You lead a global organization. Collaboration is key to success. Here are four reasons why you should invest 150 € in each of your people:
Cost
How many of your people collaborate cross-border? Add just one hour of work per week per person due to cultural misunderstanding.
Let’s do the numbers: 10 people x 1.0 hour x 48 workweeks x 75 hourly cost = 36,000. That’s 3,600 for each colleague. USD or Euros. Year in, year out.
Results
That’s cost. What about results? When cross-border collaboration does not go well it means over budget, over schedule, poor quality, or a combination thereof.
Take your most important cross-border project. Go over budget 5%, over schedule 5%, reduce quality 5%, or any combination thereof. Not good.
If 5% is too high, reduce it to 2%. Or wait, go down to just 1%. Then run the numbers. Cultural misunderstanding impacts your bottom-line. Negatively.
People
Costs can be measured. Results, too. What about colleagues in global teams? What’s the negative impact on them when cross-border collaboration is slow, difficult, frustrating?
At best they slog through the work. At worst they’re looking for ways to avoid collaboration. In some cases, some of them might be looking to get out altogether.
You know your team. You know who the performers are. Estimate the impact on results if just one of them is demotivated, leaves the team, or worse leaves the company.
Relationships
Let’s not forget your business ecosystem. You’re a global organisation. With colleagues in different countries. Interacting with customers and/or with suppliers.
Cultural differences are at play in those relationships, also. It can’t be any other way. And that means the potential for misunderstanding, confusion, irritation.
Estimate the cost of losing just one of your customers, or losing just one important supplier, in any of the countries where you’re doing business. It can get very painful.
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