Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/62210
ter a global leadership perspective, educators should trans- form students' attitudes toward failure, from a tendency to fear it to an eagerness to try new approaches. Business has long had an aversion to failure; but in a global market, failure is often inevitable. Global leaders are eager to try new approaches and learn in the global context. They view failure as an opportunity for systematic learning! Top management in particular must make sure that executives are not stigma- tized if there is an occasional setback. Furthermore, if top managers are supervising executives from other cultures, they should expect those executives to make mistakes, rather than criticize their efforts to learn. Experiment. It's important to develop global leaders who are Encourage systematic learning—sometimes through failure. To fos- willing to try faster—and, if necessary, fail sooner—so that they can learn faster. In other words, successful leaders are willing to "fail early to succeed sooner." In the eyes of the global leader, experimentation is a matter of trying new ini- tiatives in a global context, in areas of the world where they are most likely to thrive. It's not just a matter of first trying them in one's traditional home market, and then expecting them to translate to another culture. tant to keep each national unit from developing its own silo culture. Instead, the firm should become a single global "fam- ily," with no particular cultural silos. National leaders tend to be more home-culture-oriented and hide within their nation- al silos; but the right leaders can make global families happen, as IMD professors Joseph DiStefano and Martha Maznevski assert in their recent article "Developing Global Managers: Integrating Theory, Behaviour, Data and Performance." Globally minded business educators must actively work against a silo culture, where a restrictive, "not invented here" juxtapose new business models with their traditional, cher- ished models. Typically, the traditional business model tends to be soundly grounded in the culture of the host country. Unfortunately, that grounding can prevent a business from discovering new, alternative ways of doing business in other cultures and in other parts of the world. The challenge for business schools is to develop global leaders who are open to new interpretations of their business rationales, so that the business model can continually evolve and expand within an international context. Avoid silo cultures. In any multinational company, it's impor- Juxtapose business models. Executives must be encouraged to BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2003 25