Management in China

Prof Keith Goodall has just published his new book “Management Education and Training in China” (Routledge). On this occasion TMSM has interviewed Prof Goodall, grasping the experience of an academic professor and consultant with a professional experience in Europe and China. The idea is to understanding analogies and differences in management training and development between the emerging China and the rest of the world.

Goodall investigates the growth of management training and consultancy companies, and analyses the perceived quality and utility of management training from the perspective of senior Chinese and expatriate managers. It summarises the current trends in management training and development in China, and outlines the likely course of future developments. Overall, this book is a comprehensive account of management training and development in China, and is an important resource in an area that has hitherto seen little substantive research.

1)Which the main difference between management in China and in the rest of the world?

It's difficult to generalise because of the huge variety of types and sizes of business in China and the large differences in business cultures within Europe. Certainly the first word a foreign manager learns in China is probably 'guanxi' or 'relationships'. Whereas American managers, say, will typically negotiate a legal contract and then strengthen relationships as business goes well, Chinese managers often want to develop a relationship first and then sign a contract. Of course, Italian managers will also recognise the primary importance of relationships. Another difference between Chinese management and many other countries is the degree of attention paid to 'face' in formal relationships. A foreign manager who gives direct, public criticism of his staff might well be seen as unduly aggressive and rude. The foreign manager may, in turn, feel that more open and direct conversations would be helpful. A final difference that many foreign managers notice is the high degree of 'power distance' in traditional Chinese manager-subordinate relations. When I ask Chinese managers how a good subordinate is traditionally expected to behave the word that most often comes back is 'obedient'. American managers expect much more 'proactive' behaviour from their subordinates.

2)Is there something that Europe can learn from China?

The importance of balancing respect for tradition with fast-paced change.

3)How China, USA and Europe can improve the organisation through team work?

By not over-emphasising the importance of teams. They can, of course, be useful in certain situations but are often over-used and can be ineffiicient. Managers need to evaluate the nature of the task carefully before turning to a team.

4)Human Resource Department: it is still a key function. Why and what

do you think HR can be useful to overcome the crisis?

I don't think HR is necessarily a key function in all organisations (after all HP didn't have an HR department until they had around 250 employees).

However, in the crisis many HR managers have understood that it is a great time to go shopping for talent and that they should be as concerned with retaining key staff as with downsizing.

Intervista a Federico Rampini

L'ho  intervistato  al telefono, lui a New York io a Milano. Ci siamo dati appuntamento via mail e lui, puntualissimo mi ha risposto dal cellulare. E' un uomo molto pratico che ho sempre visto come un guru e che ho scoperto ha una dimensione di vita anche normale. Quando ci siamo salutati mi ha chiesto scusa per il rumore, aveva una cena in casa con ragazzi e bambini che rendevano ancora più reale la nostra conversazione. Abbiamo chiacchierato un po' informalmente ma poi ha risposto con molta disponibilità a moltissime domande.

1)    Ritorno al futuro? Dagli Stati Uniti alla Cina, quali i punti chiave del dopo crisi?

La Cina ha accelerato processi che erano in atto. Ad esempio ha saputo rafforzare il suo peso nel mondo. La Cina non è mai entrata in recessione, ha incrementato gli investimenti all’estero e, attraverso la perdita di prestigio dell’Occidente  ha saputo rafforzare il suo sistema alternativo.

Per quanto riguarda gli USA, il verdetto è ancora aperto, il governo di Obama è “giovane” ed è ancora in fase di sviluppo.

Possiamo dire che si tratta di un ritorno al futuro, di una riedizione aggiornata e modificata del New Deal di Roosvelt.

Ma nulla può essere come prima.

2)    “Questa crisi può essere un’occasione per accelerare il cambiamento”. Dallo choc energetico

 al protezionismo rispettabile. Quali i punti salienti in nome dell’ambiente e di quello che lei definisce consumo frugale?

