Case Study: Building enterprise-wide cultural intelligence: the TMA World Country Navigator

The Country Navigator enables employees across an organization to build a deeper understanding of how to collaborate, communicate and build productive working relationships with colleagues, customers, partners and suppliers from different cultural backgrounds.

A web-based tool, the Country Navigator is used by numerous international organizations as an enterprise-wide learning resource, providing employees with valuable insight on how to successfully interact with people from different cultures and gain a deeper cross-cultural understanding - what we at TMA World call 'cultural intelligence'.

This deeper understanding is gained through the Navigator's combination of personal cultural profiling and feedback, database of information on key business cultures and interactive global effectiveness e-learning modules.

Below are some examples of how companies are using the Country Navigator:

International Business Machines (IBM) is the world's top provider of computer products and services. Among the leaders in almost every market in which it competes, the company focuses primarily on its growing services business, which accounts for more than half of sales. Though perhaps still best known for its hardware, its IT and business services units are among the largest in the world and serve customers across most industries.

IBM has been a leader in cross-cultural education since the early 1960's and its collaboration on pioneering research of Geert Hofstsede. Today, cross-cultural education remains a key component across its workforce development curriculum. It continues to innovate in providing state-of-the-art learning provision to help its increasingly global workforce innovate and collaborate.

The Country Navigator is at the core of IBM's online multicultural training programs, available to a wide cross-section of its workforce. In addition, it has been fully integrated as a blended component to its Global Diversity classroom and virtual class curriculum.

Headquartered in Canada, Research In Motion (RIM) is the designer and manufacturer of the award-winning BlackBerry smartphone. In 10 years RIM has sold 50 million wireless handset units worldwide. RIM also creates software solutions that allow smartphones to access email, applications, media and the Internet wirelessly.

RIM's remarkably swift international growth (from start-up 25 years ago to position 177 in 2009's FT Global 500) created a clear need for enterprise-wide cultural intelligence learning solutions across the business in order to support continued expansion. After discussions with several training organizations RIM chose to work with TMA World, because we alone offered a global strategy for building deep and sustainable cross-cultural competence through the vehicle of sophisticated blended learning and long term partnership between our two organizations.

The Country Navigator is used by RIM employees to become more aware of their own personal working styles and expectations, as a precursor to learning about their colleagues and customers from different business cultures and with different approaches. This self-awareness is a crucial skill to facilitate cross-border collaboration. RIM employees also have access to the Global Effectiveness e-learning modules in the Navigator, which provide a practical framework on how to approach cross-cultural challenges and detail what options can be used to deal with them.

Medtronic is a global leader in medical technology, serving chronic disease patients and partnering with medical professionals in over 120 countries. A key strategic goal is to build 'One Medtronic', a truly integrated global organization. A crucial element of this strategy is to foster a global mindset among its 38,000 employees.

The Medtronic Corporate University chose the Country Navigator - along with TMA World's Global Team Navigator and Global Virtual Teams e-learning solutions - to provide employees with practical, on-demand learning resources to equip them for success in the new global workplace. The University recognised that an enterprise-wide solution was needed to ensure that employee groups had access to relevant learning resources that enable them to play their part in creating 'One Medtronic'. Initial feedback from Navigator users has been highly positive.

Westinghouse Electric, which is owned by Japan-based conglomerate Toshiba, provides fuel, services, technology, plant design, and equipment for the commercial nuclear electric power industry. Its technology solutions are used in 50% of nuclear power plants around the world.

Westinghouse Electric has seen rapid global growth, despite recent challenging market conditions. As a result of this expansion US employees, with emerging international roles, need to build a broader understanding of overseas business cultures. At the same time, new recruits across the world require a global mindset to succeed in this rapidly globalising organization.

Westinghouse Electric chose the Country Navigator as an enterprise-wide solution - empowering employees to build their knowledge and skills in cross-cultural working and global awareness. In addition to being available to all employees worldwide, it is also widely used as an informational tool for employees undertaking overseas assignments. Feedback from users has been highly positive and it is now being integrated with related cross-cultural and global leadership learning solutions.

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