Here is an excerpt from an article written by John Boudreau for Talent Management magazine. To check out all the resources and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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How can companies balance cost pressures with the need to better fit global development into a modern world? Talent Management columnist John Boudreau explains how.

Here’s a loaded question: How should talent systems build globally aware leaders who are prepared for the opportunities that will be presented by a flatter world, greater diversity in customers and workers, and the need to deeply understand and respond to local environments while achieving the advantages of global scale?

Traditionally, the answer has been expatriation or something like it: Identify a select group of leaders, send them to key regions in high-level roles and immerse them in the region for several years. However, such approaches can disrupt families, are expensive and often create in-country enclaves that insulate leaders from vital experiences and relationships. Also, the organization often doesn’t have a specific re-entry plan to connect with the experiences.

Good talent development can still be accomplished through such assignments. Yet, the friction is ever more apparent in a world of accelerating change and diversity, in which global leadership must be shared throughout the organization, not contained solely in an elite cadre of future leaders. Many organizations have reduced such assignments over the years due to cost pressures, precisely when global leadership has never been more valuable. How do you balance cost pressures with the need to better fit global development into a modern world.

In product design, these demands were answered through sachet marketing. Consumers in most of the world earn a fraction of the average income in developed countries, and their lifestyles are hardly suited toward typical large-volume packaging. Sachet marketing begins with questions such as: “How can we provide soap, shampoo, food, telecommunications or even loans with price points, features and manufacturing and supply-chain designs that fit such consumers?”

For example, Unilever sells a detergent specifically formulated for hand-washing in river water. Mexican Banco Azteca provides savings accounts, mortgages or loans through large retail appliance stores. Grameenphone, a telecommunications operator in Bangladesh, offers special packages that allow “phone ladies” in remote villages to share phones with other villagers.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

John Boudreau is professor and research director at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and Center for Effective Organizations, and author of Retooling HR: Using Proven Business Tools to Make Better Decisions about Talent.