A workshop reflection on power, visibility, and the uncomfortable questions GM must ask itself

Global Mobility has a strange problem. It is essential to business success, yet often excluded from the conversations that shape it. It manages enormous risk, yet struggles to be seen as a strategic function. It delivers value every day — and yet, when leadership looks around the room, GM is frequently not there.

Our recent workshop, The Power of Positioning: Turning GM into a Strategic Force, was designed to confront this paradox head-on. Co-hosted with MasteringGM, and supported by our partners Vialto, WorkFlex, and crossculture academy, the workshop brought together a diverse group of Global Mobility leaders over two days to explore how power, positioning, and organisational dynamics shape the role of GM and why operational excellence alone does not translate into strategic influence.

What emerged was not a set of tidy answers, but a series of uncomfortable questions. These are the questions Global Mobility professionals must be willing to ask — and answer — if the function is to move from order-taker to strategic force.

The Core Tension: Value Created vs. Value Seen 

Participants quickly identified a central disconnect. Global Mobility creates the value that business leaders need — talent deployed, assignments executed, compliance managed, families settled. But too often, that value remains invisible. 

This is not a capability problem. It is not a performance problem. It is a visibility problem. And invisible functions rarely shape strategy. They implement decisions made by others. 

The workshop surfaced a hard truth: if the Global Mobility function disappeared tomorrow, would senior leadership actually understand what had been lost? For many organisations, the answer is uncomfortable.

Who Really Decides? Mapping Power and Blockers

A significant portion of the workshop focused on a question that GM professionals often avoid: Who can block me? And equally important: Who really drives decisions?

Participants mapped the formal and informal power structures in their organisations. The findings were revealing. In many cases, the people who decide who gets sent on international assignments are not in Global Mobility. Managers decide. Business leaders decide. Sometimes decisions are made based on availability, personal relationships, or assumptions about who “fits”, not on strategic talent development or business alignment.

Global Mobility is then brought in after the decision has already been made. This is not partnership. It is administration.

The workshop challenged participants to confront this reality directly. Where is Global Mobility situated in the organisation? Does it sit under HR, under Finance, under Operations? Where it sits shapes what it can see, what it can influence, and what it can control. How much time does Global Mobility actually get in strategic meetings? For most, the answer is: not enough. And when GM is absent from those conversations, it cannot shape the decisions that matter.

The Stakeholder Question: Trusted Partner or Service Provider?

Global Mobility as a trusted partner? This was a phrase that resonated and also provoked scepticism. Trust is not granted. It is earned through consistent delivery, strategic insight, and relational capital. 

But trust also requires understanding. Participants explored the role perception of stakeholders. What do business leaders think Global Mobility does? What do HR partners think? What does Talent Management think? The answers varied — and often revealed misalignment. 

This led to one of the workshop’s most important conclusions: Global Mobility must break out of its internal perspective and connect with Talent Management. The two functions are deeply interdependent. Talent needs mobility to develop leaders, fill critical roles, and build global capability. Mobility needs Talent to ensure that assignments are driven by strategic workforce planning — not ad hoc decisions. 

Without this connection, Global Mobility remains trapped in execution mode, processing moves rather than shaping the talent strategy that drives them.

The Resource Reality: Competing with Other Functions 

What resources does Global Mobility have? And just as importantly: What resources does it need? 

Participants were honest about the constraints. Global Mobility competes with other functions for budget, for attention, for headcount. It is often under-resourced relative to the complexity of what it manages, e.g. immigration, tax, relocation, compliance, family support, risk. 

Global Mobility must deliver. That is non-negotiable. But it must also be given the resources to deliver strategically, not just operationally. The workshop explored how GM can make the case for investment by linking its work to business outcomes, not just cost per assignment, but time-to-productivity, retention of internationally experienced talent, and leadership pipeline development.

The Information Question: What Do You Know and Who Knows It?

What information does Global Mobility have? This question revealed another layer of the positioning challenge. 

Global Mobility sits on a wealth of data: who is moving where, why, at what cost, with what success rates. But too often, that data is not aggregated, not analysed, and not communicated in a language that business leaders understand. 

The workshop challenged participants to move beyond operational reporting. Communication about the objective is decisive. If Global Mobility cannot articulate what it is trying to achieve — in business terms — then it cannot expect others to value it.

Unusual Measures for Visibility

One of the workshop’s most provocative discussions centred on a difficult truth: Global Mobility requires unusual measures to gain visibility. 

Working harder does not make the function more visible. Operational excellence, paradoxically, can make Global Mobility less visible, because when things run smoothly, no one notices the expertise behind the process. 

Visibility requires deliberate action. It requires putting the function in rooms where it is not expected. It requires telling stories about consequences, not just activities. It requires building alliances with stakeholders who can advocate for Global Mobility when GM is not in the room. 

Global Mobility as a trusted partner? Yes, but only if GM is willing to fight for that position. 

The Simulation: Experiencing Power Firsthand

At the heart of the workshop was a high-impact simulation game. Participants actively engaged in running a complex system, experienced shifting power structures, and saw firsthand how decisions are shaped by influence, relationships, and positioning rather than formal roles. 

The simulation revealed what no lecture could: the emotional reality of power dynamics. Who gets heard? Who gets ignored? Who has the information, and who is left guessing? What power plays is Global Mobility subject to? And just as importantly: What power does Global Mobility itself hold and how can it be used? 

The Uncomfortable Conclusion

The workshop did not end with easy answers. It ended with a clearer understanding of the questions. 

What design options does Global Mobility have? More than it thinks — but only if it is willing to move beyond policy administration and into strategic partnership. 

Global Mobility must deliver. Yes. But it must also be positioned to deliver. And positioning is not something that happens to a function. It is something a function does. 

Stakeholder management decides. This was perhaps the workshop’s clearest takeaway. The future of Global Mobility will not be determined by the quality of its policies alone. It will be determined by the quality of its relationships, the strength of its positioning, and its willingness to claim a seat at the table and then use it. 

The Power of Positioning is not a workshop about doing Global Mobility better. It is a workshop about being seen, heard, and valued for what Global Mobility already does. That is a different challenge. And it requires a different kind of courage.