Robyn Green, VP, Global Integration

Robyn, currently based on the East Coast in the US, joined Global Integration in early 2011.  She holds an undergraduate degree in Financial Management and a graduate degree in Human Resource Education.

Her business career has been primarily dominated by financial services giving her terrific insight in to working within complex, highly regulated, challenging and constantly changing environments.  She has experience leading teams globally and running training programs around the world.

When she’s not on one of her many international assignments, Robyn has a keen interest in travel and scuba diving. Her young son constantly helps her to see the World from new perspectives, and contributes daily to her training skills.

Articles by and about Robyn Green

PR Web press release on appointment: Robyn Green Joins Global Integration

Global Integration blog: Global Integration’s New Consultant, Robyn Green

HR Zone: Robyn Green Joins Global Integration

Contact details:

Email: robyn @ global-integration.com (removing spaces, which have been added to prevent spamming)

Jul 22 2011

News International: facing problems

As Rupert Murdoch’s News International Corporation draws attention from around the World, one of the overlooked elements of the unfolding story is the pressure that was on journalists at British publication News of the World.

At Global Integration, we often look at targets and measurement in a more holistic context, but one of the lessons we have learned is the need to be careful around what we measure performance on.

Individual objectives and measures can drive people to become very one dimensional, focused only on meeting objectives. This can cause real problems in a complex organizations when, for example, functional and business objectives are not aligned or legitimately compete.

When bonuses and careers depend on hitting objectives and metrics it can be hard to find reconciliations to the trade-offs and dilemmas that are normal in complex organizations.

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Jul 15 2011

This short slide show is from Global Integration trainer Rod Farnan’s trip last week to Switzerland to deliver training for an international pharmaceutical company.

Rod Farnan is a Global Integration consultant and trainer based in the UK. These pictures are part of a set which he has allowed us to share.

Join us on Facebook for further pictures, or see more on the Global Integration Flickr channel.

Jul 12 2011

The Global Integration Time Zone app

Good news for anyone using the Global Integration time zone Meeting Planner app.

Certain cities (around India I believe) were found to display the wrong times – New Delhi actually has half hour difference, rather than the usual on the hour change, as is usual for most places in the world, which apparently threw things out.

I am pleased to report that this has now been corrected. Our apologies to anyone inconvenienced by the original.

The app is available only in the Apple App Store at the moment: if you search for ‘Global Integration’ or ‘time zone meeting planner’ you will find it in the store, either from your (Apple) device or using itunes.

Jul 11 2011

John Bland, Global Integration

Post by John Bland, Director, Global Integration, who has thought long and hard about that balance between logic, randomness, and control.

I read a really good book recently: The Drunkards Walk. How Randomness Rules our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow

Apparently some of the research was undertaken in an old people’s home.  Some people were given rooms arranged by the home and a pot plant looked after by staff.  Others were allowed to arrange their own room and look after their own plant.  Not only were all measures of happiness higher in the second group when measured after (I believe) six months, but the first group died faster too. Conclusion — people need to feel some control over their lives.

One of my colleagues worked with a software firm where they ran a similar experiment with air conditioning – the air conditioning kept the temperature steady, but people were willing to accept a far wider range of temperatures when they were able to control it by opening the window.

This resonates with me at the moment as a raft of new technology is forced upon me, and I think it also has a lot to say for those working for large organisations where it’s easy to lose the will to live.

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Jul 07 2011

Phil Stockbridge, Director, Global Integration, spots that one organization, the British Army, is bridging a ‘cultural gap’:

'Lads' culture meets 'health' culture in an army playing card

In our culture workshops, we often use a tool for reconciling cultural differences which is very well received by our participants. Whilst we focus in our programmes on some of the drivers of cultural differences we find in work, we always make the point that this tool can also be used to reconcile other ‘cultural’  differences. One common challenge to us is: ‘How do we truly reconcile apparently unbridgeable gaps?’. And whilst we readily concede that it’s a possibility, we also prepare participants to be creative in their reconciliations.

