Hilary Mine
Mark Braithwaite interviews
Hilary Mine, Managing Director Australasia and North Asia – Alcatel Lucent
Alcatel Lucent has supplied 40% of the world’s current DSL broadband infrastructure. Hilary Mine, Managing Director Australasia and North Asia, speaks with Mark Braithwaite about how she manages in a culturally diverse region.
Hilary, can you explain the geographic scope of your responsibility?
Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Macau, Taiwan, and the Pacific Islands. We have local MD’s in each of these countries and I think it is vitally important for these roles to be filled by local talent. I am based in Sydney, but my key executive team are spread across the region. The situation is partly by design and partly driven by the availability of talent. As regional executives, we all travel, so there is no need for a regional HQ as such. A HQ mentality disenfranchises the other offices.
So, how do you ensure that you have effective communication with your direct reports?
It’s important to get face to face and build mutual trust, but beyond this, video conferencing over IP has been a very powerful tool for us in bringing together a dispersed management team. Alcatel Lucent has a governance structure that means we have planned, regular business meetings. Video conferencing works very well for this process. E-mail is great for simple communication but for any complex issue, I encourage people to pick up the phone. You can waste far too much time with e-mail if the issue is complex.
Are you finding that the cultural differences in each of these geographies changes the way you behave?
The language barriers are not insignificant in some countries but getting to know and trust the team is about having dinner with them and just spending time together. It’s Sake in Japan and Beer in Korea, but otherwise the needs are very similar. The other side of course is the customer relationships. We have very capable local country managers that handle the bulk of customer interaction. In the end, our customers face many similar issues across the region, and around the world, and this means that once you get into the issues and the technology, there is a great deal of commonality that transcends cultural difference.
I have not met many American women running Asia Pacific geographies for global companies. Did you sense any acceptance issues when you first took on this role?
The global CEO of Alcatel Lucent is a woman and so is our leader for China and North Korea. Irrelevant of gender, I think that because I listen, people are quickly at ease. I see myself as being in a support function. I am there to create success for my team.
So, looking forward, what is exciting about Alcatel Lucent in this region?
Regionally, we have had consistent double digit growth every year for the last few years and continue to grow at a much faster rate than the western world, but the headline has to be China. There is one statistic that will give you all the perspective you need. Every year, China rolls out additional network infrastructure equal to 20% of the total existing US network infrastructure (and nearly 3 times the total Australian infrastructure)!
This interview was conducted by Mark Braithwaite, an Asia based Director of Mosaic Global Executive Search on 29 February 2008.
