravitas through speaking, publishing, blogs, references from leaders whose companies have a global footprint, etc. The quality and distinctiveness of the niche, and the credibility and appeal of you as someone parlaying that area of expertise, will make it possible for your work, and you, to travel meaningfully and profitably.
Again, make sure you are literate about the culture and market realities of where you consult. Great advice is often greatly inapplicable, or usually, in need of some adaptation to be applicable. Do that homework as well as learning something about the country, customs and business realities.
Finally, make sure you are a pleasure to do business with. Have clear, transparent, user friendly terms of engagement, forms, follow-up and more. Be a source of confidence and energy in the lives of your clients, not a source of aggravation and stress due to poor preparation and processes.
Remember your role globally is to bring international insight, standards and perspective to local problems. It is to enlarge the vision of your clients. You can't do that without expanding your own.
Hard to pick one. But one that stands out is when I realized that you could leverage expertise and quality of input and engagement, rather than physical presence and thus, wear and tear.
I used to bill for how hard I worked. I learned to bill for the quality of the process I was offering, the speed of essential skills transfer to the client, and the quality of engagement I helped them achieve with each other focused on key business outcomes.
I used to then bill primarily for physical presence. And while that continues to be important, my clients are extremely busy, already travel too much, and have packed calendars. Therefore being readily contactable and having fast response times via webcam, teleconferencing, email and local team members, to their needs, gives them the quality of thinking and partnership they want, without having to spend on more expenses, or worse (for most of them), take yet more time from their already packed lives.
So intellectual capital, ability to add value without increasing labor intensity, and building on and leveraging trusting relationships with key leaders -- and realizing that was valued more than wear and tear, was a highlight, a breakthrough, and a great inducement to keep raising my game in value terms.
You need–
- the ability to listen deeply and understand quickly, the capacity to reframe issues so people hear them reflected back to them in original, illuminating and provocative ways.
- a well-developed 'rubbish' monitor'; enough business acumen to understand issues and situations and separate the essential from the incidental; some insight into human dynamics and human defensiveness.
- unwavering commitment to improve your client's situation; a dedication to the success of those you serve.
- the humility to be a student of what works as well as what doesn't; equal parts of wonder at the new and inspiring and utter intolerance for recycled nonsense and excuse-mongering.
- the ability to take your work seriously and yourself lightly, strong professional standards, a dedication to life-long personal and professional learning; a curiosity about the history and culture of myriad parts of the world; and the courage to be an original.
- a powerful quotient for converting ideas into execution; the ability to coach team or individual attempts at improvement; good emotional and social intelligence.
can certainly help, but they come AFTER the above. The best degrees absent the above will get you nowhere. Shine relative to the above, and your formal education can, based on the nature of your consulting, either be icing on the cake, or possibly an impressive footnote.
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