William J. Holstein
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Reader Responds to Article on New Challenges Facing Multinationals
JUNE 30--Here is an exchange between a reader of my article in KPMG's Agenda magazine (http://www.kpmg.com/agendaonline) and myself regarding the management of multinational corporations. I posted the original article on April 27:
From: John Astor
Subject: Your article:Reinventing the Multinational
To:
Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2010, 4:14 PM
Hello Mr. Holstein,
I was really impressed with your perspectives and decentralized leadership and found your arguments very compelling. thanks for such an insightful piece.
I'd like to ask you what your feelings are about people from different countries working together successfully; clear communications, acceptance of different behavioral styles. It's an area that I'm very interested in.
By the way, it is interesting that Karl Marx was right about many things and his social history interpretations continue to resonate today.
Once again, it was an excellent article.
Best Regards,
John Astor
My response:
Always great to hear from a happy reader. Encouraging people of different cultures to work together is an extremely important and complex subject. My single best insight comes from United Technologies where CEO George David nurtured a range of French, Canadian and Dutch managers, among other nationalities, to run many of UTC's lines of business. His philosophy was that he needed to create a strong enough corporate culture that it transcended specific national cultures. Perhaps the single most important ingredient of that culture was the use of specific performance numbers. The numbers did the talking, so to speak. In fact, David was succeeded by Louis Chenevert, a French Canadian. I think the ability of American companies to accommodate foreign nationals at senior management levels and on the board remains a clear competitive advantage over, say, the Japanese, who remain very monocultural.
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exchange on the blog on my website, http://www.williamjholstein.com.
--- On Tue, 6/29/10, John Astor
