The borderless workplace, anyone contributing from anywhere at any time, from any device, is fast becoming a reality. This whitepaper will help you discover capabilities you and your organization need in order to thrive in the new world of work. Contact us today, to find out how to thrive in the borderless workplace: enquiries@tmaworld.com

1. The Borderless
Workplace
Terence Brake
TMA World
Director of Learning & Innovation
The global
stage is in
a state of
perpetual
motion.
Kenichi Omae, Next Global Stage: The
Challenges and Opportunities in our Borderless
World. NJ: Pearson Education, 2005
“
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Visualize a game of soccer at kickoff. Two teams of 11 players are facing each other on a field whose outer boundaries
are marked in white; a line across the field marks the half-way point. The players on each team are distributed in their
half of the field depending on the position they play. At each end of the field are goal posts, and there are also white
lines that mark penalty areas. It all looks very orderly. Now imagine that after the kickoff whistle has blown a lot of
the white boundary lines disappear, and other teams with an unlimited number of players can run onto the field to
compete; imagine also that the goals and penalty areas are moved continually or even disappear. Imagine also that
obstructions appear randomly on the field, and numerous referees can join in – each one with a different set of rules.
You get the picture. This is today’s business environment.
The nature of change has changed.
This has been driven by two powerful and interdependent forces in the business environment:
Change
Past



Definable
Predictable
Continuous
Change
Present/
Future



Undefinable
Unpredictable
Discontinuous
new information can impact the rest of the globe at the
speed of the Internet, and information is being created
24/7.
As Eric Schmidt of Google said,
There is more content being created in 48 hours
today than was created from the beginning of
time ‘til 2003!
gone are the days when globalization was simply
multinationals from advanced economies spreading their
power and influence across borders. Companies from
emerging markets are wielding much more power.
“
”
Digital technologies Multi-polar globalization 

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Think of:
Lenovo (China) – now the world’s largest maker of PCs.
Tata (India) – a conglomerate with a market capitalization of $90 billion that earns 58 percent of its revenues outside
of India. The Reputation Institute ranked Tata as the 11th most reputable company in the world.
While Lenovo and Tata are becoming well-known names, there are many other emerging market companies becoming
‘global challengers’. The Boston Consulting Group (as reported on the US TV station CNBC on January 22, 2013) just
issued a report on 100 fast growing and fast globalizing companies from emerging markets. The companies included
Alibaba (the largest e-commerce company in China), Trina Solar (the world’s 4th largest solar panel manufacturer),
Naspers (a South African media giant). While China and India dominated the list, there were also companies from
Egypt, Colombia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Chile.
While the digital revolution and globalization have been with us for some time, how are businesses doing in their
response? According to research conducted by Accenture and the Economist Intelligence Unit:
“
”
Strikingly, only 11 percent of business leaders surveyed believe that their companies are
significantly advanced in their strategic response to the disruptive business environment
brought about by the intersection of the multi-polar world and developments in IT.
From global connection to global orchestration: Future business models for high performance where technology and
the multi-polar world meet. Accenture, 2010.

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What are some specific business realities triggered by these powerful forces?
Multi-polar globalization means competition is coming from here, there, and
everywhere. This means there is a continuous need to be proactive, responsive, and
agile. We experience rapid changes in the marketplace requiring continuous
adaptation in strategy, decision-making, and action. It is increasingly more difficult
to plan for change often leaving us feeling disoriented, overwhelmed and unprepared.
Diverse – yet often interconnected and conflicting - business models, management
systems, legal and regulatory systems, customers, suppliers, stakeholders,
geographies, employees, and socio-political systems make up a complex business
environment. Often, complex problems cannot be managed with existing knowledge
and know-how; they require collaborative solutions and innovation.
Information technologies have long been used to create efficiencies and productivity.
Advanced virtual communication and collaboration technologies are going further by
enabling business transformations. The ‘connected’, ‘networked’, ‘matrixed’, ‘latticed’,
and ‘borderless’ enterprise are names for organizational forms enabled by the digital
revolution.
Being more digitally connected doesn’t mean we are more culturally or
psychologically connected. In a world of virtual and face-to-face interactions across
borders we often experience difficulty in understanding what is happening or in
identifying what is significant. There is an increased chance for misreading situations
because the reality might be interpreted in more than one way.
Competition
Complexity


Connectivity
Cultures


What do these business realities mean for organizations?

