EVERY company claims that it is desperate for talent. Because, in fact, it’s not easy to tap fully into people’s capacity and potential. Imagine an ambitious young man just starting his career at a distinguished multinational corporation, such as Coca-Cola. Does he truly know what his future will look like, or even what it should look like? It’s an issue about which the famous management guru Peter Drucker has been concerned. In his widely read article “Managing Oneself,” Drucker stressed that young knowledge workers have to become their own CEOs because today’s companies don’t really emphasize career development.

But perhaps Drucker was generalizing a bit too much. Not all giant companies task their employees with the same routine work day in and day out without also offering opportunities for more advanced challenges that will help advance their careers.

Individuals require the support provided by a well-established work environment if they seek to make good on their highest aspirations. In 1996, a young Brazilian boy named Henrique Braun joined Coca-Cola United States as a new management trainee at the company’s Atlanta headquarters. When Braun started his career at Coca-Cola as a technical engineer, he had already earned a Master of Science in industrial engineering from Michigan State University and an MBA from Georgia State University. But as he took on assignments in North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia covering supply chain, business development, market innovation and operation management, his résumé grew more sophisticated and diversified.

He worked in a variety of business regions and in various functions at group headquarters and the bottling plant. With 19 years of experience under his belt, Braun was promoted to president of Coca-Cola China & Korea, where he is responsible for the direction of the company’s third-largest global market.

Braun realized his ambition at Coca-Cola thanks mainly to the management-trainee system, through which Coca-Cola is committed to cultivating the talent of young college graduates. Because, at Coca-Cola, the talent pool is the cornerstone of the company’s entire employee system.

Coca-Cola also promotes the Management Trainee Program in China, where it provides world-class career development opportunities for fresh college graduates. Every new class of trainees consists of around 10 candidates for a three-year program. During those three years, trainees transfer between different business functions, helping to bolster their professional capability quickly within the Coca-Cola China system. As Braun noted: “The best benefit about the Coca-Cola Management Trainee Program is that it provides you with broad opportunities to explore and to learn, contributing to your career development and individual growth. During my three years as a trainee, my biggest gain undoubtedly came from collaborating with colleagues from different backgrounds. They inspired me and contributed invaluable insights for my own career path.”

Collaboration between colleagues with diverse upbringings is typical at a multinational company. Coco Lu, the vice president of human resources at Coca-Cola China & Korea, can still recall the feelings inspired by her first visit to Coca-Cola’s US headquarters.

It was, she said, as if she had stepped into a miniature version of United Nations. In fact, the variety of English dialects she heard in the Atlanta HQ — including English with Indian or German accents, among others — led her to realize that Coca-Cola was no longer a United States company, but a “United Nations company,” one that would probably prove an object of fascination to any linguist who happened to drop by. Lu worked for nearly two years in the HR Department of US headquarters before being reassigned to China last year.

A true United Nations company not only draws on a large pool of talent from different cultural and geographical backgrounds, but also welcomes talent from different professional backgrounds.

Zhang Jiantao, vice president of public affairs, communications and sustainability at Coca-Cola China & Korea joined the Coca-Cola system half a year ago from an Internet giant. It well demonstrates Coca-Cola’s ability to bring a diversified range of talent together to work toward the same goals. This sort of inclusiveness, which fosters long-lasting prosperity, is written into Coca-Cola DNA.

Braun became president of Coca-Cola China partly because his vision was international in scope. Lu went to Atlanta partly because she told the management that she aspired to become a “global person.” Similar goals are proposed by employees in the Coca-Cola system every single day. And Coca-Cola understands that the key for its future success lies in identifying individuals who can clearly articulate their personal visions and dreams, and matching them to the corresponding resources and systems in the company.

“Talent referral,” a process through which Coca-Cola encourages its employees to develop real talent beyond the requirements of their current work, is one of the key pillars of the company’s talent cultivation strategy. Employees should maintain goals for their futures at the company, a strong desire to pursue career development, and display a commitment to work hard for it. That’s because personal achievement may require them to move to another country or to give up on their existing accomplishments by moving to a new division of the business. A strong will to embrace new challenges is of the utmost importance.

Talent exchange

International assignment is vital element in Coca-Cola China’s strategy to cultivate its future leaders. These future leaders will be deployed in a number of essential positions and play key decision-making roles. Some of them will be dispatched to work at US headquarters so as to better understand the company’s global operation model.

In recent years, an increasing number of outstanding Chinese employees have been assigned to positions at headquarters or other markets, forming a strong talent pool for Coca-Cola’s global network and setting up a healthy mechanism for talent exchange.

In the China market, however, it can be difficult to convince high-end talent to transfer internationally, partly due to family and social concerns. The proportion of Chinese families in which both husband and wife have full-time careers is the highest in the world. And the international relocation of either husband or wife produces a variety of family-related constraints.

In order to support more international talent from China, Coca-Cola Global is discussing the possibility of “shifting the focus to China” by relocating some of its global operations positions to China and engaging Chinese employees in some core global projects. Coca-Cola will continue to provide opportunities to those who want international work experience, but the company will also seek to create more opportunities for those who are unable to work overseas now but have strong growth potential in order to help them gain global experience while staying in China .

As to how a multinational company can strike a harmonious balance between local and global talent, Lu, who has experience both in China and abroad, offered this insight: “Although 99 percent of Coca-Cola China’s employees are local, we cannot have a one-sided view of the localization strategy. In Coca-Cola Global, the management also hopes to maintain an appropriate ratio between local and international employees, which helps facilitate cross-regional and cross-border exchange and the flow of talent.”

A positive and healthy corporate culture will certainly encourage employees to challenge the unknown. However, it is a system that is based on reciprocity between employer and employee. If Coca-Cola Global is an ocean, then every employee is like a fish swimming through its tides. If the fish wants to explore the deeper waters, then the entire ocean must intensify the strength of waves to power its journey.

At Coca-Cola, every employee has his or her own experiences, and there are a wide variety of career paths to choose from. Here, all of you have the opportunity to become the best of yourself.