Going Global #4 and #5: Communicate and Educate

All aboard? It’s the last day of the worldwide tour and you’re ready to put your passport to use. Yes, it’s time to launch your global project and head for the airport. In order to ensure a smooth launch, you will need to maximize awareness, interest, and participation from your team members around the world. Since communication and education are both important in this process, here’s a double dose of global readiness to help you wrap up this international voyage.

(more…)

Going Global #3: Build A Global Network

It’s a global initiative just waiting to happen. You’ve got the plan and you’re ready to go. But where’s the team? How are you going to recruit, dazzle, and motivate your international team members? All of a sudden, you may find yourself spinning circles around the globe. Don’t get lost in foreign territory. Get your world map out of the closet and locate your global network. (more…)

Going Global #2: Ensure Early Planning

Uno, dos, tres… are you ready for take-off? In order to get a running start for fall and the coming year, take the opportunity to evaluate your global launch timeline. The global launch plan provides a clear vision and road map to facilitate execution by cross-functional and cross-regional teams. The creation of the global launch plan also provides the opportunity to engage teams worldwide. Ensure early input from key functional and country teams who will drive global and local program management, communication, and readiness activities. Vamanos! (more…)

Going Global #1: Focus on Local Needs

Parlez-vous le project management? A cross-cultural perspective and local market understanding is always needed when delivering effective project management solutions. There are many cultural communication mistakes that have been made by well-intentioned global strategists who assumed similarity rather than difference. In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” was presented as “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead.” Cisco had to re-think the design and size of its router products to suit compact Japanese offices. Nike recently offended Chinese customers when its ad campaign featured LeBron James trouncing sacred dragons on the basketball court. And Microsoft created a Geo-political Product Strategy (GPS) team to avoid the number of management faux pas that resulted from a lack of cross-cultural knowledge. (more…)

Ready to Go Global?

It’s time to go global. With ticket and passport in hand, you’re ready to evangelize the world about your mission. The global launch project has been approved and your team is onboard. There’s just one challenge – you only have one strategy for multiple countries. The regions are following different travel plans, communication and teamwork is not translating well across borders, and the project management process didn’t pass local customs inspection. How are you going to think global yet go local? (more…)

Can Project Management Save the World?

Yesterday I spent 2 hours walking solemnly through the Peace Memorial and Park in Hiroshima, Japan. This was a somber experience for me. At 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945, in an instant a thriving city was reduced to rubble and throngs of injured people - some screaming for help and others praying for death. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to live through that horror. As I walked the 2 kilometers back to my hotel, my feet aching in my inappropriate shoes, I told myself that my suffering was minor in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of people who had experienced the devastation of the bomb, and I resisted the urge to flag down a taxi. (more…)

Learning Principles at Work

In today’s fast-moving economy, success depends on embracing the future rather than repeating the past - taking time to extract lessons from project experience positions us as learners rather than followers. (more…)