Come i consiglieri di Obama hanno sottolineato, non si deve sprecare una buona crisi. Una crisi di tale intensità e così profonda si genera soltanto ogni tre generazioni. Anche in passato ci sono state occasioni per riuscire a operare cambiamenti, ma coalizioni e resistenze politiche e sociali hanno reso impossibile che tale cambiamento potesse realmente diventare reale. L’establishment Usa non avrebbe mai accettato riforme come quelle ora in atto, la politica ambientale era bloccata da lobby (basta pensare al settore automobilistico). Ora è arrivato il momento anche per la riforma sanitaria, e tale riforma andrà inevitabilmente a  coinvolgere anche le aziende statunitensi. La diminuzione della competitività americana è diventata sempre maggiore e gli aspetti assicurativi non possono certamente essere d’aiuto in questo senso.

Il discorso del consumo frugale è importante. La crisi ha ridato forte credibilità alle politiche ambientaliste, l’aumento del prezzo del petrolio e la scarsità delle risorse naturali sono una situazione che deve essere affrontata.

Nascono, di conseguenza, nuovi modelli di consumo, così come una forte attenzione al risparmio è indispensabile, il tutto passando attraverso un uso oculato delle risorse ambientali ed economiche.

Stanno cambiando anche gli stili di vita dei ceti medi e dei ceti abbienti americani che storicamente fanno tendenza, il cambiamento sta realmente partendo anche da qui.

3)    Quali insegnamenti può trarre l’Occidente dalla Cina definita da lei vincente e perché?

La Cina è vincente perché il suo capitalismo di stato ha saputo mettere in campo risorse economiche importanti per rilanciare la crescita attraverso investimenti pubblici in infrastrutture. La modernizzazione è aumentata ed è passata attraverso la sperimentazione di  nuove “ricette” nelle quali l’attenzione per l’ambiente è diventata molto importante, così come il ricorso ad energie rinnovabili e alla tecnologie verdi.  La Cina sta mobilitando tutte le leve di investimento pubblico attraverso una pianificazione a lungo termine e con una estrema lucidità ed attenzione verso il nuovo.

4)    L’impero americano è davvero in declino nonostante i messaggi e gli “insegnamenti” che

 Obama sembra proferire?

Obama sta rilanciando il prestigio USA e la credibilità di questa grande potenza. La vitalità e la democrazia americana tuttavia non basternno ad arrestare il declino del peso relativo degli Usa nel mondo. Si tratta di una cambiale in scadenza legata all’effetto dell’imponente deficit pubblico.

I pesanti debiti costringeranno ad una diminuzione del tenore di vita, gli USA saranno sempre più dipendenti da chi finanzia il suo debito pubblico, Cina in primis.

Intervista pubblicata su The Work Style Magazine.

Gli autori di "Strategia Oceano Blu"

Ho intervistato questi autori per il magazine "The Work Style Magazine". Si sono dimostrate due persone amabili oltre che esperti. Il testo è un valido strumento per provare a pensare "fuori dagli schemi", non solo in ambito di strategia, ma anche di marketing, un  modo per guardare l'oceano con occhi diversi!

Cina e mondo del lavoro

LO SPIRITO DELLA COLTIVAZIONE DEL RISO APPLICATO ALLA VOLONTA' DI LAVORARE SEMPRE E COMUNQUE

With more than 1.3 billion inhabitants, or 20% of world population, and an im-mensely wide territory, China cannot be considered one indistinct country when discussing the consequences of and responses to economic crisis.

“To China’s south, the Pearl River Delta encompasses Guangzhou and is strongly linked to Hong Kong. The Delta is home to China’s export-oriented industries, in such areas as toys and textiles, and these are suffering because of the crisis. Up to 80% have experienced falls in their orders and many have already closed,” explain Saro Capozzoli, General Man- ager of Jesa, a firm headquartered in Shanghai and specialized in providing consulting services during the settle- ment phase of new plants.

“In the north, around Beijing and Tian- jin, many firms belong to the so-called ‘heavy industry’ sectors where the mar- ket has not stopped and there is con- tinued business growth” adds Marco Gentili, Partner in Jesa. “In the Yangtze River Delta where Shanghai is located, this economic region is geared towards China’s domestic market and the impact of the global crisis is less serious”.

