Times Up For The Man From Head Office

When it comes to the nuts and bo-lts of manageme-nt, the idea of the global company can be misunderstood. For some, it calls up a picture of multicultural monsters, uprooting managers of all nations and sending them to wander the globe.

The reality is more complex. The vast majority companies still have a culture rooted in their country or origin. Changing that is one of the biggest challenges to becoming genuinely global.

As for expatriate managers, the situation is the reverse. Most companies aim not to have more of them, but fewer.

In some respects, the expatriate is a hangover from the old days of the multinationals, when managers were sent out from head office, like colonial governors, to run the overseas possessions. The aim is not to employ local managers who have been imbued with the culture of the organisation.

The trick is to achieve a balance: to combine the strength of local knowledge with global reach.

Richard Greenhalgh, head of management development and training at the Anglo-Dutch consumer group Unilever, says that in a few areas, such as integrity and the Unilever code of conduct, corporate culture takes precedence.

But you need a balance betw-een having a very international cadre and having a national presence, he says. A few years ago, we were concerned that we had too many expatriates. Five years ago, three of our four business heads in Italy were expatriates. Now theyre all Italian. In a consumer business like ours, thats important.

Lowell Bryan, a senior partner with McKinsey in New York, agre-es, Though you may want to rotate people, he says, you tend to find theyre most effective back in their home country. Otherwise you get the cut flower syndrome. People start off knowing a lot, but then they lose it. And theyre competing with locals.

The global executive, in fact, may be something of a myth. According to Mr Greenhalgh, the use of foreign talent runs counter to the need to provide a career ladder for local managers. In addition, he says, the increase in dual career families makes it more difficult to move people around. There is often a window of opportunity for people to go abroad, but in many cases its for four years, he says. Then the partner wants to resume a career, or the children have to be educated, so they return.

However global the company may be, it remains necessary to ma-nage people differently in different countries. Within Europe, Mr Greenhalgh says, Unilever has traditionally been much more open with managers in northern than southern counties, on matters such as where they stand in the salary scale or what their prospects are.

That is changing, he adds. A younger generation of managers is more likely to have travelled when young, and many have taken an MBA in the US.

Nevertheless, local differences remain. Steve Redwood, a London-based management consultant with Price Waterhouse, tells of a client who had assembled a team from eight different countries to work on a project. The national stereotypes applied, he says. The people from Switzerland and Germany were mainly interested in the way the project was organised. The people from Spain took a much more intuitive approach.

The British displayed a high level of scepticism on whether the whole thing really mattered. Language was not the issue. It was more basic than that.

Behind this lies the most fundamental problem of all: the fact that outside a handful of companies Mr Bryan of McKinsey puts it at between a dozen and 20 worldwide even the biggest corporations are dominated by the culture of the home country. Outside that handful, Bryan says, companies are very German, or very British, or very American. One big difference with American companies is they assume globalisation means Americanising the world. Others dont have that arrogance.

If top management are all nativ-es of the home country, that makes it much more difficult to attract and keep a global pool of talent. People know when they fit in and when they dont, Bryan says. Thats true even of national companies: theres a tendency for people to have gone to the same school, or all have train-ed as engineers. Its even more true when it comes to where you grew up. The problem lies not in attracting people, a talented Indian or Korean manager will typically want early experience with a MNC but in keeping them. People will join the company to learn, Bryan says, but unless they feel theyre part of the core company, theyre going to leave, and exploit the brand status of the company in their next job.

Given the importance of local cultures within the global company, an obvious question is how to appraise and identify talent around the world on a consistent basis. Unilever, Mr Greenhalgh says, has been working on this for the past four years.

Weve been developing a set of 11 management competencies we can use worldwide, he says.

The aim is to have a clear objective measure of potential. We measure such things as entrepreneurial drive, the ability to lead and develop other, and integrity. That makes up a common core of behaviours. Weve tested it, and so far it seems to be culturally transferable.

The final issue is one of communication within the global company. The PC, naturally, is vital. All 20,000 of Unilevers managers worldwide are on an internet, and a further 50,000 employees are on e-mail. But here too, there is a paradox. According to Mr Redwood, quite a few companies are using technology to install what he calls buffers.

They use it to provide time for reflection and understanding, and avoid possible loss of face he says.

In other words, the idea that the global company represents faceless conformity is the opposite of the truth. The companies which succeed in being global will be those which best understand how to manage diversity.