Before becoming the seventh generation President & CEO of Hollingsworth & Vose, an almost 300-year-old global leader in filtration and energy storage solutions, I spent seven years living and working in China. The experience changed the way I think about business and the world and taught me one fundamental lesson that drives my work today. It’s not your revenue, your number of employees, or even the addresses of your offices that make you a global company. If you want to truly be global, you have to be global in your thinking, in your mindset, and in your infrastructure.

My journey to this realization started in 2007 when I was working for General Electric and signed on for two years abroad. The initial plan was to go to Belgium, but about six weeks before we were slated to depart, my wife and I found out that plans had changed and we were off to Shanghai, China instead. We had both been eager to spend time abroad, so we adjusted to the new plan and set off with our children, who were four and five at the time.