Managing cultural integration

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: balance-sheets’ merger, or distribution channels coming together, but about people coming together along with their values and cultures.

A leader must always take into consideration its employees, as you can have the most forward-looking vision and strategy, but unless you have a passionate and committed team to execute it, you cannot translate your vision into reality. Also there should be heterogeneity of people. Bringing in people from different cultures and with different skill-sets can be useful as a heterogeneous mix of people helps in the process of change.

“The focus should be to facilitate inclusion in this diverse workforce and create space for each employee to reach his or her full potential. Moreover, the globalisation plans require innovative and disruptive business models unlike any the company has seen before. We at Cisco, work across geographies and organisations to pull together project teams with the right mix of people to get optimal results on the right task, regardless of location. And the challenge is to source and develop these new capabilities ahead of business needs,” adds Wadhwa.

According to HR experts, awareness, skills and knowledge of multiple cultures are necessary when managing a diverse workforce. Management strategists view these cultural shifts like the movement of waves in an ocean where each successive wave of technology brings with it a corresponding value-shift. Managing cultural integration may be the single-most effective skill to warrant the survival of an organisation in a constantly changing global economy.

“Indian leaders have for several years not just been doing business with, but successfully initiating and managing global takeovers in diverse countries and continents. A significant number of large and mid-sized Indian companies across industry verticals have facilities and business interests in one or more countries and are on their way to becoming successful global companies,” avers Kumar. “Moreover, globalisation has taught Indian CEOs to be more outward-focused, think and dream big and not be afraid to take risks,” he adds.