HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Across Cultures by Harvard Business Review

Author:Harvard Business Review [Harvard Business Review]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633691636
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2016-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

Rule 1: Don’t Underestimate the Challenge

Management styles stem from habits developed over a lifetime, which makes them hard to change. Here’s a good example: In 2010 Heineken, the Dutch brewing company, purchased a big operation in Monterrey, Mexico, and a large number of Mexican employees are now based at its Amsterdam headquarters. One of these is Carlos, the director of marketing for the Dos Equis brand, who admits that he struggled during his first year in the position:

“It is incredible to manage Dutch people, and nothing like my experience leading Mexican teams. I’ll schedule a meeting to roll out a new process, and during it, my team starts challenging the process, taking us in various unexpected directions, ignoring my process altogether, and paying no attention to the fact that they work for me. Sometimes I just watch them astounded. Where is the respect?

“I know this treating everyone as pure equals is the Dutch way, so I keep quiet and try to be patient. But often I just feel like getting down on my knees and pleading, ‘Dear colleagues, in case you have forgotten: I–am–the–boss.’”

It didn’t take long for Carlos to realize that the leadership skills he had built over the previous decade in Mexico, where more deference to authority is the norm, were not going to transfer easily to the Netherlands. Succeeding would depend on taking an entirely different approach and making ongoing adjustments over the long term. “I realized I was going to need to unlearn many of the techniques that had made me so successful in Mexico and develop others from the ground up,” he said.

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