| Robert |
Okay, thanks for joining us to today’s episode of Globally Speaking. Today we have a special guest, Francesca Di Marco. She is one of the members of the GILT Leaders Forum, who recently published the Globalization Strategy Playbook. And I’d like to pass over to Francesca for a second for her to introduce herself. Please. |
| Francesca |
Thank you so much, Robert. Thank you for inviting me. I’m Francesca and I lead internationalization program at Pinterest. I lead the global development program for product and marketing. Super passionate about enabling teams to achieve global scale by integrating processes and strategies, and also bridging gaps across functions and regional offices. And I’ve had the amazing experience of being able to work with 11 globalization leads in the tech industry, and to write a Globalization Strategy Playbook, that I would like to talk about today with you Robert. |
| Robert |
Wonderful. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the podcast. Your second episode with us, actually. So welcome back, I should say. |
| Francesca |
Thank you. |
| Robert |
So yeah, that’s the topic of today’s podcast. Yeah, you’re very welcome. The Globalization Strategy Playbook. I know you and your co-authors are on a bit of a press tour. You’ve shown up on some of our colleague podcasts in the industry. And by the way, shout out to Global Ambitions and also to the SlatorPod. Those podcasts had some interviews with some of your co-authors and explored some other topics than we will today. So I always think it’s really great that our industry has a vibrant podcast ecosystem. I love that about our industry. Yeah, the nice thing about having so many co-authors on this playbook, is that because you and different co-authors are joining different podcasts, we get to hear different perspectives and explore different things. And that’s also a great thing about having so many of you. |
| Robert |
And today I want to start off a little bit with… You know, I heard on one of the other podcasts that you were a large part of the editing team of this playbook. For anyone who is not aware of the playbook itself, the strategic thinking group of the GILT Leaders Forum got together 12 people and put together a playbook for experience and also for aspiring localization professionals on how to think about being more strategic. The questions you should be asking, how to position localization in internationalization inside corporations, it’s hosted on GitHub, we’ll be posting a link to it. It’s kind of all over the internet. You can probably just Google it as well. |
| Robert |
Like I said, there were 12 co-authors and I’d love to kind of pass the mic to you, Francesca, and hear from an editor’s point of view, and from your point of view in particular. What was that like? Because I can imagine it wasn’t without its challenges working with so many people under tight deadlines. |
| Francesca |
Yeah. It was 12 of us located in different time zones, and with very demanding jobs. But we were all thrilled to be part of this. The idea to write a book or a playbook on globalization strategy came out of a discussion on data around localization during one of the GILT meetings. Probably like more than 30 members, but 12 of us volunteered to write the Globalization Strategy Playbook. So there was an incredible amount of experience sitting with many of us in one room, and we managed to leverage the biggest advantage of working remotely. The more distant you are from something in time, in space, or socially, the more you’re able to think in an abstract way, which was exactly the goal of what we were going to write. And to build a constructive and productive environment, of course we had to overcome some logistical challenges. |
| Francesca |
The hardest part was definitely brainstorming, which is renownedly challenging in a remote environment. You know, when you want to generate ideas collaboratively, Zoom, or working with remote in general is very, very challenging. But what we needed was a plan for inception of the idea, and then a timeline to achieve the final product. Nobody has done this before. So we spent time defining what the playbook would look like and who was our audience and how to split responsibilities across ourselves. Once we had the chapter outline, we started deep diving into drafting the playbook. And then it was a matter of logistics, like working with a geographically diverse team, which is nothing new to us in this industry. |
| Francesca |
So there was a long preparation phase where each person generated potential solutions working in small groups and thinking about possibilities, which was followed by an activity process where all elements, all chapters were treated as tentative. |
| Francesca |
And each of us volunteered to work on what we knew better. And and the rest of the group acted as a devil’s advocate, as reviewers, as motivators. And for me, after writing and co-writing different chapters, I volunteered to be the reviewer, since I have some academic experience, I’m a published author. And in my previous life, I was an academic. And so my goal was to guarantee that the playbook was cohesive. From a stylistic point of view, but also from a content point of view. So you shouldn’t hear the voice of one author, but you should hear a group talking where you cannot distinguish between individual voices, but all together they form a beautiful harmony. So in the end, the initial work was to keep everyone in the loop and keep them all engaged. |
| Francesca |
