Global Reach, Local Impact: Operating Across 23+ Countries
Over the course of my career, I have had the privilege of conducting business at senior levels in more than twenty-three countries across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and North America. That experience has given me a perspective on international business development that I could not have acquired any other way — one shaped by successes and setbacks, by cultural collisions and cultural breakthroughs, and by the slow accumulation of understanding that comes from genuinely engaging with places and people rather than simply passing through them.
This article distils some of what I have learned — not as a comprehensive guide to international business, but as a reflection on the principles that have made the most difference in my own experience operating across very different markets.
Local Knowledge Is Not Optional
There is a tempting shortcut in international business: to treat each new market as a version of markets you already understand. To assume that the legal frameworks are broadly similar, that business culture operates on the same basic principles, and that a strategy that has worked in London or New York will work, with minor adjustments, in Nairobi or Riyadh or Kuala Lumpur.
This shortcut is expensive. Each market has its own history, its own power structures, its own informal rules of engagement — rules that are often more important than the formal ones, and that are rarely written down anywhere. The legal framework governing a transaction in one country may be formally similar to the framework in another while operating in practice in an entirely different way, because the culture of the institutions that enforce it is different, the expectations of the parties involved are different, and the relationships that surround the transaction are different.
Genuine local knowledge requires genuine local presence — not just a representative office or a local agent, but a sustained investment in understanding the market at a level of depth that takes time and genuine engagement to achieve. The organisations that do this build durable competitive advantages in their markets. The organisations that do not find themselves repeatedly surprised, and repeatedly paying the cost of that surprise.
The Network Is the Strategy
In international markets, your network is not a support structure for your strategy — it is the strategy. The relationships you have built determine which doors open, which introductions are made, which proposals receive serious consideration, and which are politely filed away. This is true in the UK and the US. It is even more true in markets where formal institutions are less developed and informal relationship networks carry more weight.
Building a genuinely effective international network takes years and requires genuine investment — not just attendance at the right conferences and membership of the right associations, but the kind of sustained, substantive engagement that creates real professional relationships rather than a collection of business cards.
The most valuable relationships in my own international network were not built in single dramatic encounters. They were built across many interactions over many years — through delivering on commitments, through being useful to people in ways that were not immediately reciprocated, through showing up consistently and professionally in contexts where it would have been easier not to. That kind of relationship capital is not quickly accumulated, but once accumulated, it is extremely durable.
Cultural Intelligence as a Core Competency
Cultural intelligence — the ability to understand, navigate, and effectively operate across different cultural contexts — is not a soft skill. In international business, it is a core competency with direct commercial implications.
The mistakes that cost businesses most in international markets are rarely technical or legal in nature. They are cultural — a negotiation approach that reads as aggressive in one context and merely assertive in another, a communication style that signals confidence in one culture and arrogance in another, a decision-making timeline that creates urgency in one market and offence in another.
Developing genuine cultural intelligence requires more than reading about cultural differences. It requires spending real time in the markets you are working in, building relationships with people who can give you honest feedback, and developing the humility to recognise that your own cultural assumptions are assumptions rather than universal truths.
Managing Risk Across Multiple Jurisdictions
Operating across more than twenty countries inevitably means operating in markets with very different risk profiles — different political risks, different regulatory risks, different counterparty risks, and different reputational risks. Managing that complexity requires a systematic approach to due diligence and risk assessment.
The most important element of that approach is not the formal due diligence process, important as that is. It is the quality of your local intelligence — your ability to understand, through your network and your direct engagement, what is actually happening in a market beyond what is formally documented. Regulatory environments can change rapidly, political risks can materialise quickly, and the counterparties who appear credible in formal presentations may look quite different when viewed through the lens of well-placed local knowledge.
Final Thoughts
International business development is, at its core, a human enterprise. The technical dimensions — legal frameworks, financial structures, regulatory requirements — are important, but they are ultimately secondary to the quality of the relationships and the depth of the understanding that you bring to each market.
The organisations and individuals that succeed over the long term in international markets are those that invest in those relationships and that understanding — not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself. They become genuinely part of the markets they operate in, known and trusted by the people who matter, and capable of navigating challenges that would stop less well-embedded competitors in their tracks.
That is what global reach with genuine local impact looks like. It is not achieved quickly. But it is worth every year of the investment it takes.
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