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.
When communicating around the world, you’ll need to ensure that you can align teams and manage time zones effectively. In order to maximize awareness, interest, and participation in the global launch, it’s important to develop a communication strategy that will engage team members in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. The strategy needs to address when communication takes place, to whom it should be communicated, and what will be communicated during the launch process.
Aside from managing time zones and meeting schedules, the greater challenges of cross-cultural communication involved understanding and support of the global strategy and team roles. Due to cultural perspectives, there may be a different understanding of the global plan, its criteria, and its outcome. Different communication styles can also cause misunderstanding and disruptions during the project management phase. Awareness and knowledge of cultural differences and business norms are important in developing and motivating international team members.
A successful internal communication strategy should engage cross-functional and cross-regional team members through the use of regular and consistent communications. In addition to weekly launch meetings, consider additional vehicles such as regional launch calls, email updates, and online meetings.
The opportunity to transfer knowledge and empower teams with new information is a common training driver for any location around the globe. The Global Minds Network Global Launch Report showed that training content is often US centric and offers a primary emphasis on product, marketing, and sales skills training. All of the participants offered product training, while 38% offered cross-cultural training. Timing can also be a problem as international locations are often second in line for training, especially in Asia-Pacific and Latin America. While online training and simulation tools offer some insight, live training with product experts is important to sales teams worldwide.
When ensuring sales readiness globally, it’s important to create content integration, management commitment, and enforcement of local sales training objectives. When targeting local training needs and resources, make sure to secure commitment from product, marketing, and sales teams for content creation and delivery. A consistent program addressing user population, application, and measurement makes a world of difference.
Well, it’s time to conclude the worldwide tour. Wishing you a bon voyage and much global launch success!
What’s your global readiness challenge? Respond to this blog or contact karina@globalmindsnetwork.com or visit www.globalmindsnetwork.com
