Advisory No 13: Going "Glocal"

The Advisory Partnership reports on how to get the balance right when your global strategy meets local reality. http://bit.ly/TAP-APAC13

Glocalisation is the ugliest of buzzwords. It’s neither easy to say nor easy to implement but it’s an important concept to be aware of for any business that is planning geographic expansion. 

We understand globalization as a modern reality and we have affection for localisation as something personal, more intimate and somehow just a little more right.

Not surprisingly, the process of glocalisation is a hybrid of the two where a global product or service is transformed to meet the needs of local consumers. In simple terms, it’s where that international supermarket chain comfortably becomes our corner shop.

The trick in a successful implementation of a glocal strategy is the transformation process and how much attention is really paid to the 'local' part.

The glocal approach is often criticized for its long-term ineffectiveness. Bloomberg Business Week highlighted the weakness of a system that allows for the flow of innovation in only one direction; from the headquarters of multinational corporations out into the world. They said that whilst glocalisation suggests an understanding of local conditions, in reality, glocalised goods often have little local relevance and overlook the specialized behaviours and cultural specifics of local markets.  

They are right.

Research shows that whilst there may be an initial surge in sales for newly adapted products, in time, local markets lose interest due to poor adaptation and come to see it as just a cynical gesture towards the local market.

Glocalisation will always fail if it forgets the concept of local when rolling out a service that has worked well in a different region for a unique population. 

Glocalisation is however an economic reality and a necessary part of today's global expansion strategies. So, for us, it will only be successful when we take the best of both worlds: trading on our international success whilst truly understanding and respecting the uniqueness of local markets.

Rather than take a top down approach from multinational to local, we’re best to use our international skills and experience to fully understand the needs and requirements of the local markets first.

So be careful to focus on the end-user customer first and then restructure your product or service back till it meets the core. 

As a key part of your strategic plan, be sure to get out of your office headquarters and experience the local markets as fully as you can. This way you will achieve the best of both worlds: a global product enhanced with regional input and a local product reinforced with international experience.

Aligning our strategy this way, creates both sustainable reach for international products and services without the need for insensitive commercial colonisation.

 The Advisory Partnership assists its clients with business development strategy, delivering outputs that are scaleable to meet the challenges of technological change and International growth.

Post by James Douglas
www.theadvisorypartnership.com

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Advisory No 12 - The Traditional Office is an Endangered Species

You’ll notice a common theme if you stroll the central business districts of many of the world’s larger cities.  There are increasing numbers of premium office spaces being turned into luxury apartments.  

Of course there are practical considerations here, both technological change and the cultural change that favours renovated warehouses as workplaces can mean that many of our eighties-style office blocks are now redundant and are preferred for housing over business.

This change may however be the development of a major shift in business culture to us working remotely or "teleworking".  Indeed it’s entirely possible that the office of the future is not an office at all and is likely, for many of us, to be a place where we meet, exchange ideas and tasks, and then complete our working day at home.  

The end of the traditional office could well occur during the course of our careers and we have to be ready to adapt our operational systems and processes accordingly.

In the USA in 2012, 2.6% (3.3 Million people) considered "home" their primary place of work. (Source: Global Analytics.com).  This figure had grown by 80% from 2005 and continued growing even when the workforce declined in 2011-2012.

In 2013 the Australian Bureau of Statistics concluded that 24% of Australian workers spent at least part of their time working from home.

In that same year the Australian Public Service Commission Employee Survey found that 80% said working from home ‘increased work and life balance’ with 69% saying they were ‘more productive’.  

Interestingly, these Australian teleworkers had higher employee engagement, worked longer hours and had fewer sick leaves.  This is not at all surprising considering they get to give up the daily commute and put some extra quality hours back into their working day.  The Australian Government now has a target to double the formal teleworking workforce by 2020. (telework.gov.au)

So, teleworking should be embraced because what any manager wants is a fully engaged productive workforce who are happy and committed in their roles.

Technology has enabled this flexible work practice and the widespread availability of mobile and cloud technologies now has most of us connected to our workplace 24/7.  It's practical then that only way to make the 24/7 work culture sustainable for us personally and professionally is to have the tools to take some time back for ourselves while still operating in the reality of modern business.  Teleworking is part of the solution for this.

Teleworking is both empowering for the individual and productive for our businesses.  

As managers and business owners we have to be ready for this inevitable change in our operations and ensure that we have adapted our processes accordingly.  

We need a management structure that recognises our increasingly fluid teams and, at the same time, we need to ensure that there is increased formality and accountability around roles and responsibilities.  We need to keep our project management tight and our meetings formal, structured and action orientated. 

By recognising this change and working with it,  we win all of the benefits of an engaged motivated team and less of the risk around lack of accountability with a mobile workforce. 

The Advisory Partnership assists its clients with operational strategy, delivering outputs that are scaleable to meet the challenges of technological change and International growth.

Post by James Douglas
www.theadvisorypartnership.com