Cross-Cultural Collaboration for Global Growth in Biotech

Working with one of our Biotech clients in Europe, Hanover collaborated with their DEI team to design a 3-part series centred around cross-collaboration, using input from Erin Meyers Culture Map and a GlobeSmart Cross-Cultural framework and assessment.

The organisation is on a fast growth trajectory and implicit in that growth is expansion of their global footprint. While a very positive story for the business, the DEI team have been proactive in managing risk for the business by investing in the design and delivery of this series alongside Hanover. Excluding the pilot, to date, we have run 3 sets of the 3-part series and the participant experience has been consistently positive with more work scheduled into 2024 and 2025.

Each module has a different focus to bring the subject to light with elective sign-ups to meet individual learning needs. Module topics take participants on a journey from cross-cultural self-discovery and awareness to noticing their impact on their teams and stakeholders and finally to considering the power of cross-cultural collaboration in creating a unified organisation, enabled by leveraging difference to drive high performance.
The essence of the business is very relationship-driven but like in any organisation experiencing growth, the more growth, the more complexity and the more factors to consider that would be enablers or obstacles to the business success i.e., long vs. short tenured employees, different value perceived by different functional areas and the inevitable difference in cultural ways of work and how these play out in teams working across geographical boundaries.

The programme has been an instrumental lever to help the organisation move forward collaboratively and to reframe the power of difference. This has helped to maintain some of the key ingredients of the culture that got the client to where they are and to position them with more awareness and tools to get them to where they would like to be.