Case Study Overview:

This case study is the tale of three high-level executives from the United States titan Argos vs
a group of incohesive European managers from their various acquisitions.

Frank Waterhouse, CEO of Argos Diesel, has been working furiously for the last four years in
Europe. Argos now had several companies under its umbrella and Frank had been busying
himself with getting new contracts from various different governments; in short, he’s Argos
Group’s shining star.

Acquiring new companies to join the ever-growing Argos portfolio is easy but Integrating the
teams and aligning so many different visions together is another animal entirely.

International Argos CEO Bill Loun said he had the perfect guy for the job named Bert
Danoldson, professor for American Studies in Cairo for 5 years, he had international experience.
He then joined Argos in the States and pulled together a fantastic training program that
brought all the cross-divisional teams together in record time. Costs came down, productivity
went up. He was one of Argos Group’s rising stars and would be an excellent aide to Frank. 

Enter Bert Donaldson. He arrives in Zurich with his family in tow excited to get his hands dirty
and start the ball rolling. He’s got plans for these managers, and he’s determined to get
everybody aligned to ‘The Argos Way’.

But how things progressed-

As time went by, Bert started to run into problems. The managers didn’t seem to be responding
to him at all. He felt like he tried it all;

1 – 1 meetings, training sessions, office lunch invitations. He’s asked for feedback and sent out
questionnaires. All the responses didn’t give him any detail or move him any closer to bringing
all these teams across Europe together. That’s assuming he got responses at all; a lot of the
managers didn’t respond.

He held a huge progress meeting to discuss how things were moving forward and Bert had…
nothing. No stats, no vision, no plan.

They were halfway through an aggressively quick 2-year program to bring the European
managers together and they weren’t even close to getting started. In a defeated, frustrated
panic, Bert phoned Frank to let him know that this presentation was going to be terrible.
 Frank was annoyed at this point. The success of his own career was tied to Bert’s ability
to deliver this program. If Bert failed, so did he. If Frank give up on Bert and return
him to the States, his career path would also take a hit and all the work he’d done for
the past 4 years would be wasted and even Bert’s career and reputation would
potentially be destroyed beyond repair

How did it go-

A close colleague said that the training sessions seemed to go okay but some managers felt
patronized, and others felt that there wasn’t enough information. The training always ran over,
details like naming etiquette was overlooked. No opportunities for networking, no coffee
breaks… it was a disaster. People were talking in the office. The trainers that Bert had brought
in, turned up in casual dress to a formal business environment and got angry when one of the
Norwegian managers asked ‘too many questions’.

Bert’s response made it clear that he had completely overlooked how the Europeans did
business. The culture here was different from what he was used to in America. The values were
different, the way they reached goals and came to an agreement was different.

Bert seemed to have no awareness about how his behavior was impacting those around him
and no desire to learn about how to get the best out of the European managers.

Bert never went home at a normal time, he always looked stressed and he seemed unable to
get into the cultural swing of things. He was unprepared for the different social norms and
customs and so all of his training programs and plans were frustrating and resisted at every
turn. 

There were also whispers that his family was suffering too. They were in a new city, his
daughter was in a new school but they were also struggling to adjust to such a vastly different
lifestyle.

Bert’s right-hand lady, Frau Schweri, who helped him pull together the training programs
advised against certain things but Bert even did not listen to her, On top of that, he insulted
Frau Schweri by referring to her as his secretary.
Whereas,

Frau Schweri: This woman was a training and development powerhouse, spoke 5 different
languages and was both emotionally and culturally intelligent. She had years of experience in
this field and was suitably outraged.

The Final Situation:

At this point, everybody was frustrated. Frank could see that a lot of the problems would have
been alleviated if Bert were more culturally adaptable. Frank was unsure whether to fire Bert
and move on. Could cultural understanding really be taught? From Bert’s perspective, he didn’t
understand why people aren’t responding. Their companies had been acquired into the Argos
Group and ‘The Argos Way’. Culture shouldn’t be important. It is what it is; they work for an
American company now.

Morale is down and without a strong vision, people are beginning to call for Bert’s resignation.
Is he really the right man for the job? Is there any more time left for him to make the proper
adjustments? 

Problem 1: Misunderstanding The Cultural

Landscape
This is where Frank Waterhouse fell short. In an effort to ringfence the
success of his career, Waterhouse did not give his CEO enough of
a briefing about the ongoing challenges of trying to pull together all the
different departments under one banner, he could have painted
a more detailed picture for his CEO. 

Waterhouse could have at least touched base with Bert Donaldson

and showed him the ropes- The two men are colleagues and could
have been a support network for each other in this regard. Instead,
Donaldson was left to sink in his lack of knowledge and
understanding. This then directly impacted the success of the project
-Such a commitment would have led Donaldson to work with
Waterhouse to establish a clear workup of what social and cultural
norms were at play in these teams.

-This intel would have guided the strategy creation for initiatives like
workshops, conferences, and 1 – 1 feedback sessions. 

Problem 2: ‘The Argos Way’:

The second problem is the belief that ‘The Argos Way’ is enough. The
Argos Way was built on one kind of overarching culture. The
assumption that what works in Detroit would translate well into other
cultural contexts was the company’s first big mistake.

This viewpoint was perpetuated from the top of the organization:

The chairman and International CEO Bill Loun did not seem to
understand that you can’t ignore the culture of employees and replace
it with ‘The Argos Way’

The likelihood here is that although he held the title of International

CEO, Bill Loun had little to no experience dealing with European
acquisitions and no advisors to brief him on the challenges that would
await his hand-picked candidate. 

