Global Mindset and Inclusion of students with disabilities

The following is from Jim Fennell, a Staff Sports Writer at the Union Leader of New Hampshire.

"Including Samuel" is the personal journey of Dan Habib and his family -- his wife, Betsy McNamara, and two sons, Isaiah and Samuel -- told over four years. At the heart of the story is the family's support of Samuel, who has a rare form of cerebral palsy, a disorder that makes it difficult for the brain to control the body's muscles. It's about their efforts to make him part of educational and recreational activities open to kids without physical or emotional disabilities.

The film tells not only the story of Samuel, but also of four other people with disabilities. There is a balance between the positive and negative aspects of inclusion that reveals Habib's journalistic background. Some of the greatest advocates to emerge from the film are the students without disabilities whom Habib interviews.

"I really want every school to be welcoming to all kids," he said. "It's all about problem solving. It's about saying this is a value that we embrace, that we want our school to have the diversity of kids of all abilities. I honestly believe that's part of the natural diversity of our society, but a lot of schools are challenged by that, so you have to get together and say how do we do this well".

Simply stated, Including Samuel is a must see…for anyone who wants to develop a "Global Mindset" and wants and/or needs an in-depth look into the concept, current practice and real-life experience of inclusion and integration for those with disabilities. “Sometimes students with disabilities are the low-hanging fruit. They’re the ones that people pick on and say ‘they’re too expensive.” Some children are going to require more resources to learn than other children. And that is part of America. And that is where it becomes a civil rights issue. ” (Jan Nisbet, director of the UNH institute, cited in Business Week)

So readers, how do you feel about “inclusion”—is it the next civil rights issue and does it relate to having a "Global Mindset"?

Do you have a global mindset?

Having a global mindset means the ability to scan the world from a broad perspective; always looking for unexpected trends and opportunities that may constitute a threat or an opportunity to achieve personal, professional or organizational objectives.

A global mindset is described by the Global Entrepreneurship Institute as a way of being rather than a set of skills. It is an orientation and a state of mind able to understand a product, a business, an industry sector, or a particular market, on a global basis. The executive with a global mindset has the ability to see across multiple territories, focusing on “commonalties across many markets.”

Over 63,000 or 77 percent of all the companies involved in exporting from the United States had fewer than 100 employees. A global entrepreneur seeks out and conducts new and innovative business activities across national borders. These activities may consist of exporting, licensing, opening a new sales office, or acquiring another venture.

Manging ambiguity

Growing multinationals, whether they are based in the United States, India or elsewhere, all face a common problem: developing leaders who can manage global enterprises and take advantage of strategic opportunities. But do global leaders require a set of skills entirely different from those needed by their domestic counterparts? Yes they do!

Global Leaders need to develop is a consistent set of attitudes. This set includes curiosity, flexibility, willing to take risks, tolerance for ambiguity, open-mindedness, non-judgmental, openness to change, integrity, and optimism.

The reason that a Global Leader needs special characteristics is because doing business globally is fraught with uncertainty. This sense of never being fully "certain", is amplified by cultural differences. Of the characteristics that I have just mentioned, I think that the ability to tolerate ambiguity is vital.

In order to be able to develop tolerance for ambiguity Global Leaders need to "learn how to learn" in new situations. This critical skill is less valued in a purely "domestic" environment. A Global Leader has to be able to function successfully in new and unfamiliar situations and must know how to integrate this new understanding with existing skills and knowledge.

The Global Leader knows that he or she does not have al the answers. But the Global Leader knows how to find the answers, leveraging the knowledge of his collaborators. Line managers are the ones who most especially need to be attuned to learning to learn across different cultual environments

Different skills are needed for CEOs and top managers vs. line managers. It comes down to a difference between corporate strategy and business strategy. The leadership at the top is more responsible for managing the portfolio and doing due diligence, and for weighing whether it is better to acquire a firm or develop a strategic alliance. The line managers in businesses or SBUs are concerned with how to compete, how to overcome cultural differences and respond to local tastes, and how to integrate key functions or processes within the business to achieve local success.

Keogh & Associates Consulting , LLC has many services to help your company compete by developing a global mindset.

