Institution:
INSEAD Business School, France
Course:
Leading Across Borders and Cultures
I wish to acknowledge the Board of the Industry Leaders Fund for granting me a scholarship and thank them for their support. The programme which I selected was Leading Across Borders and Cultures which was highly pertinent to my role.
The programme was presented by INSEAD, a globally recognised, leading European Business School, located in Fontainebleau, France.
The course is presented over a period of a week in highly interactive face to face lectures and sessions; led and facilitated, primarily by Professor Erin Meyer, who is a world leading expert in culture and the interface and interaction between the world’s foremost cultures. The purpose of the programme is designed with the intention of developing knowledge, insight and reduction in culture clashes and cultural misunderstanding, as well as improving the ability of senior executives to lead increasingly inclusive, diverse, and global businesses.
The programme is attended by a highly selected and select group of senior executives from businesses all over the world, which in turn creates an “on campus” microcosmic laboratory in which the taught cultural identifiers and characteristics are not only examined, exposed and explored, but the opportunity is provided to test, apply and validate the theory in real time. A truly unique and novel way of learning, applying and validating the frameworks and knowledge in vitro.
The programme content was particularly applicable and valuable to my situation and was immensely practical and immediately able to be applied. In my role as CEO, I had consciously sort out the best skill that I was able to find to fill especially senior roles within the business, actively engaging in international sourcing if the relevant skill, knowledge or experience could not be found in Australia, attracting some top global talent to South Australia to fill key roles. This had introduced great diversity into the business.
In addition, our parent company, which is Japanese, send a certain number of high potential assignees to rotate through Australia to enhance their practical skills, knowledge, and to gain exposure to, and an understanding of the Australian market.
As a result, Mitsubishi Motors Australia has a highly diverse mix of employees from around the world, with more than 36 foreign languages spoken as a first language in the business.
What I implicitly knew, from my exposure to a multitude of cultures over my professional career, is that people come from varied, different backgrounds; often with significant differences; not only in language, but in ways of communicating, problem solving, and expressing themselves. What I never had; was a scientifically validated framework for plotting/mapping where different people and cultures sit on a scale, which I acquired from the programme.
Additionally, and as importantly, I was given tools, insight and understanding of how to adapt certain practices to create greater commonality of understanding, improved communication, performance and productivity enhancement and motivation improvement. This was evidenced through a significant year-on-year improvement in the employee engagement metric between 2024 and 2025.
Immediately upon my return from the programme in November 2024 I set about applying the knowledge in Mitsubishi Motors Australia, together with my interaction with my Japanese parent company, as well as to visits to other Mitsubishi operations in the USA, Canada and Holland, among other global interactions.
Looking forward, I intend to use the knowledge and insights gained to pay it forward in future consulting, advisory and board roles that I may adopt.
The programme is extremely valuable to anyone who either manages a diverse workforce, or who does business regularly with people in or from different parts of the world. Not only does it provide sound theory, but it is structured in such a manner that the learning is insightful, practical and easily applied in any situation. The programme can be confronting as it challenges one’s own preconceived ideas, past experience, unconscious biases, possibly even prejudices.
It also opens your eyes to the fact that just because you have learnt, experienced and applied your knowledge successfully in one context, or set of experiences, that it may not work in different environments; or that it is potentially not even workable, applicable, or acceptable as a cultural practice, or correct in different cultural contexts.
A substantial amount of evidence, practical examples and case studies on the programme demonstrate that individuals who have been highly successful in one environment and culture often fail when they are required to work in another. What holds true in one society, even from the way you learn (inductive vs deductive) to the way you communicate, motivate and reward can differ vastly. What is valued and appreciated in one society can be despised or devalued in another.
If you actively engage with the insights I found that the course content can initially be discombobulating and confronting for some and challenges your assumptions and beliefs, but as clarity emerges it can be transformational in your understanding of culture and the impact it can and does have on the way your business can operate more successfully, particularly if you operate across borders, continents and cultures.
If you approach the programme with an open mind, and be open to understand, and to acknowledge; that if you studied in one context / culture – for example – America or Australia; or Europe or Asia, or even more accurately, down to national differences e.g. French/English/Spanish/Russian/Israel individually or Chinese/Japanese for example, all cultures are vastly different; there are significant differences in what works in one culture/country – that won’t work in another – then the programme becomes extremely insightful, valid and valuable.
I would like to thank the ILF for the fantastic opportunity they provided for me to attend the programme. I found it extremely insightful and it has added a new dimension of knowledge, insight and experience to my quest for, and ethos of, lifelong continuous improvement, evolution and learning.
In addition, after attending the programme, I was fortunate to be selected by INSEAD to support the promotion of the programme globally.
Institution:
Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK
Course:
Advanced Leadership Program