Global Leadership

Leading Global Expansion

“Global Risk Consultants (GRC) is a privately owned, independent risk consulting business to

the international oil and gas and petrochemical industries. Our targeted solutions and advice

help our clients achieve their goals throughout the asset lifecycle, through our expert

assistance with risk and safety assessment, environmental management, optimisation of oil

and gas facility operations, and business solutions”. (Corporate website).

Grant Briggs was the new International Marketing Director for GRC. He had been hired 3

months ago to lead the strategic expansion of GRC’s business activities worldwide. From its

head office in Perth, Australia, GRC had the aim to become a truly global organisation. In

particular there was a mission to develop international revenue streams from all significant

regions. While GRC had been and were involved in many international projects there was a

view that these activities were not strategic or particularly well-focused.

In his first three months with the company Grant had spent time understanding the

nature of the issues involved. He found that the current approach to global expansion was

through ‘word-of-mouth’ and, while this was not in itself an issue, it meant that there was

often very little discernible pattern or structure to the global expansion and many of the

projects became ‘pet projects’ of those engineers, geologists and other senior professionals

who had made those connections in overseas markets. In addition, the competition in the

oil and gas risk consulting space was intensive and increasingly global. There were many

large consulting organisations with related capabilities.

While informal business development and expansion was important it was critical for Grant

to develop a strategy for global expansion in order that it could be done with greater

business integration in mind.

Grant did not have a background in oil and gas or petrochemicals, nor was he an

engineer or a geologist. He was a marketing and business development expert, with over 30

years of strategic marketing experience. He had started his career in the music industry in

the United Kingdom and his experience working with global teams and leading global

business development projects had expanded to include diverse sectors including tourism,

health and finance. He had moved from the United Kingdom to Australia ten years ago,

enthused by both the lifestyle and career opportunities available.

A Global Business?

GRC had established offices in several parts of the world; Australia, United Kingdom, USA,

Singapore, and Abu Dhabi, UAE. This visibility was important, however, the offices acted in

a largely reactive way and exercised little control over which projects were accepted. Most

projects were driven by those who had ‘discovered’ them and were sometimes pursued

because of the interest-value to the professional(s) involved rather than with business

development, expansion and revenue generation in mind. This approach utilized many

valuable resources in projects which may have little importance for the reputation of GRC in

a global business context, or had little revenue generation capability.

In recent years Australian competitors and those from many other parts of the world

had developed successful expansion strategies and central to most of these was the

rationalization and prioritization of expansion activities with clear objectives. GRC did not

have this. One major issue was the degree of autonomy that professionals in GRC had to

develop their own projects wherever they felt it was feasible. As a result many partners and

consultants at GRC networked with other GRC offices around the world to create projects

with no marketing or business coordination and integration. Grant realized that this was

inefficient and an ineffective way of expanding a successful global business.

His analysis of the impact of this approach for the business found that there were

key issues that needed to be resolved but that the most critical was to work with those who

were deeply implicated in the current arrangements and who had vested interests in

maintaining things as they were/are.

Key Stakeholders

In any consulting firm senior partners are the most central stakeholders. It is they who

decide on the firm strategy, including global expansion. In GRC while some senior partners

share Grant’s views of how to proceed with global expansion, not all do. In fact, it is senior

partners who are often those developing ad-hoc and ‘pet’ projects throughout the world

based on their interests and expertise rather than on what is best for successful business

expansion and revenue generation.

Grant has identified Colin Burch and Morris Jefferson as two senior partners and co-

founders of the business who have identified the value of a strategy for expansion.

However, two other senior partners - Yarub Al-Douri and Allison Dowley - have been keen

to argue for continuation of the present ‘word-of-mouth’ approach. In a recent

conversation with Yarub – a chemical engineer and senior partner of the safety and risk

division, Grant mentioned that he felt all of the ad-hoc developments were actually

affecting the business negatively. Yarub became quite angry- “No”, he stated, “this business

is built on the expertise of professionals who are experts in risk within the oil and gas sector.

They should be the ones to determine if projects are worth pursuing. It is a professional

issue not a strategic one”. Grant realised at this point that there was a great divergence of

viewpoints among senior partners.

He also became aware that the people managing overseas offices were engineers,

geologists, environmental scientists etc. They were technical people with a passion for their

area of expertise, rather than strategy and business development. This was a potential

problem because they would be focused more, perhaps, on the interest and challenge of

the projects rather than whether they were good for the business overall or aligned with

business strategy.

GRC’s managing partner, Howard Chan, wanted Grant to develop a report outlining

his approach for turning GRC into a truly global firm, including a framework for dealing with

the current issues. He was unsure which way to go and he had both positive and negative

views of the change to a more structured global expansion strategy. However, he also knew

that in professional consulting firms it was very difficult to ‘structure’ consultants and lead

change in the consulting team.

GRC had done well in developing and expanding global projects but volume of

projects does not necessarily equate to increase in revenue and margin. This is particularly

true in the oil and gas and petrochemical sectors where projects are notoriously lengthy

from beginning to fruition. Howard also wondered whether Grant’s lack of experience in

resources sectors and particularly, risk consulting, was a help or hindrance. However, he had

an outstanding reputation as a marketing and business development expert and had applied

his skills and capabilities to a range of industrial and commercial sectors in his career.

Being Global

Grant knew that pursuing projects globally was not the same as ‘being global’. GRC had the

vision of being a global risk consulting firm within the resources sector but doing projects in

an ad-hoc way did not contribute to a branding of GRC as ‘global’ or enhance its global

reputation and integration. Importantly, this approach did not contribute to the bottom

line contribution of the global business.

He knew he had a very difficult task; leading a global team effort, leading global change,

leading a change in mindsets. He had to provide a report to Howard that dealt with these

issues and showed how principles and ideas about global leadership could inform how GRC

could become a truly global firm. This was not the first time that he had to take a global

leadership role, but there were many levels to this project and he had to make sure that his

report was able to identify all the issues and map their interconnectedness.

Becoming Global - Providing a Solution

Adopting the role of Grant Briggs, International Marketing Director of GRC, you are required

to prepare a report for Howard Chan, Managing Partner of GRC, that outlines your proposed

approach for turning GRC into a truly global risk consulting firm. Your report should take the

form of a consultant’s report, and should:

• Describe the current situation at GRC, demonstrating your understanding of the

scenario and context.

• Identify the core challenges and areas of opportunity related to GRC’s aim of

becoming a global firm.

• Analyse the underlying issues, drawing on your knowledge of global leadership

concepts.

• Propose an integrated framework for achieving the desired change of strategic

global expansion, again drawing on your knowledge of global leadership

concepts to provide evidence and support for your approach.

• Provide a ‘Becoming Global’ execution plan for the Managing Director, detailing

short term and long term practical actions, with responsible person/people, to

achieve the required shift within the organisation.