Entry 04: Navigating the complexities of culture in an unpredictable world
How do you get your corporate positioning and strategy right at a global level? Culture and understanding nuance from region to region are the critical success factors in delivering your strategy.
Over Q1 2025, the dynamics of the global business environment have intensified, primarily due to geopolitical factors driving first economic chaos and then market shocks. These dual factors have created significant challenges in corporate affairs, strategy, and the positions organisations choose to take on key themes impacting their internal and external stakeholders.
For some organisations the situation has been made worse by companies unilaterally unsubscribing from positions and values they supported only six months ago in a matter of weeks. Widespread changes in corporate positioning delivered with the hope that globally everyone including their employees and investors will forget these valued positions these same companies held only yesterday create unique challenges in trust and credibility.
Unfortunately customers, clients and stakeholders can be like elephants who never forget, especially if you have spent the last decade telling them one thing and now want to take an opposite position. Circumstances dictate that such pivots result in things getting very complicated rather quickly.
Period of tension and unpredictability
What I recognise from my daily conversations with colleagues and friends or just listening to podcasts or the radio is the intensity of this heightened tension. The increased unpredictability of the geo-political landscape which is driving external issues are influencing corporate strategies. With $3 trillion knocked off the capital markets the landmines for investors and funds is rather obvious. When combined a perfect storm is created of a cycle for which at present their appears little end.
The uncertainty is palpable
The uncertainty, nervousness, and hesitancy are palpable and fairly draining for anyone in corporate affairs, strategy, investor relations and communications. The fact that everyone is living and dictated to by the algorithm of their news feed increases the sense of tension and obscures facts. While context is lost and executives don’t seem to have that broad experience to pause, be calm and respond to issues with the required degree of lived experience and pragmatism.
With my consultancy hat on the repeat questions, I receive are focused on how companies and investors should respond to the economic chaos and unpredictable political pressure. What should executives do, and how can they position their organisation, financial services company or investment bank in a period of never-ending change? How does one position an organisation on the global and the local level when curve balls being thrown up every day?
Narratives are key but which one to use?
These themes and the conversations which I have been having are not just limited to CFOs and board members of listed companies but are also troubling colleagues in the finance sector, investment banks, and funds. One executive who sits on the board of a large global entity with a diverse range of products, markets, and stakeholders with different priorities, views, values, and interests, summarised the challenge succinctly. “How do we put out a global message and report defining our global position when we know that stakeholders in different regions will respond more or less favourably to that position?”
From an operational point of view the question is how to be effective and approach sending out messages when the news cycle and social media seem to change market dynamics on a whim. In terms of corporate affairs and communication your strategy or offering the challenge is fixing the narrative that will work globally when from region to region things can change at such a speed.
In this new era cultural manoeuvring is key
The shift from region to region is essentially a cultural question, requiring cultural manoeuvring, clarity on political and regulatory pressures. Societal issues play a large factor and a deep understanding of stakeholders at the baseline of each region creates the baseline of knowledge. From experience, I know that it is is difficult for investors, brands, and companies to achieve alignment on strategy and narratives even at the internal level. This is usually long before they start discussions about the strategy and how to engage with external stakeholders which requires region to region balance and a whole different level of nuance and awareness.
In order to get cultural manoeuvring right you must go broad and ensure you gather the key stakeholder themes and understand the very nuance and translation of each across markets and regions. The risks in communicating a corporate strategy across a global matrix organisation or to diverse sets of stakeholders is always the same. You don’t have the line of sight at the corporate level or you don’t really grasp the issues at the bottom that can blow back and impact your corporate position at the top.
Two reasons things fail
Really the challenges and why things fail fall into two boxes. The message at the top is finessed so much that the global message means nothing, so the organisation is just making noise with no meaning. Alternatively, it goes the other way, where the global message means something, and the regional message means nothing and does not address or connect the issues for the company or executives on the ground at the country level. Worst case scenario neither the global message nor the local message holds the culture understanding and sensitivity to balance the tight rope and the manoeuvring and everything blows up in your face.
Four starter strategies to build upon
Here are four starter strategies to think about which should help navigate this complexity:
Shape and develop a compelling narrative: Build a clear set of messages around the organisation’s vision and strategy for the future. This enables leaders to confidently build conviction among stakeholders and rally them around a unified aspiration, direction of travel or to demonstrate a degree of competence in dealing with unpredictability. In my conversations with leaders, they’re really leaning into storytelling across different mediums to reach their teams regionally and systematically to try and drive that internal consensus and positioning. These stories are rooted in the here and now, based on the direction of travel and the journey while acknowledging the challenges causing anxiety.
Communicate with authenticity: Q1 2025, has been a year when many corporates, companies and investors have done a 360 degree turn on positions, values, corporate beliefs which they had spent a lot and time and money in promoting as being part of their DNA. Such wiping of history and taking down of websites creates trust and credibility issues both internally with stakeholders and externally with clients. To regain authenticity, try to provide a rational to the sudden change of position. In the future consider the position you take on issues and the motivation, if you don’t believe it then don’t market it and make speeches about the values, world views, beliefs or cultural issues for which you can not deliver over the long run.
Connect Communications to stakeholders with purpose: In a world of increased anxiety, pressure and uncertainty create narratives and communicate your corporate strategy with purpose. Be clear what you stand you for to both your internal and external stakeholders, be clear as to what you are going to do, and what you are not going to do. If the north-star or purpose of the organisation has changed, that’s fine, just take the time to communicate it clearly, with facts and some sort of explanation. Stay away from hubris big visions, as now is a time to reiterate the ability to work on and achieve objectives over the short run. Do this before the next shock or black cloud or event starts coming into the horizon.
Understanding culture is key: By this there are dominant global trends to which companies are reacting. We have witnessed a dropping of company values, position on carbon and climate, support for diversity, fair pay, work on carbon and climate on a dime. There appears to be some sort of belief that when a website is taken down or a piece of marketing material erased that suddenly, we all forget it existed. Problem is we don’t and neither do internal and external stakeholders. U-turns like this create credibility issues, when given market subtle, consistency and delivery of the corporate strategy is the key. Culture wise what is good and works in the US, is not always accepted in Europe and Asia. We are not in a one size fits all scenario which was the working idea during the peak of globalisation from the late 1990s to late 2010s.
That phase of history is over and we have not really sorted out where we are going next. Culture which is routed in society, people, politics and local view points is not homogenous. It is nuanced, unspoken and a lot of the time unpredictable. You will not learn about it on your tik tok feed or via platitudes on linked in posts. Culture is the unspoken word, the reaction that goes unnoticed, to understand it requires active listening, engagement with people and observing over time.
Start with engaging internally region to region, understand your blind spots, identify what you don’t know and the certain polices and strategies which simply just do not culturally translate. Again run the segmentation on the global position and then the local position and find the balancing point. Then align those two inverted pyramids back to the corporate affairs elements of communications, investor relations and the overall delivery of the strategy.
If you want to discuss these issues and how I may be able to help, then please connect and let’s talk.
Jonny Mulligan
