Archive for the 'Global-local linkages' Category

It is hard to believe we are already at the end of the decade (and that I’ve been blogging for a decade!) but here we are 🙂  For my end of the year (decade) post I’m sharing some of my blog posts that have been the most popular this decade.  If you missed some of these, I hope they can be useful to you now.  Happy Reading and Happy Holidays!

First blog post:  How Relevant is Global Thinking?  (2010) Hint: It’s only gotten more relevant over the decade 🙂

What Makes Someone Inspirational (2010) – my most popular blog post …

Last week I participated in a discussion around some of the success factors for how organizations can engage and grow more effectively internationally. We reviewed a report entitled Association Global Maturity: Critical Actions for Successful International Growth and especially seven areas that it laid out:

I. Strategic and business planning

II. Management and organizational culture

III. Leadership engagement

IV. Market insight

V. Value proposition and engagement model

VI. Global organization, roles, and support

VII. Local operations and service delivery capacity

The group shared some experiences with those categories they found particularly challenging with some suggestions of how to address these …

One of the fun parts of being more ‘senior’ in one’s career is having the opportunity to share ‘lessons learned’ over the years.  I had the opportunity to participate in one such session in August – blog post here – and another earlier this month.  Here are a few of the lessons shared from this latest session:

• The ‘why’ is always the most important – why are you undertaking this effort?  Form (tactics – what will you do and how will you do it?) should follow function (what is it you’re trying to accomplish?).  I’ve often called it the Journalism

If your organization is expanding its international reach, taking time for doing the due diligence to explore and understand new environments is crucial. First steps to take include clearly articulating with your board and senior leadership why you want to engage with a particular country or region and what you are trying to accomplish.  Once the answer to these questions are clear, developing a criteria for identifying or determining if a particular area of the world is aligned with your goals is an important next step.

There is a range of steps you can take to conduct your due diligence …

Going Global Takes Time – that was the theme of an American Society of Association Executives MasterClass on operating globally that I presented at last week.  80% of the group represented organizations operating internationally for more than five years, and 24% for more than 20 years, so there was a lot of experience in the room.  The group discussed some of their successes and challenges in increasing their international engagement.  The unifying theme was the need to look at long-term horizons and not rush the process.  Some of the specific topics discussed included:

Cultural sensitivity –  For organizations, there should …