A global manager faces many challenges in developing employees. She must encourage and develop talents of workers in different countries. Because her workers belong to diverse cultures and have different needs, she must provide as many tools as she can. Her job is to use creative approaches to helping her workers solve operational challenges in their respective markets.
A strategic challenge is how to develop the company through a central strategy. For example, a manager might try to apply a marketing strategy that works in Japan to the Canadian market. Even though workers in Japan might collaborate with workers in Canada, the same marketing strategy might not work. Japanese consumers might differ markedly from Canadian consumers in a particular market. In this situation, different parts of the company under a global manager must use whatever methods necessary to achieve the company's central marketing goals.
It is not enough to organize people into international or regional project teams so they can develop strategic direction for the company or even share operational strategies. A manager must find ways to get people in all parts of the world to collaborate by breaking down geographic boundaries. Without sharing ideas in a creative and supportive environment, even if this occurs in the virtual world, a global manager cannot help the global firm successfully handle challenges in its different markets.
A global manager must organize employee talents to create a sustainable competitive advantage. A company first develops a business strategy that works so that it can provide the same product to people around the world. The challenge is in developing successful business practices that will keep the costs of producing a product in line and help the company maintain its competitive advantage.
A global manager must also help a company face operational challenges associated with maintaining core competencies. These are strategically-developed competencies that give it an advantage in each market. If these competencies are weakened over time, a company will lose some of its market share to competitors. One way that a manager does this is by helping the company guard its knowledge of how to operate and to protect this knowledge from being shared with competitors.
