by Rhonda Mullen

For years a map of global business leadership resembled a one-way street. Key talented executives left the United States to take the helm of foreign-based companies, exporting their business know-how. But recently many global, U.S.-based companies have recruited foreign-born CEOs and executive leaders here – among them Alcoa, Eli Lily, NCR, The Coca-Cola Company, Goodyear, Kellogg and Philip Morris. These days the map is not only “flat” – as Thomas Friedman argued in his 2005 book on globalization – but also a busy thoroughfare. • So if the world is flat, the playing field level, how do up-and-coming CEOs navigate? And how do the leaders already at the top of the global game attract and retain talent? These four graduates of the Robinson College of Business share lessons on finding their way around the top of the business globe.

Quenching Thirst Worldwide

Ahmet Bozer, fresh out of school at Middle East Technical University, left his native Ankara, Turkey, at 21 to study at Georgia State’s Robinson College of Business. The move marked a major turning point for Bozer, coming from the closed economy of Turkey – where it was illegal to have even a dollar bill in his pocket – to the free enterprise system of the United States. He has parlayed the management and technical training from Robinson into a 20-year career at The Coca- Cola Company, where he is now president of the Eurasia and Africa group.

Bozer, the 2009 recipient of the Robinson Alumni Global Business Leadership Award, knows from experience that international business students need to keep the global map in sight. “They should be benchmarking their skills to the best in the world, not just those in the country, city or class,” he says. “They need cultural diversity to go seamlessly between cultures.” To prepare for such a career, Bozer recommends starting in a company’s headquarters, learning the central business, then following that with fieldwork – much as he did. In 1990 he joined Coca-Cola in Atlanta as financial controller and later moved to Turkey as region finance manager. He next became managing director of bottling operations in Turkey before serving as president of the Eurasia Middle East Division and later Eurasia’s group president. Bozer oversees regions from the Middle East to Russia, from India to South Africa, bringing Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and others under the Coca-Cola umbrella. One of the challenges for the beverage giant in those diverse cultures is to create local “charters.” Coca-Cola has developed a process that addresses that challenge. In each promotion – say for Ramadan, Christmas or Wali – a lead country ensures the cultural requirements of all the participating countries get built into advertising and social marketing efforts. Bozer’s division now has 12 charters in 90 countries. “If we want to leverage our global scale, we have to act like a global company,” Bozer says. “We have to think locally wherever we operate, but we have to bring our global scale to bear in a locally relevant way.” To help leaders and employees think locally on a global scale, Coca-Cola has several programs. The People Development Forums (PDFs) evaluate the data, performance and potential of each member of the management team, predicting the likelihood of future success. The process allows the company to prioritize its internal talent pool, identify people to fill key leadership positions, and pinpoint gaps. The people who rise to the top have versatility, says Bozer. They can operate well in environments with both high-market and low-market share, in cultural landscapes that offer large and small stores. All managers also attend Coca-Cola University, which delivers content online and in person, to teach common standard practices. “You get a DNA model of the Coca-Cola way of marketing,” Bozer says. “We want to use common standard practices but still leave room for creativity.” Yet another leadership development program is Catalyst, which brings together eight project teams from across the world. With up to seven members each, the Catalyst teams are deployed to business units throughout the company to tackle particular issues. The cross-cultural teams help build best practices and networking opportunities.

Making Mobile Work on the 24-Hour Clock

When business travelers take their mobile phones from Peoria to Paris, they expect them to work. The same goes with iTablets, laptops, and other electronic communication devices. What goes on behind the scenes of those seamless transitions is what concerns Tony Holcombe, CEO of Syniverse.

Syniverse provides the bridges between the world’s disparate communications networks. “We make mobile work,” says Holcombe.

To do that, Syniverse employees in more than 25 countries serve 700-plus wireless operators and 100 enterprise companies via four regional worldwide headquarters. Operationally, Syniverse has made a deliberate decision to “sell local and process global.” A technology company, it looks for experienced managers in local markets, recruiting regional executives who have both technical expertise and knowledge of local cultures, languages and customers. Those local managers also come to headquarters in Tampa for training and cross-pollination. Holcombe harkens back to a history lesson he learned at Georgia State to explain the approach. Wherever the Romans went, whatever territory they conquered, they always left some Roman officials behind, and they brought some locals back to Rome. With a solid reputation, the NYSE-listed company attracts a steady supply of people who want to work for it. Once the company hires, it lets regional managers do what they know how to do best. “We don’t tell them how to do things,” Holcombe says. “Day in and day out, they manage their customers, and they own the responsibility for revenues from all the customers in that region.” The trade-off for that authority and freedom is accountability and the bottom line. At Syniverse, customers are the bottom line, says Holcombe. While he may not micromanage, Holcombe does stay in touch, using the same technology his company supports. Early Monday morning he starts with a group call from his desk in Tampa to each region’s leaders – in Hong Kong (already well into Tuesday), Europe (six hours ahead), and Latin America. Tuesdays start early, too, with individual calls to the regional heads. Every 60 days the executive team meets somewhere in the vast Syniverse enterprise in person. “Nothing beats face to face,” Holcombe says. “The nonverbal is so important. I can learn so much from having a beer, hanging out. It helps us to get to know each other.” More so than finding skilled managers, Holcombe finds the 24-hour clock a bigger hurdle. “The challenge today is that the world is always on,” he says. “You can always be working. It can wear you out.” Geography and distance add complications, too – for example, how to get developers in Bangalore simultaneously talking with the sales team in Germany and operations personnel in the States. Then there are the cultural challenges. Holcombe knows too well that what works in one country doesn’t necessarily translate to another. At the end of meetings with his Indian employees, for example, he may get hundreds of questions on any number of topics. But in Hong Kong, where workers see questioning the CEO as a sign of disrespect, “I’m not going to get input from anyone in an open forum,” Holcombe says. “I have to figure out another way.” To retain talent, Syniverse also has no one size for all. The company tries to support employees in locally appropriate ways. While in Tampa, that means an on-site, free healthcare clinic staffed by a nurse practitioner. In India, where overcrowding makes it time-consuming to get around, the benefit is a concierge service that handles anything from dry cleaning to help scheduling appointments.

