The most effective way to gain international experience is by relocating to a country outside your home country. Getting exposed to and evolving in another culture and context will broaden your perspective and strengthen your adaptability. There are other alternatives to broadening your cultural experience: working with a global or regional team or managing a regional/global team.
First time I went abroad by myself was in 11th grade where I did a high school year in the US living with an American family for 1 year. That was such a defining time in my life that I decided to spend more time abroad during my studies. Since joining Mars I have worked in my home country of Germany but also in the UK, Portugal and Switzerland.
Learning to be agile and to adjust to a different cultural environment while not losing yourself as a person.
The period after the first “honeymoon phase” where nothing seems to be going right, where you are wondering what you have gotten yourself into and where you simply miss your family & friends.
I am much more clear about who I am and what my core values are. I have also become much better in decoding the invisible boundaries. “The Culture Map” really helped me to understand how to build trust, how decisions are taken and how you get things done in cultures different than mine.
Across my career I had the opportunity to work in Italy, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and USA
When entering an international assignment or relocation there has to be a strong sense of WHY, this will carry you through the dips that happens everytime you re-start “your life”.
There has to be a strong alignment between you and your partner/family.
You need to be able to weight the pros and cons of the choice, for us it has been a great set of experiences.
Having family being happy, settle in, I made the mistake of not taking anytime to support the settling period.
I have an international network, far broader experience then before and a heighten sense of cultural diversity and impact
I joined Mars 17 years ago. Have had different roles mainly in Finance. Before I did Demand Planning, I had 3 years international experience in Central Asia and Belorussia (CEAB). I did S&OP+ in CEAB and set up S&OP+ from scratch, giving an experience of deployment market, and I gained Supply experience leading the merge of teams within an OKF factory.
Diversity is our advantage. Leverage synergy and resources from the global organization (S&OP+, Supply mainly from Russia) and at the same time create value and drive agility of local market. Keep in loop the role of market on the global map (e.g. growth engine, etc.) Small markets are amazing for a test & learn approach to be scaled up within bigger markets.
Be close to your consumer and your customer. CEAB included 11 markets at that time. Follow legal specifics and be relevant. Get trust from your team, respect the traditions of each country and be provoking at the same time. The Five Principles are your guidance in this journey.
Wider perspective and business acumen. Significant step-up in emotional leadership and talents agenda.
I gained this experience in my current role as FP&A and Supply Finance Director for Global Emerging Markets, Mars Wrigley.
Moving from India to Singapore was a big shift, both on the professional and personal side but indeed a great experience in terms of getting exposed to another country, culture, time zone differences and has helped a lot around building perspective, managing challenges, widening horizons and being flexible and agile to adopting and settling down in a new environment.
As a regional FP&A and Supply Finance Director for a complex region like Global Emerging Markets has also helped in understanding diverse market dynamics, building perspective and cultural nuances across multiple markets and adopting and being respectful about many of these in our conversations and dealings.
The challenging part of this experience was- Dealing with initial anxiety on how oneself and family will settle down well in a new place with completely new environment as it was our first move outside home country (whether for family at new residential place/ in a new country or for kids at their new school while I was comfortable on office front).
Got great advice & support from the company, line managers, peers and friends and within 6 months of our move, family was at ease in the new country and environment and reflecting back I feel like I should not have worried so much about the move.
On the work front, I had virtual team and stakeholders spread across the world from Australia on one side to LATAM markets on other side and hence it looked like 24 hours were not enough. I had to work very hard in building relationship and trust with key stakeholders across this wide geography along with managing time zone differences and once that happened, working has been great fun with huge learnings and one of the best stints in my entire career.
A regional role outside my home country has helped me in:
a) Managing multiple stakeholders across different countries/cultural nuances very well and developing a comfort with higher management
b) Increased my confidence level and made me more matured and resilient in dealing with VUCA challenges across our markets
c) Widened my perspective and built strategic agility muscle very well for managing businesses across large complex region like GEM with multiple markets /units through dynamic resource allocation and Value Creation lens
The Breadth layer is about having a variety of experiences. It’s about becoming more comfortable with the way we do business whether in a new country or in a new segment. Experience in this layer empowers Associates to make credible and informed decisions and create value for the business.
Experiences expand your business acumen; they help you understand how Mars works as an organization. In this layer you can demonstrate your ability to make strategic choices and create value in a variety of situations and scenarios. Successful experience in this may demonstrate that you can manage better business outcomes.
The People layer gives you experience in people management, a critical capability for managers and leaders across the organization. If you wish to manage large scale teams, significant experience will be required as part of this people layer.
Gaining experience across Finance pillars will help Associates gain perspective, business understanding and be more credible when making decisions. You build functional skills by gaining experiences in at least two of the three job families within the Finance function (i.e. Innovative Business Partnering, Smart Financial Operations, Enhanced Specialized Services) as well as some experience in the Digital space.
The Breadth layer is about having a variety of experiences. It is about becoming more comfortable with the way we do business whether in a new country or in a new segment. Gaining this experience empowers Associates to take more credible and informed decisions and understand where the value comes from. Some of these experiences can be checked off simply by working in project teams that are cross-segment, cross-country, or within different types of business models (i.e. Mature vs Emerging markets, CPG vs Retail, DTC or Services business, Shared services business).
