7:30 – 8:00 AM Monday Morning, U.S. Central Standard Time

Globalization Management Issue #1

In-country participation in product/service design, creation, testing, marketing, sales, support, maintenance and end-of-life.

Required Management Abilities

Empathetic listening, synthesis, writing and negotiation skills

Current Challenge

Incorporating feedback from Brazil, Germany, Japan and the U.K. on future versions of training materials delivered by Osiel’s division

Jia-Shin Osiel, Manager of Language Services for Worldwide Training, Learning & Development (aka Globalization Manager), begins the morning commute to her office on the Oak Brook, Illinois (USA) campus of Hamburger University. As the car heads onto the expressway, she dials into her first conference call of the day – with the McDonald’s Country Managers from the U.K., Germany, Brazil and Japan.

The good news is that, overall, in-country management is pleased with the materials that Osiel’s team has created. After discussing the feedback, Osiel and the country managers eventually agree on a strategy to ensure that their input will be taken into account at the product design stage the next time this particular group at headquarters develops a product/service. Osiel will use the model to develop an enterprise-wide strategy for all product/service development groups. One small win at a time, Osiel reminds herself as she pushes the End Call button on her cell phone.

Osiel on Soliciting and Integrating International Feedback

“Soliciting and integrating international feedback at McDonald’s varies from project to project. My goal is to raise awareness within the company and to make it a corporate-wide requirement to involve the markets outside the U.S. at the earliest stages of product development. This is necessary to ensure that the product being developed, whether it is an application, a production procedure, a training manual, or a marketing campaign, will apply to as many markets as possible with little or no reworking. There are always many people in any global company who are not aware of internationalization requirements, or that there are certain things that you must do if you are developing something for the global market. McDonald’s is no different.

“In the past, my division was only contacted AFTER a product had been developed and finalized for the global market without any consideration for internationalization. It used to be a common assumption that anything in English could be translated into other languages and implemented in other locales. Most people do not understand that the way in which a product or material is designed in English (or in any source language) has a lot to do with how easy or difficult it will be to localize for other locales.

“My senior management now understands that it’s not enough simply to solicit feedback from various countries. Language Services needs to be involved at the onset of any global initiative to interpret the feedback for the corporate teams in terms of feature prioritization, what it means to implement something on a truly global scale, etc. For example, if it’s a Java application, here’s what you need to do. If it’s documentation, this is the application that you should use. My team members now serve as consultants to augment the expertise of our Operations folks.”

8:10 – 9:00 AM

Globalization Management Issue #2

Evangelizing up, down, across and throughout the organization that designing and creating a product/service for the global marketplace is an integral part of the original architecture, not a negotiable feature to be retrofitted at some later date

Required Management Abilities

Evangelization, negotiation, sales and presentation skills

Current Challenge

Choosing the right partners and vendors and running them through a “Globalization Audit” to determine their level of globalization knowledge and their ability to deliver a globally aware product/service on time

Osiel walks along the winding path around the small lake to her office.

She quickly reviews her email and voicemails and discovers that there is one urgent item. It turns out that the new software for a critical enterprise application cannot handle Spanish, let alone any other language. It’s only Monday morning (and just after 8:00 AM), but it’s time for yet another Introduction to Globalization presentation.

Osiel smiles to herself as she schedules a presentation for both internal Product Managers and the team of external consultants hired to design, create and deliver the software. Even though evangelization is not yet listed as part of her job description at McDonald’s, it’s one of her favorite responsibilities. The ability to deliver the same message over and over again as if it were new is not a talent that everyone possesses, but Osiel excels at it.

Osiel on Choosing the Right Partners and Vendors

“We at McDonald’s are always working on ways to increase customer satisfaction, which includes the development of top-notch applications to facilitate restaurant operations. Because our core business is to sell the best-tasting products, we partner with qualified external vendors to develop applications well-suited to our global markets. The Project Managers at McDonald’s serve as experts on McDonald’s operations, while the outside partner (specializing in a certain type of technology or application) is hired to undertake development.

“However, it is rare to find a vendor who truly understands what it means to develop a product for global rollout – all too often, many vendors claim to have all the answers. Even when partnering with vendors with a global presence, it is not uncommon to find consultants who have no idea about internationalization requirements.

