Mobile Leadership

I remember one of the discussions i had an year ago( in china) facilitated by Chapman Consulting where majority of HR leaders present in the meeting said that their companies were pulling back key decision making and top talent to corporate HQ.  I believe this must have been a reverse trend set during the economic slowdown. I am not sure how the response would be now.

However in today's globally connected economies  if there is one mantra to make  companies successful, it is going Glocal ( Globally Local). One of the biggest impediments of going glocal is the availability of leadership to drive this , especially "mobile leaders" who are willing to take the challenge of not just sitting in the company headquarters , but willing to relocate to locations across the world.

There has been an attempt made by many companies to move talent and leaders across various countries. This exchange is predominantly between the major economies in Europe ,USA and the BRIC countries. As we witness a slowdown in BRIC there is another set of nations lead by CIVETS( Columbia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Turkey and South Africa) which is   setting a new path for mobile leadership. It is relatively easy to move leadership talent from US to developed countries in Europe ( without going into the tax and payroll parts), or from less  developing or emerging economies to US or developed countries in Europe , however the reverse may be a hard sell. Even within APAC, this is a hard sell when it comes to moving people from one country to another. So it is an immediate need for organizations not just to develop leadership as a number one priority ( according to Deloitte Global Human capital trends 2013), but also to develop leaders who are mobile. Infact mobility should be added as key factor in assessing talent especially at leadership levels.

A good example is CISCO which chose Bangalore, India  as its second global Head Quarters and moved its Chief Globalisation Officer Wim Elfrink  there reporting directly to John Chambers who is the Chairman and CEO of the company based in California. Bayer did the same thing for its polycarbonate plastic business by moving it to Shanghai.