Develop leaders globally

Charles “Chip” McClure, chairman, president and CEO, ArvinMeritor Inc.

When Charles “Chip” McClure, the chairman, president and CEO of ArvinMeritor
Inc., is interviewing for an overseas management position, he has two questions he asks
every candidate: “Do you know a second
language?” and “Have you had a chance to
live and work internationally?”

The first and most important component
of successful overseas expansion is the
people you put in place to run the show.
McClure says the best candidates won’t just
have a working knowledge of your company and industry, they’ll also have an extensive knowledge of the culture, business climate and customer base of the country or
region you are trying to broach.

“The person who heads up our Asian unit
has been with ArvinMeritor for about eight
years,” he says. “He is originally from India,
was educated in the U.S. and is now based
in Shanghai, China. So you have to have
people who know how to do business in
the area, from the leadership on down.

“The bottom line is that you need to have
people on board who have had international experience. I encourage people to take
(expatriate) assignments because it really
does teach you a lot about the globalization
of business.”

As part of ArvinMeritor’s expansion plan,
McClure places an emphasis on educating
his employees on cultures and customs
from around the world. It’s something
McClure believes should be reinforced at
regular intervals, and it can be done in a format as basic as a lunch meeting.

“We’ll have our people bring their lunch for
doing a lunchtime training session,” he says.
“As part of our diversity exercise, around
Cinco de Mayo, we had a lot of programs
about what goes on in the Latino culture.”