Flame-Broiling Around the Globe

In Tromso, Norway, after viewing the northern lights and before departing for expeditions to the North Pole, travelers can have one last taste of Americana before they leave this northern outpost – a flame-broiled Burger King hamburger. “There’s always a Burger King restaurant open somewhere in the world,” says Julio Ramirez, who recently visited both of Tromso’s restaurants.

At the northernmost Burger King restaurant in the world, diners enjoy the same Whopper sandwich that they find in Miami, Sao Paulo or the newest franchise – in Bucharest. Today the burger chain operates more than 12,000 restaurants in all 50 states and 74 countries worldwide, with approximately 10 percent of the restaurants owned by the parent company and 90 percent operated by independent franchisees. Maintaining similarity and consistency throughout the system is both a logistical and cultural challenge. Sometimes it involves getting appropriate equipment to remote locations in Bulgaria; other times it means importing produce to areas that are too cold to grow their own. “Each country has its own hurdles,” says Ramirez, who received his bachelor’s degree from Robinson, graduating in 1975. He should know. As executive vice president for global operations for Burger King Corp., Ramirez is the point person for operations worldwide. He supports four regional presidents, overseeing R&D, training, food safety, operations audits, suppliers, and purchasing and restaurant technology. It’s a big job, especially since more than 80 percent of the brand’s growth is outside the United States. A 25-year veteran of the company, Ramirez began his career at Burger King Corp., as a field marketing manager for the Florida region. He next took on field marketing for U.S. franchisees, followed by two stints leading the Burger King business in Latin America interspersed with two years of running U.S. franchise operations. Paralleling the impact of globalization, the expansion of the chain worldwide has become more integrated. “The Burger King of 15 to 20 years ago was a company that happened to have restaurants in other countries,” Ramirez says. “Now we are part of those countries.” Company practice is to choose the best talent locally, from management to employees to franchise owners. Burger King franchisees don’t need a map to get around the country. In other words, as Ramirez says, “they have the know-who, and we have the know-how.” More than half of Burger King Corp.’s senior leadership team comes from outside the United States, with 53 percent of executive management being women and minorities. That diversity runs throughout all the levels of the company, down to the employees broiling burgers on the front line. For example, at a Burger King restaurant in Germany that Ramirez recently visited, he counted employees from 10 different nationalities. The company recognizes the value of those entry-level workers, having a history of promoting from within and growing its own, says Ramirez. “We push work down to the lowest levels, where our employees act like managers, our managers like directors, our directors like general managers.” Why? “We’re in the people business,” he explains. “Our brand is in the hands of every member who makes a Whopper.” For students considering a global business career, Ramirez recommends mastery of a second language as the first prerequisite. If you speak two languages, you should really learn a third,” he suggests to many young professionals. Ramirez sees a world wide open with opportunity but also competition. He counsels his own daughters that in the current economy, they may not find the perfect job. “But there is a nobility in doing a job well at any level,” he says. Ramirez himself worked part-time for eight years in the grocery store business, and look where that led.

Global Pipelines to Drug Discovery

In 1997 when the CEO of Pharmacia and Upjohn started searching for a senior executive team to help turn the company around, he went outside the pharmaceutical industry, not wanting the same old, same old. The person he found to run global compensation and benefits was Ron Cheeley.

A seasoned human resources professional, Cheeley had headed global compensation and for six years at The Coca-Cola Company. He had even worked to reestablish Coca- Cola in India, after the Indian government ended its isolationist practices and allowed multinational companies back in. Prior to Coca Cola, Cheeley spent 12 years in Human Resources at the Southern Company.

Pfizer purchased Pharmacia in 2003, which sent Cheeley on to his next position as head of HR at Schering Plough (wellknown for its allergy drug Claritin). His first task there was recruitment of a new executive management team. Simultaneously Cheeley was developing a core value system of leader behaviors, such as shared accountability, transparency, and a listening/ learning environment. On the heels of that program came new compensation strategies linked to performance and a new performance management system. While at Schering Plough, he also put in place “a people strategy” with input from employees worldwide. The four pillars of that approach were to Attract, Develop, Engage and Reward colleagues worldwide with the objective of creating a high performance organization. As part of the rewards component, Schering Plough developed short-term incentive plans and introduced stock options globally. Base pay was geared to local markets, and other rewards were developed based on local practices. Again, the company prospered, merging with Merck in November 2009. Now officially retired but with periodic consulting work, Cheeley pinpoints a real turning point in his career as his assignment with The Coca-Cola Company in India. “It was a real eye-opener to work in the field,” he says. “I learned that often the most important thing to the corporate headquarters can seem insignificant to those in the field.” For those aspiring to a global career, he says complete an MBA or advanced business degree. He received his master’s in insurance from Georgia State in 1981 and a BBA in accounting from the University of Georgia in 1973. He believes that completing an assignment outside the home country, even short-term, is beneficial. “I still get cards and letters from employees thanking me for sending them abroad, even when they thought they couldn’t go because of an elderly parent at home or having to move children. In every case, the experience gave their career a real boost.” A final piece of advice, no matter the place in the world: “Work real hard,” Cheeley says. “Don’t be worried about whether you have a corner office, where you sit or what your title is. Just work hard and continue to learn.”