Marek “Miki” Cohen was recently appointed as Israeli “site manager” for “Hearit”, a Raleigh NC based company which develops and sells hearing aids which are worn on clothes, not inserted into the ear.

Hearit  had recently purchased “Orhatof”, the Israel based R&D centre where Marek was the Head of New Technologies. And thus it came to pass that Marek became Hearit Israel’s new site leader.

A material engineer by training, Marek found his new role challenging-and contacted a tall, handsome, opinionated Canadian born Israeli consultant to help him “focus on what my job needs to be”. After 3 months of work which consisted of weekly meetings, the following outputs were defined for Marek’s job.

1. Maintain and augment the level of trust between the Israeli site and HQ. 
2. Ensure the strategic positioning of Hearit Israel within Hearit Corporation by focusing on high end products, long term retention of talented engineering staff and willingness to take aggressive ‘time to market” committments.
3.  Relocate Israel-based engineering staff to Raleigh to build senior level relationships in corporate.
4. Spend one week a month in Raleigh to take part in senior management meetings face to face. 
5. Build strategic relationships with the CEO to find an effective way to back-channel around the Raleigh based staff who tried to micromanage their Israeli colleagues.

The triggers for OD consulting in off-shore development centres often stem from the appointment of new executives on either side of the ocean, preventive medicine for a new project that needs a high level of cooperation, a breakdown in trust, or crisis with a delayed delivery of a product which causes mutual finger pointing.

Methodology for consulting to such projects are available (gratis) with the author.