Almost under the windows, Open Innovation is noisy. They all tell how good it is to export. Perhaps this is precisely what this story inspired by.
We are engaged in HR, mainly in IT, we assemble teams as new companies, as divisions, as branches. It so happened that we exported a dozen IT companies, and then decided: “But what? Shouldn't we go? ”
We went down. Got experience. I share.
In export stories, there are a lot of aspects and problems: financial, marketing, legal. They write a lot about it.
I, as HR, are interested in another topic. And with which team to go there? Are there any factors that will solve or minimize these problems? After all, people create problems and solutions ...
Details under the cut.
Which team to go there?
There are several factors that seem significant and perhaps not obvious to us. I will describe them.
The first one. It is necessary to go by a team, whose members communicate with each other every day and are united in a separate unit, although they may be physically located in different countries.
Stories about the matrix, and the team created from representatives of departments (departments / offices) of the corporation, do not particularly work. Or work, but incredibly not effective. Since those who will bother you the most are the employees of the same departments (departments / offices) who do not want to do something new, in principle. And you went for a new one.
Total: a team, this is a team, with a single leadership and stakeholder from the shareholders to cover up. Or without it, if you're lucky, and you are the stakeholders themselves.
The second one. You will need people with multicultural thinking.
Do you think they can be recognized by the hashtag #BreakfastOnZanzibar? Or the level of English? Probably not. They are recognized by their active interest in other cultures. The key word is active. And the lack of a "big brother" complex.
If your markets are not in the US, the Big Brother complex can create a ton of trouble. And the smaller the nation, the worse it reacts to the "elder brother."
You can conduct months-long negotiations with the Dutch, Nigerians, Senegalese, Arabs and Malays - and it all ends with a random phrase from your deputy that dumplings / herring (or any other symbol of the nation that is significant to others) is not the same.
Not the fact that you will simply be sent home. You can be framed neatly and cynically later. Communication with state security in a foreign country is impressive.
Bottom line: if multicultural thinking is practicing, then the Brother complex is a veto. Yes, there are still one-vector globalists. They are also not yours, despite English.
The third. Role dynamics
This is about this: there are always roles in the team. There are a lot of role models. The dreamer is a realist and critic. Or a leader - a shaman - a warrior. Or a maniac - deparik - sanguine. It doesn't matter what role concept you believe in. It is important that your team members are able to change these roles.
A team with a fixed distribution of roles plays the same type of play. If desired, role dynamics develop. And a stimulated realist might well be dreaming. But this must be dealt with. And human teams, by default, are prone to imposing static roles. For stability. But this, again, is not your way.
Fourth. An experience
I'll start from afar. Throughout its existence, human civilization has been at war. And during this time I did not find a way to accurately predict: how a rookie will behave in a real battle. And you too cannot predict this.
Therefore, there have always been veterans and recruits. It is clear that the former are better.
But there is a nuance. There is no one more dangerous than the veterans of a small victorious war. I see why? The bad news is that recruiters adore veterans of a small victorious war - this is their girlish essence. And they will sell them to you at a high price.
The good news: veterans of different wars will not require a triple ration, but they will be interested in a share in production. I don’t need to translate into the language of business.
Life hack. Achievements are far less important than Epic Fails. Ask about them. Firstly, it is more interesting, and secondly, they characterize a person better.
To summarize: the most flawless successes that the Russian labor market sells to you are the heel of Achilles and / or the kiss of Judah. Think about it.
Fifth. Team size
If you are a CEO and you have performers, you have no team. If you are a CEO, and you have a service station / deputy / page - you do not have a team. All over the world they invest not in a leader, but in a leader who is able to create a team.
The team starts with three. A team of three has a chance to grow, but almost no chance to be realized. Too few neurons. A team of three or four does not live very long - only at the start, a year or two. Then she burns herself: overdose, binges, divorces, suicide, cancer ...
At number five, there is the possibility of development. Much better: six - seven - ten, but without a hierarchy within itself.
As if about STEC
I read how people write about themselves, often something like this: we have “apples”, Confluence, Jira, Wrike, Bitrix24, we hate 1C, unformatted agile, play volleyball on Wednesdays Fridays and Saturdays and arrange fruit days.
Somewhere I heard this: go to Svyatki and Pokrov in the course of salting, Hallelujah we praise twice, and on Easter - three times, we don’t eat fish on Wednesdays, we kill geese to St. Ignatius, and chop the red corner in the east. Looks like?
A normal person will master Wrike in a week. But the declaration of love for conditional Raik will reject those who, for various reasons, used conditional Payrus.
There are significant stack markers (MS BI vs Python), there are markers about the “creed”. The second disconnect people. Avoid them. People are different. Much more than it seems. Practice looking for similarities, not differences.
Last test
When you return from there, no one will believe you.
When I tell you that we have been working for 5 years in the EU market, and not as hired managers, my vis-a-vis becomes empty. It seems to me that I'm talking about the fact that we flew dragons, and they feel sad that they spent so much time on obvious madmen.
This is waiting for you too. Nobody will believe you that there is land beyond the Hercules Pillars, that marketing there is completely different, that people there are not with their brains. They are sitting here - and they know better. They certainly know better. For some reason, always like that.
Good luck to us!