“Whenever the internal department responsible recognizes that there might be a problem, they contact me immediately. I believe that it is the responsibility of my division to educate consultants with regards to what they need to know about developing a product that is truly world-ready and localizable.”

9:10 – 10:00 AM

Globalization Management Issue #3

Building a Globalization Team. No process = failure.

Required Management Abilities

Analytical & problem-solving skills, team building and process improvement

Osiel meets with her team. Together, they have come a long way from the internal translation agency that Osiel found when she arrived at McDonald’s a little over two years ago. With the support of the group itself and her management, Osiel changed the model to allow for the outsourcing of project management when it made sense. Currently, the team is composed of three supervisors and two consultants who function as Localization Project Managers, along with two project assistants who maintain all of the company’s linguistic assets (translation memories, glossaries, archived files, etc.) and who are responsible for formatting.

Osiel has taught McDonald’s that the key is to separate oneself from the external vendors. There are certain things that Osiel’s team can do for the company that a vendor cannot. In terms of agenda, a vendor’s main objective is usually to gain more business. But for Osiel’s team, the agenda is how to save the company money and how to implement the processes and standards for “doing things right the first time.” Therefore, it’s important for the team to educate people internally as to why an internal department is necessary to manage all of the external resources for different specialties, rather than to shift to a totally outsourced model.

Osiel on Process and Where She’s Heading With Her Team

“I’m very big on process because I believe that many problems are caused by either the wrong process or one that is non-existent. Before I came on board here at McDonald’s, there was no process for localization or translation! Most people think localization is as simple as converting one language into another. The attitude used to be, “Now we’re done, and it’s your job to take it from here to finish it.” There was no workflow or process to show how localization was linked to the planning, development and implementation of a product.

“At the beginning of my crusade, there was more resistance than acceptance, more doubts than confidence, because people were so used to thinking of translation and localization as after thought. Our evangelism involves changing behavior and attitudes within other departments to follow a newly introduced localization process.

However, once people can actually see how having a localization process in place helps them to achieve their business objectives by allowing the products they develop to be available to global markets faster and cheaper, they are much more receptive to change. We now have that process in place. From the very beginning of a project, everyone is now involved and knows when certain things need to be done. All of my team members are prepared to handle a whole project as a project, rather than just their individual pieces.

“I must give credit to the people with whom I have worked over the past two years. If they had not been open-minded enough to listen to me, no matter how much I knew or wanted to do, I would not have been able to get anywhere. In addition, I am extremely pleased to receive the right support from my senior management for transforming my department from a team of translators and reviewers to a center of excellence for globalization.

“However, we still have a long way to go. Today, our team functions as a business partner with other departments within McDonald’s. Eventually, I would like us to have a say in the final decision for global initiatives. Right now, we don’t have that; rather, we partner with other departments as consultants through providing advice and suggestions, but the final decision is up to the department who is running the specific global initiative.”

10:10 – 11:00 AM

Globalization Management Issue #4

Evangelizing and training your own management (or “leadership,” as McDonald’s refers to it internally) is critical to the implementation and maintenance of a successful globalization strategy. These are the people who will carry your message (or not) up the chain to senior management and, if you’re truly successful in your mission, to the boardroom.

Required Management Abilities

Leadership & strategic focus

Current Challenges

Evangelizing her own management and repositioning how globalization is perceived within McDonald’s

Following her team meeting, Osiel walks down the hall to meet with her own manager. For globalization to make it to the boardroom, it almost always requires someone such as Osiel who is passionately committed to doing globalization right. That person then becomes the evangelist, and therefore a catalyst (whether consciously or unconsciously). It is critical for this person to be willing to work within the system, but also to have the ability to judge when to follow the rules and when to break them.

Osiel has an added challenge at McDonald’s when it comes to evangelizing her management and keeping their attention: her particular supervisor position is cycled into new functions every three years. This means that Osiel must re-educate and persuade new leaders (two in her case) frequently, with the rotations occurring at different times.

