Clarity about Change: Beware of the Happy Hybrid

Many global change efforts start out as "Happy Hybrids." There is an enormous temptation with dicey cross-border business relationships to say, "We'll take some of your way and some of our way and combine them to have the best of both worlds." More often than not, however, the promise that different approaches can be brought together is illusory.

"Happy Hybrids" can even degenerate into "Worst of Both Worlds" combinations. For instance, when the global premium pricing strategy of a foreign partner is applied to locally manufactured products with quality issues that remain unresolved, the results may be high prices and poor quality, accompanied by plummeting sales and defections of key distributors. Or, employees abroad cheerfully accept more generous compensation packages provided by their parent company but still expect to keep the job security and ambiguous performance standards that are common in their country's employment market - now the firm has a higher cost structure without any greater ability to deal with poor performers.

Such ill-fated hybrids tend to occur when management abdicates its responsibility to make tough choices and attempts to please everyone. Employees, too, learn to "game" the system, taking advantage of imported corporate policies or benefits that they find attractive while resisting accompanying demands for greater effort or sacrifices on the grounds that these would violate established cultural norms.

There is actually a broader menu of change options beyond superficial hybrid solutions that is best faced squarely by those in charge of any corporate makeover. It includes the following choices:

• Standardize: Establish a single policy at corporate headquarters that is applied uniformly worldwide.
• Select: Work with local managers in each country to choose and apply the elements of a corporate-wide change initiative that have the most relevance for their operations.
• Adapt: Alter the form or packaging of a particular change to make it more readily acceptable to local employees or customers.
• Combine: Seek out a felicitous combination of ideas from headquarters and local sources that will work better than a one-sided approach.
• Integrate: Fuse different country contributions with a synergistic result that exceeds the sum of the parts.
• Adopt: Identify an idea from a non-headquarters location and apply it in other markets where it offers benefits.¹

Among these change options, integration has the most seductive appeal. The term, "Happy Hybrid," is another way of describing naïve attempts to integrate conflicting approaches that are shaped by different cultural forces. Reconciling the horns of a dilemma to create a synergistic solution can indeed be a powerful process when the integration achieved is a lasting one. But in spite of the appeal of this approach as a mutually gratifying way to leverage cultural differences for the benefit of the organization, not all cross-border business problems are conducive to tidy mutual reconciliation. Integrative approaches can be exploited beyond any practical value for their ideological appeal, producing a "false reconciliation" that masks either a subtle imposition of authority or an underlying refusal to face up to difficult issues.

Companies should keep in mind the full range of change options and use the approach or combination of approaches that is most appropriate for a given situation. The ten steps for handling change cited in the previous newsletter are relevant to each of these possible change options. Even a policy that a company seeks to standardize across the globe can be developed through discussion and consultation with the people that it is going to impact. The other change options of selection, adaptation, combination, integration, and adoption require successively larger degrees of involvement on the part of local personnel if they are to be successful. The more that employees around the world can have a voice in discussing and choosing among these alternatives, the readier they will be to support whatever change process ultimately takes place.

When a virtuous cycle that includes trust, local input, and mutual learning has been established, employees in various locations understand and expect that their leaders will utilize the full range of change options. There is sufficient good will to engender support even for the occasional top-down directive during difficult times, in part because employees know that a good idea generated anywhere in the world has the chance to become corporate policy. Combining an inclusive approach with real clarity about the nature of the company's change strategy brings substantial benefits, including well-coordinated action across the global organization and credible, consistent decision-making.

This article has been excerpted from a new book by Ernest Gundling, co-managing director of Meridian Resources, entitled "Working GlobeSmart: 12 People Skills for Doing Business Across Borders".

¹ Nancy Adler outlines a related set of options for dealing with problems based upon divergent cultural practices. See Adler, Nancy, International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior, 4th Edition. Cincinnati, Ohio: South-Western, 2002, pp. 122-129.