Global Minds

Many organisations have global ambitions as they crave for success in the international markets.  These organisations want to grow globally and build a global talent pool of leaders who are able to develop global supply chains and understand the nuances of doing business globally.  However they fear the risk of failure and want to refrain from sending people overseas, only to have them retracted back to their home country.  This is a costly affair which is abhorred by corporations.

The World is in Your Hands

The Thunderbird School of Global Management in the United States, being the first and oldest graduate school that specializes in international management and global business, launched an intensive study, as scholars felt that many managers were successful in domestic operations and did not, for some reason, succeed in the international arena.  The question was ‘Why’.  “What were the competencies required in the global context?”  Consequently, a model was created with the three tenets of Social Capital, Psychological Capital and Intellectual Capital.  This model led to the creation of the GLOBAL MINDSET INVENTORY (GMI), an assessment tool with the aim of getting to the baseline as to how ready the corporate executives were, to work in a global environment.

Using the results from the GMI, an intervention program, entitled The GlobalMinds Program was created to help executives understand where the gaps were and how to choose the right behaviour under the right set of circumstances as well as decode what was going around them in a cross-cultural environment.

This was done by building up their Social, Intellectual and Psychological Capitals.  These three capitals enabled corporate executives to answer the key question of ‘HOW TO WIN?’  in a new environment, by finding out ‘WHAT WAS THE GAME’ and ‘WHAT WERE THE RULES OF THE GAMES” in that environment.  This would enable them to

• know the Social Culture and its Dimensions
• know when to use Relationship Business versus Transactional Business
• know how to become more Global Business Savvy
• know how to get Comfortable in Uncomfortable Situations
• know how to create a Passion for Diversity, among others