GlobalComm Strategists as Key Leaders and Innovators

After the Global Economic & Investment Forum I attended last week my mentor walked me out to my car. He is a retired bank CFO and was interested to know who I think the target audience of this blog is and what it is I want them to take away from it. Let me begin by saying that I was flattered to know that he was reading my blog. And secondly, he is not the first to wonder about this, sometimes I wonder myself.

The world we live in forces business leaders to deal with an enormous amount of demands; globalization, technology, the financial crisis, economic recession, downsizing and competition. But in the global communications industry, we sometimes find it hard to visualize the long term impact of these demands beyond what they mean to our own revenues each month. To ignore these demands is a very dangerous game to play, though, and in our ever-more competitive industry those of us who have a wider vision and adapt to shifting global trends will be the ones that not only survive but prosper.

One thing my mentor understands very well is we are in the middle of a seismic shift in the balance of economic power – a shift brought on in part by surging energy costs, huge budget and trade deficits in the U.S. and the redistribution of global wealth. One result is energy producing nations are taking their proceeds and becoming a main source of merger and acquisition activities and purchaser of goods and services.

Don’t believe me? Recently, Saudi Arabian Basic Industries completed the over $11 billion acquisition of one of our clients, GE’s Plastics division. It was at the time the largest ever acquisition of a U.S. company by a Middle Eastern company. We still enjoy a relationship with the new company SABIC Innovative Plastics and the success story of how they relied on our people, processes and innovation to help guide the cost effective delivery of the new brand in 12 languages and in record time is one I’ll save for another day.

In more recent news, Etihad, Abu Dhabi's flagship air carrier, stole the show at the Paris Air show this week by purchasing rights that, if exercised, would equal the largest engine order on record in commercial aviation at more than $14 billion. GE Aviation was one of the big winners inking $3.9 billion in orders from Etihad. I’ve had the pleasure of having many discussions with folks from GE Aviation who contend the international language of aviation is English; I wonder if this will change their minds?

Let’s imagine for a moment that it does and GE Aviation decides it wants to manage some portion of their global communications in a multi-lingual, multi-cultural way. Some of the decisions they would need to make would impact how they create, localize and deliver their content. To start with they would need to develop a strategy that considers classification and storage procedures, review processes to ensure regulatory and legal compliance and design standards that accommodate multiple languages. Additionally, they would need to develop best practices and vendor strategies for internationalization, translation, quality review and document compilation activities that address subject matter & language pair expertise, predictive capacity planning and pricing models. When it comes to distribution of the content, it is probably important for them to simplify how their people find and share information and multi-lingual content in a secure environment, perhaps customization and personalization is a priority and certainly they will want a delivery model that facilitates electronic and physical media. Finally, transaction accounting and metrics on activity will need to be considered.

And herein lies the disconnect for my mentor, and indeed many multi-national organizations; financially they understand the business case for ‘going global’ but what it takes to get there seems too daunting. They can’t believe that there is any way to organize the activities described above in a repeatable way to produce positive business outcomes. And even the promise of technology isn’t enough because technology is simply an accelerant to the process. And that is the problem; there is no secret recipe to the process. Each is unique and dependant on where organizations find themselves dealing with demands such as globalization, technology, the financial crisis, economic recession, downsizing and competition.

Our industry ought to be as aware of global economics as any other, but most get caught up in their own demands and become blind to the bigger picture. As the title of Marshall Goldsmith’s book tells us, what got you here won’t get you there. Business leaders aren’t looking for better ways to do the old job, they are looking for a vision that solves the demands they face today and the people, processes and innovation to take them there.

So what is it I hope readers take away from my blog? There is a huge opportunity for companies to drive growth with global communications - due to the unwinding of the world’s economic framework perhaps a bigger opportunity than ever. But as GlobalComm strategists we need to prove ourselves not just as business service providers, but also as key leaders and innovators of business development process – doing things faster, more efficiently and more cost effectively.