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When managers go transcultural

Prof Karl Moore of McGill University shares his thoughts with Mayank Singh about the growing prominence of regions and the need for transcultural managers

Prof Karl J Moore is associate professor, Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University in Montreal and an Associate Fellow, Templeton College, Oxford University. After completing his MBA at the University of Southern California and post graduate work at the Harvard Business School, Karl worked for 11 years in sales and marketing positions in technology and consulting industries with IBM and Bull. Before joining McGill, he taught at Oxford University for five years. He came to McGill to work with Henry Mintzberg with whom he co-directs McGill’s Advanced Leadership Programme. Dr Moore’s publications include over 70 articles, books and papers on a variety of topics.

What is the purpose of your visit to Muscat?
Dr Abdullah al Sabahy, chairman, Middle East College of Information Technology (MECIT), is doing an international programme at McGill University where I am his tutor. It was his suggestion that I visit Oman. I am also here to give a talk on ‘Globalisation 0.5: Known World Globalisation in the Ancient World.’

How do you see the process of globalisation unfolding and its impact on businesses?
With the growth of communications, there is a growing interaction of multiple cultures and this is leaving an imprint on the way businesses operate. Nations are becoming less important while regions are growing in prominence. We see this trend in North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the European Union (EU). Relationships are being forged at a regio-nal level; a good example is the US-Canada one. In the EU, a majority of the trade is inter-regio-nal. Secondly, there is an increasing trend towards the development of knowledge clusters (in fields like information technology) at the regional level. Both big and small companies need to work out regional strategies. There needs to be one plan for the Middle East, another for North America and yet another one for Asia. The effort should be to think global and act local.

Is this trend having an impact on the outlook and managerial style of executives?
More than ever before, senior executives and managers are required to spend time overseas as part of their work, ranging from short business trips to lengthy postings. A recent study of 270 CEOs of companies that comprise Canada’s Standard & Poors and Toronto Stock Exchange Index revealed that 40 per cent of managers had worked outside their home country, up from 29 per cent a decade ago. The numbers are higher in Europe. The experience can be very difficult, particularly in countries with different languages and customs and not everybody takes to it easily. Yet globalisation means that postings abroad are inevitable for senior managers. A number of companies try to help executives by offering language cour-ses, relocation training and brief courses on cultural differences. But while these can be useful, research suggests that they cannot create the mindset required to survive and thrive in a foreign culture. To achieve that there is a need to go deeper.

So how can companies go about grooming global managers?
The phrase global manager has been coined to describe somebody who operates successfully across different cultures. But everybody is rooted in a particular country and culture, and where we grow has a profound impact on our worldview. There is no global management style that can be applied across countries, and similarly there are no global managers. This is why I think the term ‘transcultural executive’ is more appropriate than global manager. A transcultural executive is one who is at home in two or more cultures. They are living parado-xes. They have roots in their own home culture and take considerable pride in it, yet they have travelled and lived in other parts of the world which allows them to develop a high level of comfort in one or more different cultures, allowing them to have multiple selves.

Can such a manager be groomed, or is it something that is innate in nature?
Being truly transcultural means going beyond just making friends in a new country. It means digging deeper into a culture and delving into its history, music and art. When you engage in a culture at a profound level, you get more insights into its values. It is important that you go beyond the surface. In effect it means that the person becomes multicultural within
himself or herself. So how can young managers go about successfully preparing themselves for their overseas, out-of-culture experience? A good start is to learn to move between the cultures that exist within any large firm. Most executives begin their corporate lives in one area – for example, finance, manufacturing or marketing. These functional areas inculcate in us specific views of a corporation, based on our professional roles within an organisation. One of the first challenges for a general mana-ger is to grasp the views of other competing cultures. Ultimately there is no substitute to getting your feet wet and actually experiencing another culture. Overall attitude is the key, they need to realise that a different culture is not necessarily a threat but a learning opportunity. This is the core value that a transcultural manager needs to have.

Apart from this what are the other qualities that a manager needs to possess?
A post-modern leader needs to have a new set of values and qualities. The challenge for the managers of today is to ignite the passion – the emotional side of work – of his co-workers, and this is definitely not something that one gets to learn in an MBA course. The challenge is heightened by the changing outlook of the millennial generation. This is the generation that has seen their parents make a number
of sacrifices to earn better money or to climb the corporate ladder and they are not ready to do the same. They want to have work-life balance. As a leader one needs to understand these aspirations and still get the best out of his or her colleagues.