Being a relatively small country unit of a larger multinational company has its benefits – you have “the whole train set to play with” – make sure people recognise this.
“We’ve got the whole train set to play with on a smaller scale, and the risk to the company if we make a bad decision is not as financially damaging as spending a whole lot of money on a company wide scale. We can move more quickly with less bureaucracy if we have a creative idea here.”
“You also get more autonomy. I think these roles are quite unusual in that you’ve got quite a broad functional remit. There are not many roles where you can touch HR, finance, marketing, sales, and the call center. If you go back to head office it’s more the divisional structure where you have the head of the contact center, but you actually have to go right up to director level or the COO level before you have someone with the same scope as a country manager.”
Example: From a confidential interview with the country manager of the Japanese arm of a large multinational company.
Source: Confidential Interview (2008)