Today is Saturday, April 16. I’ve just returned from a 2-day company offsite meeting with about 50 of the Senior Leaders of the company I work with. Oh my gosh – I wish there were words to adequately convey what a cool, odd, enlightening, and challenging event this was for me.
Where to start….
One of the things that jumped out at me most is the juxtaposition (cool word, eh?) of equality and competition. Ever since Monique and I arrived here we’ve noticed that the Chinese are ALWAYS doing the next “thing” bigger or better than anyone else. Longest bridge, biggest population, largest port, fastest train, deepest mine, widest ship, strongest economy, blah blah blah. (Now that I’ve pointed this out, you may start to notice it) Seriously – we laugh about this every time we hear another “we’re better than you” example – so much so that we make silly exaggerated examples to ourselves – it’s sort of a fun sport. We try not to be inappropriate or rude, just sarcastic (grin)
Anyway – what I witnessed at this offsite is that despite the cultural need to be bigger and better than the next guy, there is also an amazing sense of egalitarianism built into the culture. I saw situations where a lowly Management Trainee was allowed (encouraged) to challenge some ideas put forth from no less than the COO. And it was OK! During a team building exercise one of the most senior leaders was sort of a klutz, and he was widely dissed for his klutziness, and he laughed right along with the rest of the crowd – he was just one of the team. Yet throw into this weird mix, the concept of competition in EVERYTHING. For example, we had several team-building exercises and in the end, everything boiled down to which team’s team-building efforts were best – they were actually scored! We filled out anonymous surveys about how various departments did their jobs, and at the end of the offsite meeting, the winners and losers of the surveys were announced. We had brainstorming sessions which resulted in PowerPoint presentations to share our ideas. Those presentations ended up being ranked, with “winners” and … well not “losers”, but “anti-winners”. Oddly, no one seemed to feel bad about their “anti-winning”.
So somehow it boils down to this: everyone is truly deemed to be equal, but nonetheless everything and everyone is measured and scored with the results being made more public than any westerner would ever feel comfortable with. But the scores are not overly relied-upon, because magically somehow everyone is equal in the end anyway and no one seems to feel bad if they aren’t the “best”. It is SOOO hard to understand.
Another realization is that while the Chinese do some things REALLY REALLY well (think opening exercises of the 2008 Olympics), they do other things not-so-well, and don’t seem to notice the difference. For example, the venue where this event was held was pretty amazing. Very cool architecture, with a flair for modern Asian influences. On the surface it “appeared” to be a top-of-the-line 5 star quality location. Yet on the drive in, as we passed over the majestic moat around the facility, I spied disgusting floaty-things in the water – LOTS of them!!! Mere meters away from sheer swankiness. It was literally as though “over here” is 5-star quality but “over there” is simply “over there”. I guess when you have limited resources, you have to draw the line somewhere. Regardless, they might be better served to re-deploy some of the 20 or 30 women using bamboo branches to sweep the occasional stray leaf out of the parking lot, and have them go scoop gross things out of the canal. You know, first impressions and all that. Hard to understand.
Another thing I noticed is that although the Chinese are clearly trying to improve how they do things, and are pretty proud of their accomplishments (for which they absolutely SHOULD be proud), there seems to be in innate deference to all things Western. I (being the only foreigner at the event) was REPEATEDLY asked how we do things in the west. No matter what I said, it got written down as “best practice”. Now, maybe they were just being polite and writing it down to make me feel good, but I don’t think that was the case. Although I have to say that many of the things the Chinese do could be easily incorporated as best practices in Western businesses, yet there appears to be a collective unwritten, unspoken belief on their part that their processes, etc., are just not quite good enough.
You know, I hear lots of people in the US worrying about how the Chinese are going to “take over the world”. Trust me, I’ve come to observe that the average Chinese on the street (or in my office) has NO designs on “taking over the world”. They pretty much just want a larger apartment, maybe be able to afford a car or nicer Mo-Ped, or in the best of all worlds, at least be able to afford an iPhone – but not to actually “take over the world”. The Chinese government, on the other hand, wants to improve things for their citizens at all costs (keep the natives from getting restless), which results in the aggressive acquisition of resources around the world. What we see translates into “the Chinese trying to take over the world” – In reality I think they are just trying to get what they want/need. Seems pretty similar to what EVERY country does.
Despite all of this, while the “standard” of living is improving for many Chinese (they are buying more things), one thing that isn’t improving much is the “quality” of living. For example, sanitation remains a SERIOUS challenge here. Workmanship remains very low – something built new this year that looks amazing seems to be falling apart next year. Being able to trust what you get for your purchase is always in question. While these seem to be small and subtle things – to me they speak volumes about the future. A population can only start to become “world-class” if they ACT “world-class”. These are not things that change in one generation – these types of things are institutional. And in a population as large as China’s, I’m not sure you EVER change these things. For example, in the states we don’t really think twice about drinking water from our tap. Here, you DO have to think twice about drinking ANYTHING – even if it is bottled water (make sure the little plastic tab hasn’t been broken – it’s not unheard of for some unscrupulous store owner to just “refill” the bottled water – urg). How do you change THAT kind of behavior?
On a more personal basis – I had a hard time keeping up with all the discussions. I’ve learned that our amazing brains can decipher multiple conversations in a single room and somehow keep them separated – at least if they take place in our mother tongue. But put 4 teams of people discussing different topics in a large space using a second language, and then have sub-discussions taking place within each group, and I find my feeble little brain just resorts to taking it all in as equally important and undifferentiated data – thus useless. A cacophony (‘nother cool word) of Chinese words all with equal importance, thus NO importance. BTW – add to this the fact that people were using business jargon I’d never heard, combined with varying accents, etc. – well, I’ll just say it made for some LOOONG meetings!
Fortunately, since I did NOT already know most of these Senior Leaders, and most of them assumed I could not understand or speak Chinese, when I chatted with them in a one on one situation, I WOW’d them. That always feels nice.
Finally one last weird insight. Remember that I live in COMMUNIST China. Most of the people I work with are sworn members of the Communist Party. It is sort of a given that if you want to exceed in your career, you’d better be a member of the Party. Some are more energetic in their Party affiliation than others, if you catch my drift. To that end, there is a special guy in the company, technically the Number 3 guy behind the CEO and the Deputy CEO, who is the Liaison to the Chinese Communist Party. In this case, Mr. Fong. He did not appear to be overly skilled in business topics. Pretty sure he landed his role by being a good party member – whatever that entails. Given his role, and the nominal importance of showing loyalty to the party, Mr. Fong had a few things to say in our closing meeting. Snore. Wish you could have seen the “rapt attention” that was being paid to his comments. Snore. I could see people physically trying to widen their eyes to avoid falling asleep. Bobbing heads were everywhere. “Ooops – staaaay awaaake!” I smiled outwardly as I thought of the voice of the parent or teacher on the Charlie Brown specials. “Whaaa wa wa WAAA whaa.”
Well, there you have it. Another special opportunity to see a side of China that most don’t get. All in all, it was an eye-opening experience (except for the case of Mr. Fong’s comments) and one which causes me to be hopeful for the future and grateful for my new friendships with a lot of very amazing individuals.
Cheers to all.
Jay
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