Your International Business Development Plan calls for the establishment of a first overseas subsidiary. It helps to look at the implementation of your plan as an “International Change Management” process.
Your product development group will need input from your prospective overseas customers, and the shipping department needs to put new processes in place to ship to far-away countries. Accounting will have to roll-up the subsidiary results into the company wide results. As a result of your goal to “Go Global”, you are facing changes of most of your existing processes. But, because change is hard, and does not come easy, it helps to use tested Change Management processes..
1. Create an Urgency and Excitement surrounding your International ambitions
Usually, overseas expansion is a positive for the entire company. Therefore, even though many departments must make changes to the existing processes to accommodate for the expansion, it is usually quite easy to portray the expansion as a positive event for the company. It benefits process to add urgency, because urgency helps the team focus on the task at hand.
2. Select a Team to Drive International Change Management
Pick a team of change participants from accros the company. It is important that the change participants are selected for having influence on their colleagues and for their enthusiasm towards the Internationalization goals you are pursuing.t need to be implemented
3. Develop a Vision
While you pick the Change Team, start and develop a vision of what your Global Company looks like as a result of the changes you want to implement. For you, “Going International” might be an opportunity for the company to expand into new market, grow its revenue and extends its base. Or it may be a way to “get to know your competition” in their home market.
4. Communicate your Vision with the Change Team, and the Entire Company.
Your Change Team needs to understand and approve of your International Vision. Make sure they are solidly on board. When they approve, they will help you amplify your enthusiasm for becoming a Global competitor throughout the entire company. In case some Change Participants on the Change Team don’t buy into your Global Vision, you have two options. Either adapt your vision to accommodate their input, or remove them from the Change Team.
5. Empower Action
Drive your Change Team towards action. The actions should support your International Change Goals. During this phase it is important to get quick feedback regarding your the link between the actions you have taken and the goals you want to achieve. In order to get the necessary feedback, you will need to measure against your goal. later, you’ll use this measurement in other phases as well. If your actions do not result in the expected change, you can adjust the action, or more drastically, re-evaluate the Change Goal.
6. Create Short Term Wins
Nothing breeds success as success. So, choose a few easy to achieve intermediary International Change Goals in order to celebrate success. Let your Change Team be the hero. Encourage them to build on their success.
7. Keep at it
It is to be expected that you will have to implement many small changes in order to become a truly International company. This will take time. Organize yourself to keep at it.
8. Re-inforce the Changes
It’s easy to fall back on old habits. Therefore, it is important to ensure the changes become part of the daily activities and become ingrained into how things are done. Remember, that you can use the measurements you developed earlier during the action phase, to continue measuring proper implementation of the change. Eventually, the changes you have implemented will “permeate” into your Company Culture.
In general, it helps to reduce your overal International Change Management goal into small, minimal goals. Use an interactive process to work through each of the smaller goals. Then, if needed, adjust the actions (or the goals themselves), in order to achieve the bigger overall goal of becoming an international company.
To learn more about a Change Management process that I find particularly powerful, I strongly suggest: the Lean Change Method, Managing Agile Organizational Transformation Using Kanban, Kotter, and Lean Startup Thinking, by Jeff Anderson, ISBN 978-1-492-89960-0