The Global Mindset as a New Managerial Paradigm

Here is a good summary of why a global mindset is important for today's manager. It is from the Babson College website and refers to the book "Managing with a Global Mindset" by Jean-Pierre Jeannet.

Managers can be categorized into different type of mandates, ranging from domestic to international, regional, and multi-domestic. Each of these mindsets represents a particular point of view and is the result of different type of experiences. For the new emerging competition in the globalizing economy, the old mindsets will not suffice and a global mind will become necessary. But first, let us look at how managerial mindsets progressed over time.

The domestic mindset is characterized by a reliance on one market as the key reference and is the mindset most managers are born with. Domestic mindsets rely on a single reference point, their domestic markets, for judgments. For successful managers, who need to act in a globalizing economy, working with a domestic mindset tends to limit the point of view.

Representing the next level up is the international mindset characterized by one or few experiences in another country. The international mindset might come with different levels of international experience, ranging from casual international exposure through travel all the way to extensive foreign stay resulting in a capacity to integrate in a foreign country or environment. The international mindset, with a limited, but in-depth exposure, is, however, not identical to the more extensive global mindset.

A manager with extensive regional experience, such as throughout Latin America, or across Europe, may possess a regional mindset. The regional mindset is of interest because it includes experiences across a score of countries. Still further up the scale is the multinational mindset typical of executives who have been on successive international assignments in different countries. Although representing the backbone of the executive pool of many of our largest multinational firms today, executives with multinational mindsets are still not necessarily possessing true global mindsets.

The global mindset is defined, for the purpose of the book, as a state of mind able to understand a business, an industry sector, or a particular market on a global basis. The executive with a global mindset has the ability to see across multiple territories and focuses on commonalities across many markets rather than emphasizing the differences among countries. Companies which find themselves engulfed by extensive global pressures will need to acquire a large pool of executives who possess a global mindset and who are able to view business opportunities from a global perspective. Part of this global mindset is an entire set of new and different analytical tools that would not be needed by the previous domestic or multinational mindset. New strategies, resulting from responding to new market opportunities, are another part of this toolkit.

This global perspective differs substantially from the more traditional single-country, or domestic, and multinational perspective so much more typical today.

Culture and "Mindset"

“Global Mindset” is something that we sometimes hear about and sometimes talk about. It seems like the concept might be interesting and relevant for our work and interpersonal connections now that we live in an environment that is becoming more “global” by the minute. “Global” has pretty obvious connotations – but what do we mean by “Mindset”?

The term has come to refer to how people and organizations develop a “filter” which helps them make sense of the world with which they interact. Without a filter, we would be overwhelmed by the amount, the diversity, the complexity and the ambiguity of the vast amount of information which we have to deal with every day. So, a “mindset” is a “cognitive filter”. How is it developed?

Our “cognitive filters” are the result of our experience, our society, our history. These filters help us organize and interpret the information that comes to us. If the information fits nicely into our filter, it reinforces our mindset. If we lived in an isolated environment, with little access to new information we would have a fairly limited mindset which, over time, could become quite “rigid” in order to protect our comfort zone. What would happen if we were to be bombarded with new novel information and experiences which did not fit comfortably into our filter – mindset?

Our mindset influences whether we accept or reject the new information! If we are not aware of our mindset and how it developed in our subconscious we run the risk of having a very rigid mindset - and of not being open to change and growth. So, I believe that our "mindset" is both a product of our culture and, at the same time, it is shaping our openness to new experiences and ways of thinking. A big first step on the road to developing a truly "global mindset" is becoming aware of our current mindset, our "cognitive filtration system"

Strategic opportunity for HR professionals

It is almost impossible for employees to cultivate a global mindset - or for the organization’s leaders to acquire global skills - unless the culture of the organization itself is imbued with global effectiveness thinking, skills and behaviors.

At a time when business process outsourcing should be liberating us to focus on strategic rather than tactical issues, it is good to remind ourselves that developing organizational global effectiveness may be one of the most important contributions that HR professionals can make, if we are to have, or retain, a “seat at the table” in shaping corporate strategy.

Organizations devoid of a global way of thinking will not fare well in the international arena. Because human capital is the defining competitive differentiator of most organizations, HR's commitment to the task of attracting, retaining and managing the best talent available is its major strategic challenge. Read more...