Playing the Global Game

What are the Requirements for the "Budding" Global Strategist?

To compete in the global marketplace, you must have a wide variety of global skills. You must be the master of many general skills and a few core specialties.

The following is a listing of basic professional skills that the global strategist should have:

• A good command of the English language
• An arsenal of many languages
• A good understanding of human psychology
• A good knowledge of strategies and tactics
• A formidable set of communication and negotiation skills
• The ability to formulate and lead a global-diversified rapid deployment project team at a drop of a dime
• The ability to handle the concurrent extremity of global, regional, and local pressure
• A thorough understanding of one's industry
• The ability to constantly learn new things
• The courage to take risks
• A good understanding of global history
• The proficiency to distinguish and develop possible scenarios and plan counter moves

"Be bold and mighty. Things will come to your aid."   --- Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins

"There are two sets of people who can guard themselves from injury: those who have learned by experiencing it at their own cost and those who have observed it at the cost of others."   --- Baltasar Gracian - "Art of Worldly Wisdom"

From that listing, the five skills that are essential to the global strategist are:

1. Deploying the long view at the right time (This skill of "long viewing" is a composite of scenario awareness, recognition, and planning.)
2. Succinct communication
3. Strategic awareness (while dealing with multiple variables, being aware of the number of factors that can affect the company image and their bottom line)
4. Spending a great deal of time cautiously building a network of friends, allies, and resources
5. Gathering information with ease and then connecting the many dots of information into one large picture

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."   --- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Required Standards to Play the Global Game

Know your industry: Possession of a thorough understanding of one's industry enhances one's insight and foresight.

The importance of an effective leadership for a global team: One can hire thousands of skilled workers. Nevertheless, it is always difficult to find one effective strategic leader who can direct them.

Playing the role of being a strategic resource: Becoming the basis for a "sustained competitive advantage" that can be considered scarce to your employer.

"What makes a resource truly strategic: what gives it the capacity to be the basis for a sustained competitive advantage-is not ubiquity but scarcity. You only gain an edge over rivals by having or doing something that they can't have or do."   --- Harvard Business Review, May 2003 "Aesthetics is the Killer App" (Wired Magazine, July 2003)

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