The Globalization Challenge

Working with people on the other half of the earth, whom you have never met in person and who likely speak your language as a second language, is now becoming a necessity for many business managers in many industries. Most managers are more comfortable with face-to-face meetings to build relationships and achieve understanding of complex strategies, operational expectations, and changing directions.

Globalization and virtual-teams present significant communication challenges. Executives must learn to arrange their business agreements, establish supplier, customer and global staff relationships, and maintain these business relationships without regular face-to-face contact in order to operate in today's global business environment. Globalization can be challenging!

Achieving true global collaboration requires new leadership and communication skills. Simple text and verbal communication is not enough to be competitive. Verbal and written communication in your own language must be re-evaluated in terms of the global audience. 

     Will your global business community understand the context of your message? 
     
     Will your vision be clear to your trading network? 
     
     Is your business community optimized to seek value for each participant?

Leveraging business models and proven collaboration strategies can help companies optimize their global business community effectiveness. Business models provide the context and illustrate the relationships needed to streamline global team communications and improve operational performance. Globalization success is driven by an optimized business community with trading partners, service and logistics providers, standards consortia and governmental agencies collaborating to achieve shared value for each participant. 

      To be successful, global business community leaders must first imagine global collaboration^TM.



Karen J. Cox
Founder and President, IGC Business Network