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Four organizational capabilities stand out as being of highest priority at this time:
The ability of an organization to change rapidly in response to changes in the environment, e.g. the emergence of new
competitors, disruptive technologies, and sudden changes in market conditions.
Based on research by both McKinsey and The Economist Intelligence Unit, 90 percent of executives rank organizational
agility as critical to business success. Research at MIT shows that agile firms grow revenue 37 percent faster and
generate 30 percent higher profits than non-agile companies.
Organizational
Agility
The willingness and ability of networks of people and teams to manage complex problems, make decisions, and
innovate by working together across internal and external boundaries.
The story of Procter & Gamble (P&G) is telling. In early 2000, the company’s share price had fallen nearly 50 percent,
resulting in the loss of $85 billion in market capitalization. Despite huge spending on R&D, only 35 percent of new
products reached their financial objectives. The new CEO, A.G. Lafley, was confident that collaboration was the key to
the company’s future value. He wanted to make P&G the company that “collaborates inside and out, better than any
company in the world.” A study showed that P&G’s most profitable innovations came from internal collaborations
across business units or from external collaboration with researchers on the outside. Twenty cross-functional
‘communities of practice’ were established within P&G, and Lafley determined that 50 percent of P&G’s products, ideas
and technologies would be developed externally.
By 2008, P&G had improved its R&D productivity by 60 percent, and more than doubled its innovation success rate.
Technologies facilitate collaboration, but they are by no means sufficient. As Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat said,
“collaboration is a culture, not a set of tools.”
Collaboration

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While face-to-face relationships are – and always will be - important in business, digital relationships are increasing in
significance – digital relationships between colleagues, and also between the business and customers, partners,
suppliers, and distributors. The traditional view has always associated information technology with efficiency and
productivity, but the real value lies in the productive, value-added relationships enabled by technology. According to
IBM:
Digital
Know-How
The view that technology is primarily a driver of efficiency is outdated; CEOs now see
technology as an enabler of collaboration and relationships – those essential
connections that fuel creativity and innovation.

Leading Through Connections: Insights from the IBM Global Chief Executive Officer Study, 2012.
“
”
The ability of people in an organization to handle the uncertainties and ambiguities that are inevitable when vertical,
horizontal, regional, national, professional, functional, and linguistic boundaries are crossed.
Research points to cultural and language differences as being particularly challenging:
Adaptable
People
Managing Virtual Teams: Taking a More Strategic Approach. Economist Intelligence Unit, 2009.
The single most common challenge, selected by 56% of executives polled, relates to the
misunderstandings that emerge as a result of cultural and language differences from
teams operating globally.“
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
Based on these critical organizational capabilities, four specific capabilities emerge for people
development –
Global
Working
Collaborative
Working
Virtual
Working
Cross-Cultural
Working
people with the thinking and behavioral agility to produce high levels of
performance in a competitive borderless organization
people with the mindsets and skills to manage complex problems, innovate, and
achieve shared goals
people with the ability to perform alone and together across distances via
technologies
people with the adaptability to bridge and leverage differences between individuals
and groups
The Critical4:


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In summary,
Business
Realities
Competition
Complexity
Connectivity
Cultures
Organizational
Capabilities
Organizational
Agility
Collaboration
Digital
Know-How
Adaptable
People
People
Capabilities
Global
Working
Collaborative
Working
Virtual
Working
Cross-Cultural
Working
The Borderless Challenge




Environmental
Forces
Digital
Technologies
Multi-Polar
Globalization

9. 
We deliver
outstanding
global talent
development
solutions
TMA World Learning Content: Our transformational One World Curriculum delivers
thought leadership in Managerial, Global and Virtual Capabilities.
TMA World Learning Design: Our proprietary Discover-Develop-Deploy process ensures
that your talent follows a carefully designed Learning Path for gaining and applying
expertise.
TMA World Learning Delivery: We deliver learning solutions where, when and how our
clients want them. We seek radical flexibility by utilizing virtual classrooms, e-learning,
webcasts, apps, forums and other online tools such as the Country Navigator and TMA
World Learning Portal.
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
Country Navigator™
Country Navigator™ is a flexible e-learning tool that allows users to learn more about over
65 business cultures. A deeper cross cultural understanding that will help ensure
outstanding international collaboration and working practices is developed through the
use of a blend of resources including videos, e-learning modules and quizzes.
Global Team Navigator™
Global Team Navigator™ is a very powerful online resource that will radically enhance the
performance of your global teams, to make your organization faster and increasingly
more flexible and responsive.
Our e-tools
include

Contact
TMA World
UK: +44 (0)207 917 2784 | enquiries@tmaworld.com | www.tmaworld.com
See website for details of our global offices