Week 23 – When modernization goes global

During the late 90s and early 2000s, globalization seemed unstoppable, the world was truly becoming one with global franchises and pop reference cultures spreading across land and sea. Then, suddenly, the trend reversed, we started seeing localized complaints which later became full mainstream globalization protests.?

China, UK and even the US started seeing protectionists trends to isolate the country from foreign influence, evocating nostalgia among the electorate to return to better times. The influence was so strong that UK even had a referendum to exit the European Union, with the surprising result that the separatists won it.

Is globalization doomed? I don’t think it is; while it is true that every country has tried to implement barriers of some kind to protect their culture and ways of working of being influenced by a global sentiment, this is only based out of convenience and localized to very specific topics. I see most global organizations continue to operate as usual, and global travel continues, and in fact it is increasing on China opening their borders – after concluding the Zero Covid policy.

Globalization will indeed endure and as global citizens (after all we all live in planet Earth), we will continue to be impacted by it. Not even the UK is immune to all European Union policies after exiting the union; in fact one could argue that now they are independent, they need to demonstrate a greater degree of compliance to continue the trading agreements and flow of goods across the channel.

All this is good and fine, but how does it affect modernization? In most global programs, certain decisions need to be made to standardize how things will work. Simple things like picking a standard date format, augment more decisive decisions like choosing to convert all local currency to US dollars for global reporting purposes.

Yes, we need to continue to watch for cultural differences which might impact how people perceive change and how the program align to their interests, but we also need to consider the differences in physical infrastructure across countries. It is a very good that both Wifi and Ethernet (the standard for wired network connections) are global standards. However, the reality is that beyond power standards, there are some major differences between countries, sometimes the difference might not a physical difference (like the form a power plug), but rather a compliance and regulations difference that we need to factor-in so we can accommodate being legal in all the countries where the modernization will operate.

Best is to have a group of experts with you when your program goes across geographic boundaries, there are many companies out there who have the local capabilities and global leadership to support large scale cross border implementations. Even if you decide to do it on your own, plan for a diverse team, it is indeed better for the program to have local representation from all the groups which will be impacted (positively or negatively) and given them the opportunity to participate in the decision-making process. You will be pleasantly surprised by the improved outcomes.