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   In the past few years, we at LaMarsh & Associates have noticed a growing dependency on and concerns about effectively managing changes in a global environment. Resistance to change across cultures can sometimes be hard to detect. One of our clients in the healthcare industry retained us to support a change program implementation in EMEA, Latin and South America, Asia Pacific and Canada. We found the resistance issues were generally the same across all geographies, except in one Pacific Rim country. Employees consistently smiled and nodded their heads during presentations, asking no questions about the change. The general manager of the country was from the parent country and assumed from their behavior that there was no resistance. A mid-manager from this country joined the project team, however, and pointed out that in his culture asking questions or challenging the leader's presentation was an insult they would never commit. There was, indeed, a great deal of resistance that we were able to overcome once we identified it. At another client, a group of Human Resource professionals in Asia assembled to examine the issues around a major corporate change. They were extremely agitated because they had no idea 'why' the change needed to happen, as it was going to directly affect people's income in that part of the world. While we were with this group we made a call back to the United States to the corporate change team. We caught them late at night in the U.S., just leaving a celebratory dinner and posed the question of why change was needed. They assumed because everyone in the United States knew why that those in other geographies did as well. No one had ever thought to explain it fully because the U.S. employees knew it as part of their cultural knowledge of the company. Going through a global change? Want more information?  For more information on how LaMarsh and Associates can assist you with developing global changes within your organization,
contact Catherine Wolpert, Director of Business Development, at 312-498-3092 or cwolpert@lamarsh.com.
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