20 years or so ago BMW ran a television advertising campaign (in the UK) where they described how they make their cars so quiet: each body panel was tuned to resonate at a different frequency.  As a result, no two body panels would make each other resonate, so driving noise was reduced.  The advert finished with a tuning fork being hit and placed on the boot (trunk) with the ditty "this is the key to the boot".

Building a successful cosmopolitan corporate culture requires a similar approach.  That is, a cosmopolitan cultural change programme has two components: a global aspect and a local one.

The global aspect of the programme can include many of the techniques and models that are traditionally used in cultural change.  This can include, for example, identifying the values that everyone in the organisation should share, defining the overarching business processes that are to be used and establishing any general principles of how divisions, teams or individuals should interact.  The global part of the programme should also include systems and processes for the education and support of how the local teams are going to define their own cultures.

The local aspect of the programme involves each team looking at their own situation and determining the culture they need to succeed, taking account of both the global cultural values and their local circumstances and objectives.

Careful thought also needs to be given to where the dividing line is placed between the global and local parts of the cultural change programme.  For example, at first sight it might seem appropriate for an organisation to have global values of openness and honesty.  But this might contradict the local needs of a team that is processing personal data, which they are required to keep confidential, or an undercover crime or journalistic team, or a research team that is developing intellectual property that hasn't yet been protected by patent or trademark.

Any approach to the development of a new culture, in its basic form, involves some form of Cultural Change Programme: identifying the desired culture, measuring the current culture, and planning how to close the gap.  There is increasingly a trend to use Jungian or Myers Briggs concepts in cultural development, looking at the overall personality of the organisation using tools such as Companies Are People Too or OCTA (Organisational Character Type Assessment).  These tools can be incorporated into a cultural change programme to help an organisation identify its global character.

At a local team level, the development of sub-culture requires a similar approach, though the techniques of Team Performance Management are more suited to a local scale.  The ITPQ (Ideal Team Profile Questionairre) can help a team identify the type of Jungian/Myers Briggs character that it needs to be exhibited in its behaviours in order to be successful, and this is mentioned in the Team Performance Management page.

In summary, developing a cosmopolitan corporate culture involves developing a global programme that addresses the universal aspects of culture and initiates the process of local adaptation through an education and support programme.  Each team then takes a look at its own culture and sets objectives that best serve the role that it plays in the overall programme.  The result, like a BMW, is then an organisation that is tuned at the finest level to provide the best overall experience.