The heart of the figure is the company’s global business strategy, which determines where and how it needs leadership with a global mindset. To support compliance with the strategy, there is a layer of organizational levers, called catalysts, which are meant to enable and allow globally motivated and competent individuals to execute the strategy. Individual catalysts are the global mindset skills that the individual leader needs to possess in order to execute the strategy; these are in the next ring. The specific types of action and behaviour assumed to promote execution in the individual company are shown in the second-to-last ring. On the outside is performance, which should be understood here to mean execution of the strategy as intended. The light blue keyhole that runs through the rings from the middle to the edge symbolizes the ability to unlock the potential that lies in the global mindset as a means of achieving this end. The point is that the development of global mindset competence at the organizational and the individual level enhances the execution of the global strategy and with it the company’s performance.

The keyhole model can be used by leaders and leadership groups to analyse how the development of a global mindset is linked to the company’s overall performance via their own targets. This is to determine how global mindset can be displayed in a way that is beneficial to execution of the strategy. This analysis is carried out to arrive at global mindset behaviour calculated to create utility value for:

• The individual leader’s role and performance
• A team, a function or a business area
• A leadership team/group

Work on defining global mindset utility value and the associated behaviour starts in the middle of the figure and works outwards to the periphery by the following process:

1) Centre of the model: Your global mindset business case
The centre of the figure is the company’s global business strategy, which determines where and how it needs leadership with a global mindset. There is thus a direct connection between the company’s global strategy and the global mindset and behaviour within the organization. It sounds obvious, but when companies express a wish to work on their global mindset, they are often unable to answer the question: Why? If the answer is global mindset, what is the question? Work on global mindset therefore has to start by determining how working (together) globally adds strategic value. This means answering the following questions in relation to your role/function/team:

• Why are you working globally? What is the business case for working and collaborating globally in your unit/area/team?
• Global collaboration is more complex, so why do it at all? What value does global collaboration bring to the organization, your team or your function?
• What benefits will you miss out on if you do not work (together) globally?
• What success stories can you cite which capture the utility value of global collaboration for you?
• In what way is your performance linked to the company’s global strategy?

In this phase it may be helpful to draw inspiration from other companies’ work on global mindset, from research or from the company’s customers (perhaps by inviting them to a team meeting to give a short presentation of their experiences), as a way of kicking off the debate.

2) and 3) Individual catalysts – organizational catalysts
To support the implementation of and adherence to the strategy, there is a level of organizational intervention which should enable those individuals who are motivated and capable of working globally to help to implement the company’s strategy. These organizational catalysts can be found in the blue ring which surrounds the core of the model, and they may include the facilitators who are needed to build up and develop an organizational global mindset and the organizational structure to support it. Ways of enabling individual competences to support the company’s strategy with a global mindset are in the next circle in the model. Depending on the specific business strategy, these may be attributes such as experience of distance leadership and language skills.

The individual and organizational catalysts can usefully be discussed together, as they are related. You start with those closest to your own work and role. If you are working with the model from a middle management or team perspective, you should start with the individual facilitators. If you are approaching it from a top management or leadership development perspective, you may prefer to start with the organizational facilitators.

In both cases, the aim is to determine the balance between global integration/homogeneity and local customization/diversity in the specific context and how knowledge and ideas can be captured and disseminated (see definition of global mindset above). In this connection you can use the following questions, which should all be answered in the light of your business case for global collaboration, as determined in the previous step:

• What boundaries are strategically most important to address in your day-to-day work? Could it be the boundary between head office and country offices? Between the country office in country X and your branches in the same country? Between Danish managers and foreign business partners? Between different teams in a matrix organization? Between employees located in the same place as their manager and others managed remotely?
• What are the main sources of both benefits and drawbacks at the identified interfaces? On the positive side, this might be the opportunity for local business intelligence in emerging markets, or the possibility of optimizing time to market through knowledge transfer. On the negative side, the business model might be sub-optimal or mismatched to local business opportunities.
• In what areas is there a need for local customization, and where do you need global standardization? What is the optimum mix for your team? How exactly is this reflected in your work processes and priorities?
• What individual skills are needed to manage the identified interfaces? Do you have them? If not, how can you get them?
• How can the organization support the acquisition and use of the skills you have identified? Are these measures in place? And if not, who needs to do what to create a facilitated readiness?

4) Leadership behaviour and actions that drive execution
If global mindset is to have a positive effect on performance, the identified skills need to be translated into behaviour and actions which all arise out of the individual leader’s global mindset. The particular form of behaviour and action which is considered likely to enhance the implementation of the company’s strategy in any given case can be found in the second-to-last ring. In this part of the process we identify concrete actions through which global mindset is manifested, which can be discussed via the following questions:

• What does it mean to act with a global mindset in your function/team? Give concrete examples
• What are the results of acting with a global mindset? Be specific – please give practical examples of how the results can be seen from day to day
• What are the concrete consequences of not acting with a global mindset? Give examples

5) Performance
Performance (producing results) is the outermost ring in the model. Here, ”performance” should be viewed in relation to implementing the company’s strategy, i.e. identifying the concrete behaviour and the specific results of this behaviour that might promote execution of the strategy.

• What KPIs can be established to capture the global mindset behaviour that promotes execution of the global strategy in your situation? Remember that these may relate to both the process and the results. If, for example, you discovered in step 2 that you lack the language skills to act with a global mindset, offering and accepting language training could be a separate goal. Similarly, there might be an objective linked to capturing and disseminating good ideas from other units

6) The keyhole in the model – and your key
The light blue keyhole in the middle of the model symbolizes the ability to unlock the potential that lies in the global mindset in order to develop and enhance the company’s performance. Based on the five preceding steps, you can now determine which factors promote or inhibit global strategy execution with a global mindset. You could do this with the model below, where you use your organizational practice to develop your own global mindset analysis of drivers and barriers.