Human Touch in Global Mobility We are robots. At least you could get this impression when you deal with us. Virginia Robot is an observer in our “Global Mobility Academy.” They* regularly comment on our work. For example, when we analyze the process landscape or help expats with their immigration process, Virginia butts in with a comment about how AI could do all that faster, better, and cheaper. For the last three years, we’ve been experimenting with digital global mobility coaching and transition support with you. We are in a good position to criticize the digitalization buzz and AI hype. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a fan of new and shiny tech tools, and I get excited about apps, but somewhere down […]

Elevator Pitches for Dummies I’m teaching others how to do a two-minute elevator pitch. But I’m less than perfect when it comes to pitching myself. I sometimes have to rush to an event and am not well prepared. Once, I saw the issue coming when more and more other coaches (competition!) entered the hall. It was like a movie scene. The potential clients came streaming towards us as if they had thought about it. I ended up chatting with one woman. Then the coordinator asked us to pitch. I wanted to use storytelling, but it did not fit into her structure, and (damn!) I had not even written down what to say. It was a matter of unpreparedness because I […]

Presentation Tips, Upgrade your Presentation Tips for Female Managers with Top Ten  A guest post by Barbara Hesse When I first met Angie Weinberger, I had just spent a few months in Switzerland and was on the verge of a crisis of purpose. On the one hand, everything seemed so easy (a misconception when you come from a neighboring country) and friendly. On the other hand, with great effort, I adapted my gruff northern German temperament to Swiss customs – instead of staying true to myself. This put me in a pretty bad spot for some time, but after I understood how to get along here in Switzerland, even with my character, things went uphill. I also understood how different […]

According to Brookfield (2016) 95% of companies do not measure their Global Mobility Return on Investment. “Given the inordinate amount of cost pressure on mobility today, it is somewhat surprising that more companies do not seem to have basic cost management practices in place. Only 62% of respondents indicated that they track costs during an assignment, and even fewer noted that a cost-benefit analysis is required at the outset of an assignment. With barely two-thirds of companies actually tracking the basic and most transparent part of their investment in assignments – their cost, it is not surprising that 95% of companies do not measure international assignment ROI.”  This research is from 2016 and I bet if we had an updated version we […]

Drop the Political Correctness for Writing It can be a burden to be an interculturalist. The same kind of burden as Obi-Wan Kenobi experiences or Frodo Baggins. But the burden of not having an opinion can be even worse. We interculturalists perceive cultural differences in a way that goes far beyond the stereotype. Our knowledge feels very limited even though we know more about cultural differences than the average president. Being an “interculturalist” (which is not even an official word), you watch and observe the world with a set of “magical contact lenses”. These give you a clear sight into how the world works (and if this is not how the world works you construct the rest around it.) Once […]