Download - Ernst & Young T Magazine
Download - Ernst & Young T Magazine
Download - Ernst & Young T Magazine
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Feature Working trends<br />
33%<br />
The proportion of some<br />
36,000 firms globally,<br />
polled by ManpowerGroup,<br />
that are struggling to fill<br />
positions due to local<br />
skills shortages.<br />
Preparing a new<br />
human age<br />
Françoise Gri is President of ManpowerGroup Southern Europe and has been named<br />
as one of Fortune’s Global 50 Most Powerful Women in Business for eight consecutive years.<br />
She talks to T <strong>Magazine</strong> about key trends in the world of work. Interview by Fergal Byrne<br />
T <strong>Magazine</strong>: In today’s increasingly global<br />
business environment, how important is it for<br />
managers to have international experience?<br />
Françoise Gri: Over the past decade or so,<br />
businesses have become more global. But what<br />
has changed more recently is the way in which<br />
we think about different markets. In the past, we<br />
assumed that the world was flat and we wanted<br />
managers who dealt with different markets in a<br />
similar way. Today, we no longer believe that the<br />
world is flat. We want business leaders who have<br />
an international perspective and who can<br />
respond to local differences.<br />
Although we still need managers with<br />
international experience, we view this experience<br />
in a slightly different way than we did in the past.<br />
It’s no longer desirable to have a manager who<br />
has lived in five different countries for two years<br />
each because, although they have some<br />
experience of different cultures, they do not<br />
have a deep enough knowledge of any. Today, we<br />
need managers who are totally connected with<br />
the local culture but who can also build a bridge<br />
with the culture of the company. This will be a<br />
critical dimension of tomorrow’s leadership style.<br />
ManpowerGroup has recently published<br />
research on the Human Age. Can you tell us<br />
what this is?<br />
We believe that we are entering what we call a<br />
20 T <strong>Magazine</strong> Issue 07 <strong>Ernst</strong> & <strong>Young</strong>