And it all paid off because the book came together pretty quickly. It took us seven months from inception to publication, and not one of us dropped out. We were super thrilled and motivated to participate. We had, of course, setbacks and some slowdowns, but everyone chimed in. Everyone participated and contributed to help. And I feel super lucky to have been part of it. |
| Francesca |
And as I think that, I think that the beauty of this playbook, it’s the fact that it’s built on a collective experience. And it’s built on very diverse challenges that we all faced. And interestingly enough, a playbook by definition is not a one-off invention for each team. All of us working together had the ability to view different situations across different companies, in an ever evolving business. And we had the ability to identify, at a high level, the foundations of our strategic thinking. And those foundations hopefully can be used by many more leaders, across many types of organizations in the future. |
| Robert |
I thought that was one of the most intriguing things of how it was written. I read a good chunk of it all. I haven’t gone through the entire thing, I skimmed through the sections that I didn’t read in detail. The sections I did read, you’re right. They sound like a group of people talking, but it’s harmonious. One chapter doesn’t deviate drastically in tone and voice from the next one. I thought that it was a good case in point. In many companies with their own content, you have all sorts of problems in localization process when the source content has its issues, right? So if there’s inconsistent use of terminology or inconsistent tone and voice, that sort of gets amplified and the chaos grows through the localization process. |
| Robert |
Now I was intrigued, the challenge of having 12 authors, and everyone’s going to have their own writing fingerprint, basically. They’re going to have their own style of writing. And to be one of the people to sort of pull that together, I thought was actually quite intriguing. Because I mean, in all honesty, not that many books get written by 12 people. You know, it’s a more unique situation than having just a co-author or single author. So I thought that it was a good sort of drinking your own champagne and making sure that… You know, imagine this book were to get localized one day, the localization process would benefit hugely from having a tone and voice and structure that’s been harmonized across 12 authors. So I thought that was actually a pretty cool living example of how to do it properly. |
| Francesca |
Yeah. That’s interesting. I mean, it’s interesting that you’re bringing this up, because it was one of our thoughts. Maybe one day this playbook is going to be localized. And so as localization leaders, we took into consideration a number of aspects. One, silent tone. But also the length of the sentences. So we realized that translating long sentences is never ideal when you translate from English into romantic languages and so on. And so this was part of the stylistic review that another member of the team did. And so we tried to make all sentences short enough to be easily translatable in the future. So yeah, it’s interesting that you brought that up. Because it was one of our thoughts, how can we make this translation-friendly. |
| Robert |
Right. Which, I guess, that’s for the future. I think it’s a good chance to take a deep breath and say after seven months, 12 people got together and wrote this amazing book. That it’s a huge achievement, and not yet time to jump to the next large bit like that. |
| Robert |
On the thread though, I wanted to explore the decision to publish this on GitHub. So for all listeners out there, if you’re not really familiar with what GitHub or platforms like that are, they’re essentially collaboration platforms for developers. And they allow people to seamlessly collaborate on code. Each person contributing some code, and then it getting merged into the master or like main repository of code in a very seamless way. I thought the decision to publish the book on GitHub seemed like a signal to the industry. It’s like, there are 12 authors, but you can be a reader and become a contributor in some way. Now I want to sort of explore that and see where the group’s thinking is. And A, probably selfishly taking the load off uploading it a little bit off yourselves, and maybe asking the community to contribute. And B, getting some of the great thoughts into the book that go beyond these 12 people. So what was the thinking behind that and how was the group thinking about that these days? |
| Francesca |
Yeah, I mean, when we got to the point that the playbook was ready and ready for publication, we started thinking about and considering different options for publication and distribution. And we wanted to keep in our mind the readership, the investment and maintenance that was due at some point, and we also were considering clients for the future. And we were pretty ambitious about that. Maybe we should publish another one. Maybe we should publish new chapters or a follow-up. But when it comes, for example, to readership, we know that this, the Globalization Strategy Playbook, is addressing globalization leaders in small companies or of seasoned corporations. Whereas the objectives might be different across the leadership because they are tied to specific businesses, the strategy and the strategic thinking exercise, which is encouraged the playbook, should resonate with each reader. And so we wanted to make sure that these readers are part of this conversation. |
| Francesca |
Because this playbook is more of a… I want to use the metaphor of a recipe that needs to be improved constantly. It’s not the recipe that is ready to be executed on that spot. And so it is supposed to be a conversation. And also, as I said before, so we wanted to consider the readership. We wanted to consider maintenance. And maintenance is very problematic because information tied to tech in the tech industry becomes very obsolete, and very quickly. Because products’ functionality has changed over time or with the invention of new products or new technologies. For example, there is a chapter on new translation technologies, speech to text, text to speech, remote interpretation, but also like multi-lingual chat and analysis, machine translation optimization. And all this information is going to be obsolete three months. So because we need to monitor the industry trends, because we need to continue to talk to the experts, and probably instead of globalization leader, you need a globalization technology architect who takes care of the new technologies. So we know that the playbook is going to need a lot of maintenance. |
| Francesca |
And also planning for the future. The idea that probably we want to add some chapters, or maybe we want to add a follow-up. So we landed on the idea of using GitHub as our hosting platform for version control and for collaboration. GitHub is going to let us work together, like the 12 of us for sure, but also more globalization leaders can chime in. Students can ask their questions or can let us know what they’re particularly interested in getting to know for their future career in the localization industry. And we are thrilled to receive feedback and to incorporate it. |
| Francesca |
Most probably what’s going to happen in the future, is that we’re going to create a window or two throughout the year when we can fully embrace all updates, requests for additional information or additional chapters. So I think that GitHub is really providing us the right format, where we can keep collaborating, the 12 of us, but also we can keep this conversation happening with more globalization leaders. Both of on the client side and on the vendor side, as well as with students. |
| Robert |
Yeah, the point about the technology, it really… When I was reading that, I was identifying some chapters. You know, the higher-level strategic chapters about how to position things and inside the company, how to interact with different stakeholder groups, that stuff probably won’t change that often, right? There will always be a finance department. There will always be a procurement department and so on. And those are the sections where I found many voices, right? So this is why I was so impressed. Somehow you got to the point where you’re writing with one voice, but you could tell in the substance of the content that many people chimed in and said, “Okay, well, so and so had this experience from their career, but someone else had a different experience.” And so in the content, you can see that you’re covering a bunch of different scenarios that the reader could face wherever they are, and therefore takes that recipe and then improves it and customizes it for that particular strategic goal, right? |
| Robert |
It’s not so much an answer as it is a set of questions for you to be thinking about, so that you can take the next step and go and answer them. So I think in those chapters, it seems like there’s probably less need for very burdensome updating. But I think you’re right on the technology chapters. You’re right, in a few months what’s there is probably also new and that needs to be updated. And just the ability to invite others to update that stuff seamlessly and even write it for you. Right? |
| Robert |
I think one point on these sort of open-source thinking is, people can raise questions and suggest things, but they can also write entire passages and ask you, “Hey, are you okay with the way I wrote it? Would you like to merge it into your book?” And I was so intrigued by the idea how open-source technology gets developed, but applied to a book. A sort of documentation for the industry. And I thought that it’s very inviting for someone who could look at that and say in certain factors there’s already a merge request on GitHub. Someone sort of improved, in his views, one of the sections. And now it’s waiting for you and your team to take a look at that and say, “Hey, that actually brings a lot of value. Let’s merge into our book.” And this person became a contributor the same way open-source technology works. So I thought that was really cool. |
| Francesca |
Yeah. For a split second, we considered publishing into a book and distributing it in the most conventional way. But it wouldn’t be fair for our readership. Because, as I said, that information is going to be obsolete soon. And also true that there are some chapters that might need more updates and more work than others and more maintenance than others. But it’s also true that they’re all so interweaved. |
| Francesca |
You talk about new technology. True that this is going to change pretty much on a monthly basis. But it’s also true that if you think about business objectives in general, what capabilities you need to support those business objectives. And you need a technology roadmap for that. And when you need a technology roadmap, you might want to need to tap into some knowledge about new technologies. And when you know about the new technologies, you might want to tap into the chapter of stakeholders. Because maybe some of those new technologies might belong, like the maintenance or the engineering support, might belong to different teams within the company. They’re not going to sit necessarily within your team. |
| Francesca |
So I think that all those chapters are very interweaved. And changing one aspect in each of them is going to change also the relationship in others. It is true also that the chapter on stakeholders is probably the most layered one. Because each of us is working in a different company with a different size and with different challenges. And just a simple distinction between who of us actually manages budget on behalf of other teams and who doesn’t, will make the whole difference in the way you reach out to stakeholders and the way you bridge gaps with other teams. And the way you interact with them and you want to keep them engaged with your operations. So, yeah. |
| Robert |
I think in that sense, it would actually be really tough to write a strategic playbook with fewer authors. Because I think the power in what you’ve produced comes from the sum of experience of many people. I’m thinking of myself. If I were to try to write a book on marketing strategy, I’m a marketer. I think I would be feeling out sometimes that I have my experience, but that’s just my experience in the particular organizations that I’ve been in, in the situations and the times of those companies, I’ve been with them. But were I to pull in other colleagues, and start putting all the ideas on the table, and looking for general trends, or writing things in a way that encompasses as many experiences as inclusive as possible of different ways of seeing things, I think I would write something much, much better. Or we would write something much better. And I think for me, that was the power of having these multiple authors and having many different perspectives somehow put into one place. |
| Robert |
And yeah, like I said, I keep going back to kudos to what you and your team have built. And especially in the time. But the sort of multiple voices singing in harmony, I thought was A, impressive in its writing style, but also just very powerful in creating a general framework in which people can think. And having as many sort of, “Hey, did you think of this?” portions. Especially the stakeholder section’s a good example, right? Because different companies are structured in different ways. And you could read through that section a lot of different experiences from a lot of different authors. |
| Francesca |
Yeah. I mean, the goal of the playbook was really to provide an overview on how you sat, as a globalization leader, as you sat a vision for your team strategic direction, and then how to guide conversations with your stakeholders with the C-suite. And then also the goal was to provide some tips and best practices. So what are the procedures and processes that better represent the most effective course of action in your organization? But if you look at each of these items, basically you understand that, that’s the light model of the playbook. So we want to shed some light on how you build. What does the future you’re trying to create look like in your business unit and across the company? |
| Francesca |
But it’s also true that the more abstract you want to be, the experience that you’re bringing to the table needs to be diverse so that you can find really what’s the common thread there. What’s the most theoretical learning that you can share with your readership. And I think that’s the reason why having 12 people, 12 veterans in the industry, was extremely important and made this playbook really a beautiful outcome. |
| Robert |
Yeah. That it is. If we were to send one message to the listeners today, because I think you’ll have a broad audience for this playbook. We have a broad audience for this podcast, as do the others. How can they get involved? If they’ve got burning questions that they would love to see in the next edition of the playbook, is this going on GitHub and commenting on something or sending an email? Or how’s the best way to sort of activate the community and get engagement? And maybe not authorship, but contributorship from the larger community. |
| Francesca |
Yeah. Thank you for asking. Of course, checking the playbook will be step number one. And I would like to remind everyone that it doesn’t need to be read from the beginning to the end. Each chapter can be utilized, can be enjoyed on its own. So even just the reading like a section or a chapter, which might be relevant for a challenge that a globalization leader is facing at the moment, might be useful. |
| Francesca |
And yes, commenting on GitHub or sending us an email, that would both work. And we’re actually piling up a number of requests and feedback. And as I said before, we’re probably going to work on maintenance and on improving our playbook in the next few months. We’re probably going to create a window or two when we’re going to look at all the feedback that we received and we’re going to take action on it. We truly welcome feedback in general. |
| Robert |
Hopefully, if COVID ever allows it, come and shake your hand at a conference one of these days. Or have a coffee or drink somewhere and strike up a conversation. I miss that a lot. |
| Francesca |
Yeah. We presented the Globalization Strategy Playbook as keynote speakers at Lockwood as well. But of course, it’s such a big project that there are so many aspects of it that could be explored. And there are some chapters that are absolutely fascinating. I’ve been learning so much. As I said, I co-authored the number of chapters, but my favorite is the chapter on technology, which I did not write. And I was not part of the committee, but I did learn so much. Like how you build a technology roadmap and the playbook describes a technology maturity model. |
| Francesca |
Think about where in the technology maturity model you stand today. And are you in the initial stage where a lot of work is done using spreadsheets and email, and how do you move forward from there, for example. So from being a small startup, to being a corporate, to be a more mature business with the sustainable processes. And so the more you see complexity growing your organization, how, for example, how do you consider acquisitions of technology providers? For example. |
| Francesca |
Those are all things that I’ve been learning by reading, editing these chapters, but it’s been a learning experience for me. So there has been a dialogue already during this seven month among the 12 of us. We’ve been providing in our knowledge, we’ve been sharing our knowledge and we’ve been learning so much from each other. And I hope that the readers can learn a lot and can give back some as well. |
| Robert |
How did you approach situations where people didn’t agree on how to approach a certain chapter or maybe a very fundamental view on something? Like I said, there are many views in many of the chapters, and that’s how you feel that it’s a symphony of voices singing. But I can imagine some cases there was an open and frank discussion, “Hey, we see this fundamentally differently.” With so many people involved that can imagine that may have come up. And if it did, how did that get managed? |
| Francesca |
Interest singly enough, there haven’t been frictions at all. I think that rather than having different takes or different opinions, we were bringing to the table a different experience. Which was actually playing in our favor, because we were adding an actual layer of complexity to what we wanted to write. |
| Francesca |
Just going back to why we came up with the idea of writing this playbook, which might explain, which might answer your question. We were at a GILT meeting, and we were having a discussion on data around localization. And most localization teams track operational data like translation cost, cost per word per language, machine translation savings, TMS savings, and so on. One of the members of GILT said that actually in her role, her role is more strategic and she looks at different metrics. And so she needs to measure the impact of localization internationalization on customers and their international audiences. |
| Francesca |
And this part, the conversation around how, as a globalization leader or organization leader, you feel like you need to evaluate if our products, if our company’s products, are usable in a language other than English. And how our customers use them in various markets and industries. So we look at how our company revenue is affected by the availability of translations and localization capabilities in our software. It turns out that there is not much information available on the strategic aspect of globalization. And this is when, so for example, how you can effectively build the strategic program or how you can measure success. And so we all reckon that we needed a playbook, that we needed a compass to navigate how to strategically build a team and set up the technology and processes for the long run. And so, and we all acknowledge that this playbook was not available yet. |
| Francesca |
And this was the reason why 12 of us volunteered in forming the strategic thinking task force, and which eventually ended up with the drafting and the publication of the strategic playbook. So we wanted to share our experiences of solving strategic problems in our companies and offer a thinking framework around decision making. So none of us came to the table with a solution. None of us came with the recipe for success. But we all came to the table with a lot of questions. And the result was a seven month long collaboration, which ended up with this playbook. And if you read it, you might notice that there are a lot of case studies with a lot of questions. But basically the most important part of, of the playbook, the most important part of this project, is that it really gives you an idea on how to go about things, how to reason about things. |
| Francesca |
So what are the questions I should ask myself when I’m considering whether adding a new language to my set of locals that I currently support, for example. So what questions I’m asking myself, what kind of support I need from my stakeholders. And with that sentiment, we were all meeting and bringing our questions, and we showed a lot of vulnerability with each other. So these are the big challenges that I’m facing at the moment, how should I go about that? And that was probably I think the most effective way of collaborating, bringing really very open and being very clear about sharing the current challenges in our companies and in our industry. |
| Robert |
Yeah. That’s a good point. I mean, I would describe it as unopinionated in a sense. I think if the book had a strong opinion about how to do something, I think actually a lot more conflict may have occurred, because then the group has to come up with its opinion. But actually the way you approached it, you and your co-authors, it’s very inclusive of a lot of different views. And in so far as it’s not prescriptive and strategic enough to be generalized, and you can take the next step to specialize it to your particular situation. |
| Robert |
I don’t think in any part of the book does it go into… It resist getting too tactical and resist getting too opinionated. So I think because of that really good limit you set yourself, you sort of created an environment where conflict can’t… I mean, conflict is a harsh word, but like disagreements sort of melt away. Because being strategic enough means being abstract enough from the particulars and the details that many different perspectives can exist without being necessarily strong opinions about how to do something. If that makes sense. |
| Francesca |
Yeah. I mean, the idea that we came altogether was, “In my position, I’m developing strategies for people, processes technologies, I’m studying a vision I’m working on strategic direction. I would love having some guidelines on how to do this.” And we all came with a set of challenges that we were facing. And in general, I think at the core there is the longstanding issue that the localization department in general is often viewed as an internal service provider that tasks are insourced and outsourced to. But these departments have so much expertise and so much more to offer. |
| Francesca |
And in this Globalization Strategy Playbook, we shared our strategic approach to solving challenges in global markets, but also on how we continuously elevate globalization strategy in our companies. You know, well aligned front where the premise was the same for everyone. We’re facing new challenges, there is no playbook, there is no guidance or guidelines on how to go about it. Why don’t we put our knowledge together and try to figure out what’s a list of questions? What were our good practices? How do we connect real life situations through strategic thinking processes in order to stay focused on the overall company strategy, not just on our business unit? |
| Francesca |
And because we know that if the localization department is not positioned strategically within a company, the international users will suffer. Or the international experience will suffer. And so we were coming to a meeting, we were coming together with the same sentiment, with the same set of challenges, but without an answer. And that was probably the reason why these frictions did not exist, because it was not in the nature of our work. |
| Robert |
So, I mean, it sounds like the target readership would encompass veterans of the industry, people not in the industry, trying to learn a little bit about what the internationalization localization and profession looks like. How it affects their marketing, how it affects their product. But probably also students and new entrants trying to figure out not just the particulars of how localization works, but how do they position themselves in the departments to be more strategic inside companies. Is that a fair assessment? |
| Francesca |
Yeah, that’s correct. Students as well might find the playbook really useful. Because they can get a glimpse on how life will look like, their professional life will look like one day. But also I think that apart from students or globalization leaders, also suppliers can gain an understanding of the buyers and thought processes and challenges. And as a result, they might be able to have the right conversations with buyers, ask relevant questions and also probably offer relevant solutions. |
| Francesca |
This could lead to new business models and new services with new technologies, for example. Or in a number of chapter that actually we mention how the LPM, the localization program manager, is of course the core of the team, but there are so many other positions that are coming up. A market specialist, a product specialist, an SEO specialist. And all these figures are job descriptions that we have ready, but it’s very hard to staff against. And this is the reason why I think the suppliers as well can gain quite of a deep understanding on what happens on the client side, and how we go about major strategic decisions, and what kind of resources we need, what kind of solutions we need. I’m talking about staff, but also technical solutions. |
| Robert |
Right? I mean, Global Speaking Radio is hosted by RWS. I work at RWS. So as a LSP side person, it was intriguing to sort of pull back the curtain through the book and read in detail. I mean, I’ve had my experiences over the years with BySide, obviously, but it was refreshing to sit back and read something that enables me and my colleagues to empathize more with our buyers. So in that sense I only say thank you to you and your colleagues for helping not educate only other colleagues on the buy side, but also on the sell side. So yeah, I think it’s a great service to the industry, and I think you guys have done a great job putting it together. I would encourage all our listeners today, check out the playbook in the link, in the description of the episode. |
| Robert |
Like Francesca said, leave comments. I think they’re called issues on GitHub. You can directly tell the team there what you’d like to see in the future, what questions you have that they can maybe take a look at in the future editorial real rounds. And if you’re feeling really, really bold, you can propose a change. Which I did actually, Francesca. A few days ago I proposed… There was a slight formatting thing in there. So I forked the book, I made a small adjustment and I proposed the change into the next edition. So I think it’s called a poll request on GitHub. So I hope to become a small contributor to the playbook in the future if you accept my change. |
| Robert |
And I just want to say thanks for coming on the show today. It’s been really great talking to you. Some of the other podcast, the other podcast industry, they explored other aspects. So I’d encourage all our listeners to go listen to those as well. And it was really fun, Francesca, to talk about the book’s inception, about how you’re looking at pulling in the community and maintenance, and what the editing experience was with the 12 of you and the sort of nature of the content. Really creating an ecosystem where opinions weren’t necessary because you were strategic and general enough to really bring in all voices. And I think that was really great. |
| Francesca |
Thank you so much for having me. It was a great conversation. |
| Robert |
Wonderful. Thanks. Talk to you next time. |
