25 January 2005
by Brian Salazar
Toshihiro “Toshi” Hamada, MBA’05 and native of Japan, experienced the inner workings of ExxonMobil in 2004 through the Global Management Program at Babson. Prior to his attendance at Babson, Toshi was an employee at ExxonMobil Japan. In an effort to gain more exposure to his former company and experience the wonders of American work-life balance, Toshi participated in a summer-long internship at the ExxonMobil headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia. Toshi worked with an international team of MBA students and full-time ExxonMobil employees to establish a global reporting system for its refining and supply businesses. Team members hailed from South Africa, France, Brazil, Japan, and the United States and were responsible for coordinating reporting information from 30 ExxonMobil representatives from around the world.
The experience opened Toshi’s eyes to the challenges that face a global corporation regarding communications, goal setting, and local vs. global organizational initiatives. Toshi explained those challenges as follows, “Even in ExxonMobil, the decision making process was different country-by-country. For example, some countries took lots of time to decide their plan because many people were involved in the decision making process.”
Toshi also admitted to making some mistakes along the way but learned a great deal from those errors in communication, “I assumed the Japanese process was common globally. Also, the sense of punctuality, seniority, communication style (formal or informal) varied in individual countries.” Toshi also mentioned that language barriers and time differences, often taken for granted, were serious issues that the team addressed in order to get their jobs done right.
Organizationally, Toshi was able to experience ExxonMobil from a different perspective through this global exercise. Tensions between local reporting methods and corporate/global initiatives were carefully sorted out. “We needed to pursue synergy through global integration. We also needed to adapt to local specific conditions,” Toshi mentioned, “Particularly for local management, this proposal was difficult to handle because it asked them to give up their previously acquired processes. I think this is a general problem in any matrix organization.”
Despite these difficulties, Toshi mentioned that ironing out issues surrounding globalization will be paramount to the success of the company. Global management is continually supported through the organization and the background Toshi had in global business issues through the first year of the Babson MBA prepared him for the real world encounters he had at ExxonMobil. “Communication and patience are key in a global company,” explained Toshi, “and people can often be the biggest barrier to change in an organization. Dealing with those aspects of the business were some of the most important factors for me at ExxonMobil.”