In spite of this rotation model, Osiel has been extremely pleased with the progress that she has made with all of her senior leadership. While the challenges she faces are no different from the challenges faced by globalization managers at other large global companies, she feels privileged to have tremendous support (financially in particular), from the senior management team at McDonald's to gradually set up the processes and infrastructure necessary for enterprise-wide globalization. The key to Osiel’s success in obtaining and maintaining her leadership support is her ability to remain strategically focused in aligning localization with business objectives. She has a clear idea about where she wants her department to be, and everything she does remains focused on bringing her department closer to that end goal.

Currently, Osiel is working with her senior management to create a communications strategy to market the value her department adds to McDonald’s and to reposition globalization in the eyes of the people who need her team’s consulting services the most, i.e., the Product Managers and their respective leadership who are struggling with the design and delivery of products/services that must go worldwide as soon as they are released to the market.

Osiel on Educating the Leadership at McDonald’s

“The fact that many of our projects are not architected nor budgeted globally is simply a reflection of McDonald’s corporate culture. On many levels, McDonald’s has been successful because it has consciously chosen to run its business in a decentralized way to survive in different countries and different cultures. This is why this same decentralized approach is used for localization, when maybe it’s not the right approach.

“That’s where my group can be extremely valuable to McDonald’s. When I evangelize my leadership, my message is very clear: It may be necessary for us to do our business globally in a decentralized way, but there are more disadvantages than advantages, more cons than pros, to performing localization in this way. The leadership here at McDonald’s is starting to realize this now. In the past, there was no one here, such as myself, to share that knowledge with them in their language, i.e., with ROI numbers attached, showing what the company can save, etc. I use Visio to graphically represent workflow so that my managers can understand how people can be deployed more effectively and how costs can be reduced.

“The localization model, which I initiated, allows McDonald’s to manage localization centrally, yet execute de-centrally, in order to shorten time-to-market of localized products and to reduce costs by reducing redundancies. This model has been applied to several large-scale global initiatives and has been well-received.

“Evangelizing my leadership is a key part of my job. There are things that I know that others don’t, so I have a responsibility to make them aware of them. Of course, I don’t have to say that that’s what I’m doing – I do it by simply integrating globalization into everything that I do.

“I am lucky in that the leadership in my department is championing globalization at the executive VP level at McDonald’s. She sees the value of what I’m trying to do and is very supportive.”

11:10 – 11:15

Globalization Management Issue #5

Re-educating vendors to support and partner, instead of compete, with in-house Globalization Managers in implementing their globalization strategies

Required Management Abilities

Negotiation and vendor management skills

Osiel accepts a forwarded call from her director from yet another salesperson from a global content management company hoping to capture a piece of Hamburger University’s significant budget for globalization-related services. This caller has made a gross error by attempting to bypass Osiel to go higher within the organization. She will soon find out that Osiel is the only one who can make the recommendation regarding vendor selection.

Osiel is especially disappointed in this case with the vendor because she has taken the time to educate the salesperson about the sales process and how McDonald’s will make its decision. The call is short – less than 3 minutes.

Osiel on the Opportunities for Language/Content Vendors

“McDonald’s has always used a decentralized approach for translation and localization, until last year, when I started to champion the very successful “central management, de-centralized execution” approach. A good example of the progress that I have made is that we now have the kind of corporate funding that is necessary for localizing e-Learning materials for global rollouts. This localization structure for e-Learning is a milestone. We are not completely decentralized or completely centralized with our model. Right now, it’s more of a blended approach, and I think that it meets the current business needs of McDonald’s.

“Whenever I talk to a vendor, especially a vendor who tries to sell me something, they are always very eager to gain more visibility, rather than to concentrate on helping us solve our very real challenges here at McDonald’s. However, this is totally the wrong approach with a company such as ours. What I need from our language services and content management partners right now is their consulting expertise on how to integrate their services and technology into our structure, and not the other way around. I also want their support for evangelizing globalization within our organization. Any localization vendor who is interested in McDonald’s globalization business will have no chance UNLESS they partner with us- bypassing or competing with my department will mean no sale. Period.”

Editor’s Note: Join us in February when Osiel continues her day.

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Jia-Shin Chiu Osiel is Manager of Language Services for Worldwide Training, Learning & Development at McDonald’s Hamburger University in Oak Brook, Illinois in the U.S.