Local sites are thousands of miles away from the company’s headquarters and hesitate to follow global processes. They have their own mode of operation and don’t see the need to align already established processes with harmonized global standards. These global standards are set by subject matter experts consolidated in centralized departments, called hubs.
MNC’s usually locate centralized hubs in the headquarters location of the company. This is a widely accepted approach with proven success in many companies. However, I strongly suggest to build hubs also at branch locations. E.g. Microsoft’s headquarters is in Redmond (WA) but their hubs for search technology are in Munich and Shanghai. The major benefit of this approach is that local hubs increase the acceptance of global standards within the whole company.
Local sites rather follow global processes set by a hub physically located on their site compared to a headquarters hub. Furthermore, once a local hub is established, other branches will follow this approach. They try to harmonize companywide processes and build a hub on their own location.
The good thing is that the acceptance of global harmonization is severely increased in companies implementing headquarters and site hubs. However, global managers have to take care for one important thing in the whole story: The local sites will try to influence “their” hub; means prioritizing their own site requests ahead of other sites or standardization driven by headquarters. If the rest of the company realizes that the “centralized” hub is influenced by local factors, the hub’s acceptance will decrease dramatically.
Never let local forces spoil your global organization.
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