Saro Capozzoli stresses, however, that the impact of the crisis is also uneven for different types of businesses even within these regions.

“The crisis is more evident for the 630,000 foreign companies operating in China where the source of economic insecurity is external with their markets undergoing downturn,” he added. “For another part of the business community, they still see infrastructure continue to be built. For example, some 36 bridges were built in China in just the last three years.”

At the end of 2008, China’s Central Gov-

ernment announced a massive $US750b stimulus spending package with a large proportion of funds going to expanding the country’s railway network and hous- ing. China is where the globe’s fastest and arguably biggest rollout of 3G broadband services is currently taking place. “Chinese employees accept sacrifices for the ‘common good’ and everyone tries to work in a more effective way to ob- tain the best result”, Marco Gentili notes. “Many companies have reduced their ex- penses, especially on holiday festivities and everyone has accepted this situation, hoping for a change in the mid-term”. To boost consumer spending, the Govern- ment has given some signals that it would extend reform to its VAT system while tax reductions already underway have put more money into the bank accounts of China’s consumers and households.

Merit wins

In China, personal connections or ‘guangxi’ is an important first step to- wards finding potential business part- ners, clients and friends. Both Saro Capozzoli and Marco Gentili are at pains to point out that only meritocracy will enable this relationship to develop beyond this important means of introduction.

“In modern China, people are managed in a flexible way and they feel free to move from one company to another one if their interests or ambitions are not met. A lot more young Chinese are exposed to the way the outside world works, and many of them have gone overseas to study” they add. “When they move up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, people here are driven by status and that will de- termine which company they work for.” Regarding career matters, performance remains core to effective professional cooperation and people are reward- ed in ways commensurate to achieve- ments and outcomes.

“Like elsewhere in the modern world, companies need to pay a lot of atten- tion to rewarding employees who are innovative, whether it is through find- ing solutions to problems or coming up with new and successful products for the marketplace.”

“Efficiency depends on transparen- cy, leadership and participation by all in the company,” Capazzoli explains while noting some difference in the Chinese workplace.

Da "THE WORK STYLE MAGAZINE" 2009

In Microsoft: postazione flessibile per menti flessibili

 INTERIVISTA A MR. FRANK ABBENHUIJS HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER MICROSOFT WEST EUROPE

Ho incontrato Frank dopo una conferenza. E' un uomo grande in tutti i sensi, alto, possente e deciso.  Appena abbiamo iniziato a parlate di Risorse Umane e di work place in Microsoft si è trasformato in un uomo caldo, appassionato e ...deciso su come ben gestire le risorse. Un esempio da seguire!

““Microsoft’s mission is to enable peo-ple and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential. It is not just only about technology but about people working together,” says Frank Abbenhuijs, Senior Hr Director for Western Europe, Microsoft.

In Microsoft’s vision of the world of work, creativity is the result of asyn- chronous interaction without the necessary formalities of old. These may range from meeting face to face over coffee to multimedia conferencing over multiple time-zones and continents us- ing the tools that are now familiar to everyone, including MSN Messenger or Windows Mobile powered devices. “

The workplace of the past as defined by hierarchy, rules and directive from the top is rapidly disappearing. The workplace nowadays is not a fixed of- fice, but rather a porous node within multiple networks of exchange and collaboration which telecommunica- tion technologies can facilitate and en- hance,” Abbenhuijs further adds. From the Microsoft perspective, human interaction and collaboration fused with telecommunication technologies is, however, not enough on their own. “Trust is at the base of every kind of activity and does not come automati- cally. Trust has to be invested in and earned. Relying on the character, abil- ity, strength or reputation of another human being is something that re- quires time and only strengthens with the experience of working together.” With this in mind, Microsoft is driven to create inspiring environs in which its technologies are seamlessly inte grated, and where people can pro- actively participate from any time or place. Abenhuijs is at pains to point out that even for Microsoft, innova- tion is not just about better communi- cation technologies. “Microsoft’s HR Directors meet two to three times a year to discuss busi- ness as well as to undertake team- building. We have also adapted so- cial innovations from the world of speed dating where people discuss one-to-one about specific topics, switching partners every thirty min- utes. This is one way that people can communicate directly with each oth- er and where hierarchy is flattened by eliminating information gatekeep ers,” concludes Abbenhuijs.

