But now, the company wanted to change the way it made decisions. It wanted to create stronger partnerships and more teamwork between its employees and get them to think about their decisions not just in terms of their own regions but in terms of the entire company around the world. To do this, the company decided to pull all its branch office managers into a team and ask them to make decisions together — to move beyond their individual needs in their own offices and look at each decision in terms of how it would affect the entire global operations of the company.

David and his team at APL had already built strong relationships with the managers of each of the company’s local offices. They worked with the managers at the Hong Kong office, the Japan office, the Europe office and the U.S. office. But up until now, they had worked with each of these people separately, helping each office with its own individual needs. They didn’t know much about the overall global needs of the company; their focus, just like the individual branch office managers had been had been on specific regions not the whole world.

David wondered what his customer’s decision would mean for APL.

Should he and his team continue to do business as they always had? After all, they had been very successful working one-on-one with the branch offices. Maybe they could still work that way. Or, should he and his team start doing their job in a new way just like their customer?