Countdown to Going Global #4: Build an internationally-minded team

by Sarah Siwak | December 18, 2014

You can have impeccable timing, choose the highest-potential countries for your company and prepare your product for a perfect pilot launch, but without a strong team, you won’t get very far. Tip #4 is all about people, and should help you answer this one big question:

How should we organize our team to go global?

The answer is threefold:

Establish clear senior leadership, both in the form of a Head of International Operations (where focusing on going global is their sole responsibility) and In-Country Managers, depending on your product and business model. This leadership should have prior experience growing international businesses from the ground up and have worked or lived abroad. Find the right in-country consultants and agencies if you need to round out any gaps in your organization.
Create a set of working values that encourage openness and flexibility. Not sure where to start? Feel free to borrow from ours. Company culture isn’t something that you just set and forget—make sure that all employees take your mission to heart. Embed these values in your everyday operations and create strong rewards structures to earnestly reinforce the attitudes you’d like for your team to embody.
Hire for diversity in the first place, building a team with diverse experiences, diverse backgrounds and diverse skill sets so that everyone can learn from one another internally.

With a high-level working plan in place, our next tip will help you with our favorite stage of going global—translation and localization.

Read all of the tips in Gengo’s Going Global Countdown:

Go global with Gengo’s people-powered translation platform.

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