I was delighted to find a great example of a cultural reconciliation recently when visiting a UK Army base: in a box by the reception were packs of playing cards, with a sign ‘Free Cards, please help yourself’. These were being readily collected by the lads, eager to play cards later in the evening. (I also helped myself – purely from a research perspective!) They  were sponsored by Army Health Promotion – Fit for Life, Fit to Fight. Each card in the pack contained a cartoon related to health promotion; fitness, diet, personal safety, etc.. Whilst – inevitably – some cartoons were funnier than others – they all carried an important message – a message which the card players would struggle not to take notice of.

Army Health Promotion wanted to get their messages across to the soldiers – and found a way to connect with their culture by creating packs of playing cards containing the messages – a true example of a culture reconciliation where neither sides ‘cultures’ were compromised.

Interestingly, the Army employed cartoons to embed the learning points, something we at Global Integration have been doing for the last few years. After all, we know that if the learning process can be enjoyed, then the learning is likely to last.

Jul 05 2011

Blog post by Global Integration trainer and consultant, Vice President T.H.Ong, written 35,000 feet in the air while cruising at 800 mph from San Francisco towards Hong Kong.  Call it a moment of inspiration or the result of oxygen deprivation due to recirculated cabin air!

The Shenzen project as seen at http://www.stevenholl.com

Of all places to look for professional inspiration, I would not have guessed The Arts section in the NY Times.

I was reading a June 29 architecture review article by Nicolai Ouroussoff on the Venke Center by Steven Holl in Shenzhen.

Holl’s entire design concept is inspirtional in itself. Liberated by the traditional constraints of architectural design, he turned something on its end and created an elegant solution in what could have been another predictable big-box recipe product. I can’t wait to see his work in person.

The most inspirational to me, however, was Ouroussoff’s last sentence in his article:

“And it underscores why China’s experimental climate, when combined with genuine intelligience can be so exciting.”.

Here are my two wake-up calls:

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Jul 01 2011

Kevan Hall is the CEO of Global Integration which offers training in remote and mobile working within its wider portfolio of consultancy and training designed to make complex organzations faster, more efficient, less expensive to run and more satisfying to work in. Here he offers a salutary warning to those considering implementing newer ways of working for ‘green’ reasons, urging them to ensure that staff are ready for the change.

Thanks to Siemens, today #greencity has been making it’s mark by ‘trending’ on Twitter.

And, admirably, people are talking about sustainable cities. The upside is that people start discussing good, practical things like recycling and carbon offsets, and, of course, the realities are complex and financially hard to incentivize.

One of the most difficult areas is home working: firstly, working out whether it’s truly green, and secondly the financial practicalities: to what extent are companies going to pay for staff to adapt their living spaces to accommodate the equipment from PCs to filing cabinets.

There’s an expression in English (for those reading English as a second language), ‘The elephant in the room’: the taboo that people are afraid to discuss -  in this case because home working is often discussed as a right or unquestionably green and ‘good’ which sometimes prevents sensible debate and discussion.

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Jun 27 2011

Robyn Green, Global Integration, on one of her first official assignments (Italy, June 2011)

I am really pleased to finally be able to tell the world about our new US (New York) based training consultant, Robyn Green, further strengthening our US team, in particular the tri-state area (NY, NJ and CT).

Robyn’s joined us from the New York offices of investment company AllianceBernstein, where she was responsible for, amongst other things, culture, communication, team-building, coaching and training in an international environment.

Her prior experience includes roles at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., Inc, and Prudential Financial – and since a lot of our work falls in the ever changing financial sector, she’ll have a lot to contribute as we continue to evolve our own training and other service offerings.

She holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Arkansas, and a Masters Degree in Human Resource Education; concentration in Training and Development from Fordham University, New York. She is also the first of our consultants to boast having passed (or even taken) the General Securities exams , consequently holding a Series 7 and 63 license and becoming a Registered Representative.

We knew she’d fit in well from the moment we met her, and she proved it when she flew to Europe recently to join our recent team meeting. There she good-naturedly accepted being tossed out of a white water raft on several occasions – and had some great input into the use and development of some of our training exercises.

I hope everyone will join me in wishing her a long and successful career with Global Integration. We’re looking forward to working with her, and know our customers will as well.

Author Kevan Hall is CEO of Global Integration, which offers consulting and training in people management in complex, matrixed, virtual and global organizations.

Jun 21 2011