Intervista a Alan Goldman

Il nuovo libro di Alan Goldman, con esempi concreti, spiega come e quando un leader deve non diventare "Toxic"
Dal mio articolo in "The Work Style Magazine" issue 2.

In the middle of a global recession and international financial crisis, Dr. Alan Goldman’s new book, Transforming Toxic Leaders, should be of serious interest. A number of practical cases lead the reader to apply suggestions to avoid to become a Toxic Leader.

INTERESTING THING: in the endorsements on the back cover, the reader will find the testimonials of premier global “toxic leadership” experts including the renowned Manfred Kets de Vries of INSEAD Global Leadership Centre in Paris; and Barbara Kellerman of the Harvard University’s - Harvard Kennedy School, USA.

The author alerts us that bad leadership ignored or undetected is extremely costly and damaging to businesses, partners, clients and customers. He shows how bad behavior and destructive decision making turns “toxic” when it spreads throughout organisations and supply chains and “infects” the entire company. The costly results of toxic leadership include: massive turnover; falling productivity and morale;  plunging motivation; grievances and lawsuits; acts of sabotage; chronic absenteeism and lateness; stress and anxiety induced illnesses; injuries on the job and a hostile, abusive, suspicious and undermining workplace.

Goldman tells seldom heard stories of seemingly successful leaders who turn toxic. and illustrates how the abrupt and mean spirited terminations of employees by the Bentley Pacific CEO turned him into a toxic leader. Companywide fear, trauma and grievances follow. What is the alternative? In contrast to the toxic Bentley Pacific “downsizing from hell” the author offers the “positive downsizing” of a rival CEO at North Country Solutions, another engineering company down the road. Rather than traumatizing employees, CEO Lane Blake transforms a potentially toxic downsizing into a supportive and culture building affair!

Another way that a leader turns “toxic” is when he brings his “pre-existing” troubled mental and emotional state into the workplace and it negatively impacts strategy, decisions and people skills. Bullying, panic attacks, extreme impatience,  physical and emotional abuse, obsessive and compulsive behavior, disorganization and confusion, and an inability to productively collaborate in executive teams are but a few of the troubling behaviors observed in leaders who turn toxic due to pre-existing conditions.

Throughout Transforming Toxic Leaders, the consultant is summoned fairly late in the game. Human resources, upper echelon leaders, employees and followers do not respond to bad leader behavior until they are forced to! The massive exit of engineers from SkyWaves in the form of transfer requests and the plunging productivity finally alerted the new HR director to the fact that something was terribly wrong. Once the consultant was retained he quickly learned that physical and emotional abuse among the engineers had been swept aside and not dealt with for approximately six years! What were the results? Leadership was “toxic” by virtue of ignoring, denying and trivializing abusive behavior. Moreover, toxic leadership had unwittingly created and sustained a dysfunctional culture that allowed bullying to metastasize throughout the company. In other cases presented in the book Goldman describes destructive leaders who are adored and applauded by a majority of their followers.  Such “yes men” followers are mostly concerned with “what’s in it for me” and not jeopardizing their performance evaluations. Followers who do not report bad leader behavior are also concerned that any negative reports on their part might serve to threaten their prospects for advancement in the company.

Ironically, Transforming Toxic Leaders also illustrates how toxic leadership is not all negative and can in fact be a positive force within an organisation’s life. In the case of Dr. Ivan Lorimer, head cardiac surgeon for Eisenhower Heart Institute, he exhibited narcissistic traits, symptoms of an intermittent explosive disorder and obsessive compulsive tendencies that made him difficult for his surgical team to deal with. But it also drove him to command excellence from his staff and for his patients. As an elite mitral valve surgeon and leader of his institute’s cardiology division, Dr. Lorimer was an extraordinary perfectionist in part driven by his narcissistic and obsessive compulsive traits.

