Much of the talk about multicultural sensitivity in the work world can seem soft. Yes, we all agree it makes sense to know something about the country we’re about to expand into, and managers headed to foreign lands benefit from a bit of training on the business etiquette there.
But a lot of the services and tools surrounding international work assignments speak in generalities. They lack hard numbers or the ability to predict whether John Doe from Dubuque, in particular, will work out well in Dubai.
That’s what makes a new consultancy intriguing. Magna Leadership Solutions is made up of three former Intel employees, and one of its central products is a leadership assessment tool grounded in data. The Cross-Cultural Leadership Inventory is designed to link leadership behaviors and characteristics to organizational performance and business results across 70 nations.
The CCLI is based on the work of Ali Lakhani, who examined the leadership performance and business results of some 200 Intel managers in creating the tool. Although originally a semiconductor engineer at Intel, Lakhani took an interest in leadership development and earned a doctorate in management from the University of Phoenix.
His mentor there was Kevin Gazzara, currently the university’s research chair for organizational development and another co-founder of Magna.
During an 18-year career at Intel, Gazzara designed and ran training programs for managers to increase cross-cultural smarts. He says the CCLI is the only product out there to provide a tailored view of how well a particular exec will fare around the globe.
“It’ll say, ‘He’ll do better if you send him to Israel. But by the way, if you send him to China, they’re going to eat him for lunch,’ ” Gazzara says.
Gazzara and Lakhani formed Magna this year along with Marleen Lundy, another veteran of Intel’s management leadership development group. Besides the CCLI, the firm offers a broader set of technologies and consulting services, including a system designed to improve leadership capacity and business results.
Lakhani says today’s cosmopolitan workplaces in the U.S. can benefit from his tool through the creation of optimal cross-cultural teams. “CCLI will provide value not just going abroad but even staying within our borders,” he says.
So far, Magna has few clients. And it is up against many vendors in the global leadership development arena. Some of the competitors, such as consulting firm Personnel Decisions International, also bring research rigor to their work.
Still, Magna might make a dent with its hard-data approach to an often fuzzy field.
