Read the full script of Module 3, Episode 8 of the Global Growth Master Class below. Want to get certified on global expansion? Simply click here to access the complete course today.

In the last article, we talked about the importance of bridging local knowledge and company knowledge. Here is a case study example of the importance of the overlap between these sets of characteristics, and how it benefits Global Class Companies that nurture interpreneurial talent.

Kamlesh Talreja grew up in India and attended the University of Mumbai. He then began his career at Tata Consultancy Services, along the way developing a strong understanding of Indian business culture. After some time, he realized he wanted more and saw that opportunity lay beyond his home borders, leading him to earn a master’s degree from UC San Diego, where he experienced local American culture.

After a brief stint at RealNetworks, he landed an engineering manager role at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters. Over the next five and a half years, Kamlesh got a better understanding of American business culture, but more importantly, learned the inner workings of Amazon. Through working in engineering management positions in both the Retail and Prime Video Division, he solidified his alignment with Amazon’s culture, learned how to get things done across departments internally, honed his leadership and people management skills, and ultimately built a strong reputation, gaining the trust of leaders across the business.

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After some time Kamlesh began developing a desire to return to his native India, and he then stumbled upon a leadership position on the Amazon Appstore team located in Bangalore. Amazon’s leadership saw the ideal balance needed to successfully lead a team in an international market.

Kamlesh had the agile/scrum foundational experience to lead a fast-growing development team still solidifying its role, the company knowledge needed to navigate internal obstacles and secure buy-in, and the local knowledge to understand the nuances of building and managing a team of engineers in his native India. His knowledge of the local market wasn’t just from his youth but from his early career and staying in constant contact with people in India, family, and otherwise. He checked all the boxes and got the job.

Despite these unique skills, Kamlesh faced a problem six months into the new role

His team was revolting against him; ACTUALLY, they were revolting against some of Amazon’s American-centric policies. Kamlesh’s team felt a lack of empathy and respect from HQ. HQ had unrealistic timelines for the team in India and would also set up meetings during American business hours, expecting the Indian team to meet late at night or early in the morning local time. In addition, the team in India struggled with the direct nature of the American communication style, something not typical in Indian business culture. This led many team members to quit.

Needing to ACT, Kamlesh tapped into his knowledge of the Indian workplace, empathizing with his team and seeking to understand their issues. Shortly after, he called on his network at HQ in Seattle—especially an influential advocate he’d built a relationship with— to influence some of the policies to better suit his team in India. He then advocated for his team’s local culture and ensured they knew that he was their local champion who would work hard to secure support from HQ. 

What did Kamlesh achieve? 

Kamlesh was able to get the team at HQ to meet them halfway, scheduling some meetings during Indian business hours and others during American business hours. Kamlesh also set up stronger communication processes with more regular cadence meetings, coaching his team in India to OVER communicate and be more transparent than is typical, to better fit the American business culture.

In response to these actions, morale, performance, and retention INCREASED. Moreover, the teams in India and HQ built mutual trust and a stronger relationship, leading to more autonomy. By year three, the team in India was given ownership of a new product line and their own S-Team goal (one of Amazon’s most critical goal levels).

Kamlesh represents an ideal ARCHETYPE that most companies would FIGHT to have when building out teams in new markets—company and local knowledge combined with the leadership skills to get things done. Kamlesh’s international experiences helped nurture his interpreneurial mindset, and his reflective leadership style and abilities to influence authority AND remove obstacles gave him the right skill set to effectively lead a remote organization.

While most companies don’t have a pipeline of Kamleshes as they build international teams, any company can use the Global Class Team Building framework and the other strategies outlined in this module to build Global Class teams that possess all 4 categories of characteristics needed to succeed in global markets.

How to Enable a Decentralized Talent Strategy

Legacy companies often adopt a strategy of building clusters of talent, where entire offices are established in specific geographic areas to focus on building specific teams or skill sets. For instance, if the company requires software engineering resources, it might aim to hire a complete development team located in Bangalore, also known as the Silicon Valley of India. However, Global Class Companies tend to take a different approach.

Global Class Companies view the recent acceleration of distributed work as an opportunity rather than a challenge, embracing the new reality of team-building in a remote world. They recognize that talent can be found anywhere and are not limited by the need for centralized HQ locations or skill-specific clusters in certain areas. This approach allows them to tap into the growth of knowledge workers across the globe, in both developed and emerging markets and hire the best individuals regardless of their geographic location. By fully embracing this distributed team-building model, Global Class Companies are able to take advantage of the new possibilities created by this shift in the way we work.

To better understand and penetrate a new market, Global Class Companies make use of their team members' local knowledge of their home country. Additionally, they recognize the value of building a diverse team that is aligned with the company culture to promote interconnectedness and prevent the formation of silos. This approach can encourage innovation by incorporating different perspectives in problem-solving, leading to two-way innovation where local teams have an equal say in decision-making as the HQ.

Companies like Meltwater have taken a decentralized talent strategy a step further by adopting a talent-led growth strategy, where the knowledge of the top talent they bring into the organization (for their functional expertise) drives where the company expands geographically. If there are strong team members in a specific market, who have strong Local Knowledge, then the company focuses more resources on entering those markets.

How Can I Create the Right Team Building System for Success?

Global Class Companies empower their talent by implementing effective processes and structures that facilitate growth and scalability. These supportive measures can take various forms. For example, Thoughtworks is designed as a global-first organization, where leadership principles and employee evaluations are aligned with this perspective. The company strives to have 20% of its employees work outside their home countries, with many employees taking on project-based assignments in other countries to gain international experience. To establish a new office, a cross-cultural team forms a pod and collaborates with local leaders to build the foundational team on the ground. After a year or two, the international group moves on to new assignments, while the local team continues to grow and develop the office.

The Global Class seeks out Interpreneurs, has the right systems to vet and hire these catalysts for growth, values and builds diverse teams, and has ways to put HQ and local teams on equal levels.

Global Class Companies and their Interpreneurs celebrate diversity and see it as an important competitive advantage to bake into both the team, as well as the product and operations. By nature, celebrating diversity prevents a company from focusing solely on the initial market and only considering the needs of that local market in designing the product and company. Diverse teams build products and go-to-market/operating models that can succeed in multiple markets, mastering the localization process with the minimum of time and money wasted. Diverse teams build company cultures that resonate with a diverse employee base.

Global Class Companies aim to create fair and equal systems that eliminate any biases towards certain markets, including the one where the headquarters is located. This is because in organizations where relationships exist, some markets may have an outsized voice due to their internal reputation and knowledge of the company's inner workings.

By leveling the playing field for all markets, HQs strive to eliminate any such biases and ensure that all teams have an equal opportunity to contribute to the company's success. To achieve this, Global Class Companies implement structured processes and systems that are consistent across all markets, enabling each team to operate on a level playing field.

NOTE: Don't miss out on the next episode! If you want to continue learning about global expansion strategies and dive deeper into the course material, simply click here to access Module 3, Episode 9 of the Global Growth Master Class.