European household goods MNC needed a multicultural Head of IT Asia

A premiere European household goods manufacturer required a multicultural Regional VP of IT well-experienced in global compliance and IT processes.

The Client needed to backfill their incumbent IT head who would be moving internally to another market. The role would report to the Global CIO. The successful candidate would not only need to understand several key markets in Asia, he/she would also need to be fluent in Japanese. In addition, within 2 years of joining he/she would be required to implement a new ERP system throughout Asia, including POS.

Through the course of this assignment it became quickly apparent that there was a significant disconnect between the regional and global stakeholders in terms of what the role expectations should be. The CIO desired a more process-oriented candidate while the regional team felt multilingual capabilities and a hands-on approach were most key. We would need to bridge these competing expectations.

Due to the transformative influence this new IT head would have on the regional organization, we set out to identify diverse Japanese-speaking candidates throughout the APJ region. To do this we put together a team of 3 researchers to identify and help grade all possible targets in Japan and abroad throughout Asia.

Our biggest challenge was satisfying the desire of the global CIO to find someone culturally like-minded with the wish of the regional team to hire someone very multicultural and meeting the language requirements. The successful candidate would likely have an unusual pedigree.

Our research covered significant ground to identify candidates with whom each party would be happy. In the end we identified one candidate from a similar role, business process minded, and fluent in English, Japanese, and Spanish, which was the native language of the global CIO. The candidate was also PMP certified and had successfully delivered ERP modules in multiple Asian locations.