Mighty Is the Mongrel

As chief executives circulate, they form a global fraternity not unlike the aristocracy of the Middle Ages, whose members followed booty and glory regardless of national borders. To be sure, CEOs are a special case, but they are also the model for the business hybrid. In technical fields already, borders are becoming less and less meaningful. In engineering, physics, code writing, and all types of design, people carry their roots with them like the 16th-century explorers who sailed ships on behalf of wealthy patrons. U.S. corporations get their pick. The Chinese or Indian engineer who works in the United States is a cliché, but less is known about the American architects, salespeople, and shopping-mall developers who serve foreign corporations. Some live abroad; others shuttle back and forth. For these folks, a "day at the office" can mean a trip to another continent.

At the best companies, building diverse teams has become a routine part of business and a central piece of strategy. McKinsey & Co., the global consultancy, illustrates this trend. In the 1970s, most of its consultants were American, and its foreign contingent came from about 20 countries. By the mid-1980s, Americans still accounted for more than half of all McKinsey consultants, although the company drew from a wider range of foreign countries -- perhaps 30 in all. In the 1990s, the trend accelerated. By 1999, McKinsey's chief partner was a foreign national (he hails from India); only 40% of its 4,800 consultants were American; and its foreign-born consultants came from more than 40 countries.

The diversity at McKinsey means that there's no dominant group -- no identity mold. And the company's "United Nations" profile isn't merely a reflection of where its customers are. The idea isn't to assign Indians to Indian customers, say, or French nationals to French customers. That's old thinking. New thinking presents the hybrid team as a positive agent. The members of McKinsey's 40-odd nationalities aren't necessarily where they "should" be. "If you let a meritocracy prevail, you're bound to get a lot of diversity," says Rajat Gupta, McKinsey's chief partner.

McKinsey encourages an appreciation for difference by having each of its offices evaluated annually by a consultant from somewhere else in the world. The head of its San Francisco office may review Düsseldorf. Paris may review Mexico City. This process acts as a check and balance by preventing too much coziness from forming between partners in a country or region. But a side benefit of such evaluations is that they raise cultural sensitivity and promote the intermingling of traits. "There's an obligation to see things from other points of view," says one McKinsey partner. "That's hardwired into this place."

Cosmopolitan corporations don't localize overseas operations; they seek a dynamic blend among strangers. That's quite different from what passes for diversity at some U.S. companies that practice "ethnic" marketing -- such as hiring a black to manage accounts in Harlem, or a Hispanic to handle the south-Texas region. Ethnic marketing is blithely presented as a form of multiculturalism, but it smacks of tokenism and is based on a dubious business model.

Rather than try to pigeonhole customers, the hybrid enterprise acts as if they are all mongrels. Hybrid marketers don't seek one-dimensional terms to describe customers. Their approach contradicts the premise of ethnic marketing, which is to put people in boxes. Ethnic marketing may work for a time, but it won't endure. It will end up chasing the shifting borders of identity and alienating potential customers. Market researchers will end up talking about the specific buying habits of, say, "second-generation Bolivian-Japanese males married to fourth-generation Russian-Arab women who have a university degree and fewer than two children."

Hybridization also takes place at lower corporate levels, as the experience of Donald Jagau suggests. In the new corporate ethos, not only are employees entitled to their differences -- they should revel in them. By pouring their authentic identities into their jobs, employees become more creative and effective. Corporations are discarding the old assumption that all employees must think and act the same -- that they must bring the same tools, attitudes, and values, or even the same language, to work.

A modem factory in Morton Grove, Illinois is typical. The factory's 1,200 workers speak 20 different languages, forming an industrial Tower of Babel. It's a miracle that the plant runs at all. Pragmatism rules. The owner of the plant, 3Com, takes a simple approach. "Managers don't even try to accommodate cultural quirks -- probably an impossibility anyway," notes one observer. "They just make it clear that they expect newcomers to adapt to the factory's methods." On the plant floor, employees must mingle and cooperate, but in the lunchroom, they can cluster in their ethnic and linguistic groups if they wish.