Inside Odgers Berndtson – Mark Braithwaite

Mark Braithwaite
Managing Director, Odgers Berndtson Asia Pacific

In the APAC region, we have been working to make collaboration the central theme of our culture.

Effectively delivering a global solution for clients can only work if we truly collaborate internally. The collective intelligence of our 1,000 people worldwide is far greater than that of a small local team. Bringing this collective intelligence to our clients is what they expect and why they engage a search firm with a global footprint.

People collaborate because they really want to. It’s about relationships and trust, so creating an environment that encourages people to build relationships, even before they have a need, is a critical task of our leadership team.

The cultural differences between countries in the APAC region go far beyond language. Cross-cultural collaboration comes from “why am I here” and a sense of shared values. If there were a scale of collaboration where one is non-existent and 10 is perfect, our business in APAC has moved from two to nine in two years. We have focused on three areas to make this happen.

Firstly, we have worked on shared business development efforts with clients across the region and globally. This has aligned the mutual interests of our industry-focused teams in each country. It has also increased the long-term potential of these clients for us, and this goes hand in hand with the need for better communication.

Secondly, by increasing the number of clients we serve across APAC and globally, along with our build-out into new sectors, our research team has needed to collaborate more to ensure candidates are cared for at the highest level.

Finally, we launched a fun CSR programme last year that everyone, at every level, in every country, takes part in. The sense of community and engagement this created was beyond our expectation, but the internal relationships needed to truly collaborate have moved to the next level.