Our world continues to get smaller! Whether you are doing business entirely in your home country, or you work for a multinational company, you are likely working with people in various regions of your country or  regions of the world. In any case it is important to spend time developing regional relationships so that you can seek to understand what is important to your counterparts in other areas of the company. Once you understand what is important and why it is important, to each region, you can develop a thriving SMM program.

Let's focus this part of the conversation on companies that only have offices in one country. Teams that work in different office locations throughout the country likely have different ways of working from each other and from the main Headquarters (HQ) office. As long as they are following company policy and guidelines, there really isn't anything wrong with that. The secret to Strategic Meetings Management (SMM) success is to understand what the unique business needs are, and to provide solutions and processes that accomplish the overarching goals of your SMMP, but also allow for regional differences. Why be concerned about these regional nuances? If you dismiss these nuances as irrelevant you are at the same time dismissing the people in those offices as irrelevant, which they certainly are not! Thus we need to understand build relationships that will encourage the support and adoption of the SMM program whether at HQ or at regional offices dispersed throughout the country.

A similar strategy of building regional relationships by seeking to understand cultural differences and unique business drivers should be used by multinational companies as well. I work with many companies, who are doing business with counterparts in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, China, India, and North & South America. Just thinking of all of the cultural variations in Western Europe is challenging enough, and adding in a number of other countries around the globe with their own distinct needs seems insurmountable! But I have seen positive results in building successful regional relationships by using some of the following tips: