From Nokia to Adidas: Lessons in Global Sales Enablement with Sybrand Oudega

The Assembly

In this excellent interview, Adam sits down with Sybrand Oudega.

Sybrand is a global learning and talent development leader with 25 years of international experience at iconic brands like Nokia, Microsoft, and Adidas. As the former Senior Director of the Global Sales Academy at Adidas, he was responsible for the skills and performance of over 35,000 employees across 75 countries and 37 languages.

In this episode, Sybrand provides a masterclass on how to design learning programs that scale globally while connecting locally. He shares the hard-won lessons from his extensive career, including:

1. The Golden Rule of Global L&D: Sybrand explains his core principle: the success of a global team is not defined by what they create, but by how successful they make the local market teams. It’s a shift from dictating to enabling.
2. Balancing Consistency and Autonomy: Discover how to maintain a consistent global brand and core frameworks (like a service model or leadership principles) while empowering local teams to adapt the application of these skills to fit their unique cultural context.
3. The Power of Partnership: Learn why the most critical factor for success is building strong, trust-based partnerships with local market teams and involving them directly in the design and validation process.
4. Scaling the Trainers: Sybrand details the 20-week global trainer certification program his team created to build a common language and skill set across 120 trainers, ensuring that when they localised content, they did so without compromising its integrity.
5. The Technology Game-Changer: Hear how advancements in AI-powered video translation completely transformed their ability to deliver relevant, timely product training, causing content engagement to spike.
6. Lessons in Cultural Nuance: Sybrand shares his personal experience of learning the hard way that a direct, Western approach to feedback doesn't work everywhere, and references Geert Hofstede's six dimensions of culture as a valuable resource.

Sybrand offers an incredibly insightful and practical guide for any L&D professional operating in a multi-national environment. If you are looking to create learning that is both globally efficient and locally effective, this is a must-listen-to episode.

Connect with Sybrand on LinkedIn: Sybrand Oudega

And check out Geert Hofstede's six dimensions of culture: The 6 dimensions model of national culture by Geert Hofstede

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