As a result of this, Donaldson was believed to have all the required

skills needed as a global leader to unify all the European teams.
Additional resources to help him acclimatize were not allocated and no
structured program to guide him through all the cultural norms was put
in place.

Problem 3: Donaldson’s Unwillingness To Learn:

“my way or the highway’ attitude-

He then proceeded to try to force his way of working onto the

acquisition teams, which was a disaster.
He alienated people, borderline insulted people, and failed to see how
certain things like the ‘Mickey Mouse sweatshirt’ fiasco was not
acceptable in a new cultural context.

The reality was that he needed to understand how some of these

smaller details affect the way people respond to a change in
organizational structure and leadership. 

For example, in American culture, it’s routine in some sectors for people to work long
hours and spend less time with their families in order to do this. In some professions,
this is seen as an example of an employee ‘going the extra mile’. In places like
Germany, staying in the office after hours on a regular basis means something
completely different. You aren’t respected for doing it; you just look like you can’t
manage your time or something is wrong in your family life. People are less likely to
value their work over their family and if they see their leader doing that, they’re unlikely
to respect you. If, as a global leader, you aren’t respected, you’re already fighting
a losing battle.

Donaldson was unwilling to be flexible:

Similarly, Donaldson ran into problems because he couldn’t seem to

connect with the team leaders. That’s because he was unwilling to
understand how to connect with them. Eating a sandwich in your office
at your desk is not always how people want to interact with you.
Excellent ideas and great rapport are often built in the canteen, during
coffee breaks, or after work over dinner. Donaldson was unwilling to
be flexible in this regard and see how things are done in the cultural
context he was in.

Problem 4: A Belief That Cultural Intelligence

Can’t Be Taught

This belief that ‘leaders are born and not created’ is probably one
of the most limiting beliefs that global leaders can have. Global
leadership can be taught to anybody who is focused on learning and
refining what they do. Everybody is born with a measure of leadership
ability; the choice to cultivate further is down to the individual.
Donaldson wasn’t exactly in a great mindset to learn, but Waterhouse
wasn’t in a mindset to teach either. 

Cultural intelligence, emotional intelligence, interpersonal skills,

communication skills. All of these things and more can be taught if
mentors are willing to share and mentees are willing to learn. Had
Waterhouse had a more open view and made fewer assumptions
about what Donaldson should know, he could have intervened much
earlier and could have made things better

Problem 5: Lack of Structured Global Leadership Development

Managing one area in Cairo and managing one area in Detroit is not
always adequate training or experience to run divisions in multiple
nations.

A structured leadership development program would have given

Donaldson a chance to correctly assess the challenges ahead of him.
Throwing leaders into ‘sink or swim’ situations is a very risky staff
development method. Why put people under unnecessary pressure
and potentially lose 75% of your leaders.

Challenge 1: Distinct Lack Of Self Awareness

Donaldson was out of his depth and completely unaware as to the
reasons why. He then resorted to blaming everybody else for why the
program he was trying to implement was not moving ahead as
planned. 

Solution 1: Reflection Exercises

Taking a step back to assess the part you play as a leader will allow
you to take a birds-eye view;
-why did your colleague not respond as you would’ve liked?

-What could you have been done better?

-Is there a more appropriate way to achieve your goal? 

Had he done this, he might have seen that the task he’d been set is
probably impossible to achieve in two years and that a longer-term
view was needed. He would have also seen that he’d missed out on
learning what really motivated the people he was now interacting with
and acted accordingly.

Challenge 2: Distinct Lack Of Cultural Intelligence

One of the multicultural competencies required of global leaders is to
become culturally intelligent. It’s as important as emotional
intelligence.

Where Donaldson should have been hyper-aware of these, he wasn’t.

He found himself in a situation where he was disrespecting his
colleagues and was totally unaware of what they needed in order to
establish that common ground. 

Solution 2: Understanding The Impact Of Culture

Ignoring the impact of wider societal culture on working environments
is a big mistake that will quickly make a fool out of even the most well-
meaning leaders.

Culture cannot be ignored. It must be accounted for when predicting

the success of any change program.

If Donaldson had mapped the general habits of his French, German

and Spanish colleagues, he would have acquired for himself a whole
blueprint detailing the best methods to convey the mission. It also
would have avoided the next problem.
Challenge 3: Poor Communication Of The Vision
Donaldson tried a one-size-fits-all approach with the conferences,
workshops and trainers. It worked for some and not for others. This
meant that whole teams were confused about the vision and the part
they were expected to play in it.

Communication is key, and how people internalise the meaning of

a company vision is directly impacted by their culture. Donaldson
found it almost impossible to get people behind his vision and that was
partly because he couldn’t adapt his delivery style to align more
closely with the culture of the different teams he was leading.

Solution 3: Scrap the One-Size-Fits-All Delivery

The solution here is to think about how you can deliver the message
of the vision in a format that resonates with people. If everybody is all
in the same room at one time, then a global leader has to think about
how they would do this. 

-It’s not enough to bulldoze your way through business strategy and hope that the people you
lead will simply fall into line.

Likewise, what are HCNs?

1. PCN (Parent-country nationals) are employees whose nationality is the same as that
of the firm headquarters — for example, a German employee of a German company
who is working at a Chinese subsidiary. 2. HCN (Host-country nationals) are employees
who have the same nationality as the local subsidiary.

What are the advantages of choosing a host country national staffing strategy?

One advantage of this type of strategy is easier application of business objectives, although an
expatriate may not be culturally versed or well accepted by the host-country employees. In a host
country strategy, workers are employed within that country to manage the operations of that business