However, most leading companies are champing at the bit to get into business with Asian companies and countries: 74% of businesses surveyed in 2010 by Asialink and the Australian Industry Group indicate interest in expanding into Asia or expanding their existing operations there.
Here is a checklist to measure your progress:
1. Awareness of opportunities and deficits
The report has given a big fillip to this important element of building capacity in the Asian Region. The nine chapters of 312-page report have resulted in blanket media coverage, and provided companies with a clear call to action, raising awareness not only among companies, but among governments, students and parents.
A deeper challenge for companies is becoming aware of their deficits, Beasley says. “There is a lot of unconscious incompetence,” she says. “People do not know what they do not know.”
This is borne out by findings published last year by Asialink and the Australian Industry Group (AiG). The study found that businesses that have senior staff with some Asian experience or skills rate the importance of local knowledge to their business in Asia significantly higher than those that have no senior staff fitting these criteria.
Similarly, these businesses rated the importance of having cultural understanding and an understanding of local management practice significantly higher than businesses that have no staff with Asian skills and experience.
In other words, companies that know a little about Asian enterprise are more conscious of how much more there is to learn.
Board and senior management experience in Asia was noticeably lacking in the study, which covered AIG members that employed about 750,000 people in a wide range of sectors.
Of responding businesses, 65% report that none of their board members have worked in Asia.
Of businesses with Asian dealings, 32% say that none of their Australian-based board members or senior executives have any of the listed Asian skills or experiences.
LeadingCompany’s research has found similar deficits among the ASX100 CEOs. None, for example, has studied at an Asian university, as we report today: ASX100: Internationally experienced, except in Asia.
There are only 12 of the 100 who have had substantial experience as leader of a business operation in an Asian country, among them Mike Smith, the CEO of ANZ Bank, who previously worked for Hong Kong bank, HSBC.
