Global business and mergers requires a greater emphasis on leadership and teamwork

As I begin to write, I pause to take in the view.  I am sitting on the balcony of a winery / guest hotel in St. Cyr sur Mer, France.  Facing the south, I see before me the rolling hills of the vineyards with their unique rocky soils, a few scattered farm houses and barns, and forested hills off to my left.  Beyond the last hills, about three kilometers away, lies the azure Mediterranean Sea.  The temperature is a pleasant 20 degrees.

Allow me at this point to venture a guess.  As a reader, you might fall into one of three categories: a) completely envious of my current environs;  b) wondering if my column had mystically been teleported from the Travel to the Business section; or c) thinking that I am crazy sitting on the balcony in 20 degree temperatures and thinking it is pleasant!  (By the way, that's 20 Celsius, which is  68 Fahrenheit!)

As a business reader, I would hope you would fall into category "a."  The simple fact is that the domain of the business community is increasingly global in scope.  I have an office in Colorado.  But like many of you, I have to travel to engage in my profession.  Increasingly, my travels lead me to international destinations because my work mirrors the way business is conducted.

For example, I am in St. Cyr sur Mer as the keynote speaker for a huge pharmaceutical company's senior research and development retreat.  Like many companies today, this behemoth is the product of mergers and acquisitions.  Both interestingly, and fortunately for me, the focus of their retreat is on leadership and teamwork.  Even though every one of the 120 executives in attendance here holds either an M.D. or a Ph.D. degree in technical arenas that I can't even pronounce, they have come to realize that leadership and teamwork are keys to their future success.

Obviously, the complexity of today's world requires diversity in technical expertise.  It is difficult to stay current in our narrow professions, much less in all the disciplines needed to move a product from the basic research stage to final market dominance.  So teams of experts are no longer a passing fad.  Teams are, indeed, the only option available.

While teams are a requirement for conducting work in a complex environment, they also bring their own complexities.  At this particular conference, there are executives from 12 different countries, each bringing their own unique language, values, and traditions.  These cultural factors alone can create problems in work teams.

As an example, I recently attended a comedy dinner theater in Europe where the various countries were being satirized in a business parody.  The actors presented a scene where an American team member had just described his proposal to his various European team mates.  After hearing the proposal, the British team mate replied, "Interesting.  Quite interesting."  Then the Dutch team mate offered this response.  "That's a stupid proposal.  And that's a stupid looking tie you have on."   To both of these replies, the European audience rolled in the aisles with laughter.  They already knew what I was about to learn about these two stereotypical replies:  both respondents meant exactly the same thing:  "There is no way we will accept this proposal."

As important as cultural differences are, organizations are learning that these differences pale in comparison to the differences in business practices that can occur between their former merged and acquired components.  One organization I work with has two major components:  the parent organization with a history of change and responsiveness; and the acquired organization with a history of "keeping things the way they used to be."  Without any further explanation, it may be fairly obvious why the latter company was swallowed.  Nonetheless, the leaders in the newly combined organization had the challenge of making these two different approaches work.

Naturally, each of the old organizations thought their organizational cultures were best and neither wanted to "become like the other."  Fortunately, there are tools and assessments that can help these two groups recognize that there can be merits in both cultures.  It is very likely that an ideal future state may not be where either sub-organization is right now, but in some new location in terms of organizational culture.  And this problem-solution set is likely to keep me employed for some time.

Time to move on.  With this international executive retreat behind me, it was time to leave my villa overlooking the Mediterranean, and catch a flight to my next international executive conference.  This one would have representatives from over 30 different countries, with participants who also recognize the critical importance of leadership and teamwork.  Unfortunately for me, the next one will be in Noordwijk, Netherlands, on the coast of the North Sea where it is snowing and the temperature is a blustery zero degrees (that's 32 degrees, Fahrenheit).  C'est la vie.

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