TWSM “Are there more toxic leaders than in the past?”

AG “Overall there appear to be more toxic leaders than in the past in part due to the fact that our movement into flatter, decentralized and empowerment oriented organisations has vastly increased the number of “leaders.” Moreover, the movement toward globalization, cross cultural workforces, and e-communications has all dramatically contributed toward not only new leadership prospects but also to the propensity for toxic leader and employee behavior. While there is no denying that employees are vulnerable to bad leaders, it is also true that no leader is fully immune from the potential wrath of an employee who wants to report bad behavior or belittle his leader online – since this may not be an in person, face-to-face option. In addition, crossing borders opens the doors for toxic leader behavior due to ethnocentrism, rigidity, and a failure to blend somewhat different approaches to management, teams and appraisal”

Finally, an unique feature of Goldman’s approach is a clear and succinct blueprint for transforming toxic leaders. The author provides one hundred and twenty-five toxic leader behaviors and policies and offers a detoxification strategy for every single item cited. In total, HR directors, managers and CEOs are provided with a hands on, practical, resourceful and thoroughly innovative cataloguing of 125 detoxification strategies based on the cases in the book. Each detoxification strategy is both theoretically sound and pragmatically oriented and provides prototypes for practicing leaders to apply the principles in their own organisations.

La "Green" revolution

Ho avuto modo di incontrare Fabrice Lecler, un pioniere del mondo green declinato in tutte le sue forme.
Fabrice è un giovane uomo, spontaneo, un creativo, ma soprattutto un uomo che sa guardare al pianeta con amore e con speranza. 
Abbiamo chiacchierato moltissimo (davanti ad una premuta ovviamente biologica) e mi ha raccontato la sua esperienza, la sua vita e la sua quotidianità in cui la tecnologia ben si sposa con il rispetto della vita, dei tempi della vita ....la vita quella vera, fatta di famiglia, di lavoro, di spesa, di traffico....Il suo sguardo positivo e il suo impegno nel "green" mi hanno aperto un mondo e mi hanno insegnato a guardare il mondo  con uno sguardo diverso.

Fabrice Leclerc , tra gli altri progetti, ha creato in Svizzera il Lab “Fresh air” nel quale lavorano e progettano i migliori esperti internazionali in ambito “green”.

Il periodo che stimo vivendo “non è un periodo solo di  crisi, ma un periodo di cambiamento, noi stiamo già operando nel ventunesimo  secolo e quindi l’atteggiamento è quello del bambino: dobbiamo inventarci un nuovo sistema, dobbiamo utilizzare l’arma della creatività in tutti i suoi aspetti, dobbiamo essere capaci di cambiare il nostro modo di pensare, liberando creatività e competenze”.

D Come si concilia questa filosofia “green” in un’ottica di profitto aziendale?

FL “Il mondo dell’individualismo è finito, siamo entrati nel mondo olistico in cui la persona va considerata nella sua totalità. Le risorse migliori solo le risorse che portano creatività nel rispetto del pianeta.

D Che impatto ha questo approccio in ambito organizzativo?

FL”Gli spostamenti per raggiungere il posto di lavoro possono essere ridotti con l’uso del web. Le persone danno il meglio di se stesse se possono continuare a vivere avendo tempo libero e potendo sviluppare passioni e interessi. L’ufficio concepito nel senso classico del termine non ha più senso di esistere, inquina, costa molto e può anche diminuire la produttività delle risorse qualificate che non hanno più la possibilità di dare spazio alla loro creatività, intesa nel senso più ampio del termine. La mia esperienza in ambito accademico mi ha dimostrato che sempre più le persone, i migliori talenti, rivolgono la loro attenzione ad aziende che pensano e che curano le persone come esseri nella loro totalità e non solo come prestatori d’opera, ancora una volta l’approccio diventa olistico.

L’investimento in formazione e training sulle persone diventa un investimento sul lungo periodo, la risorsa umana che si sente valorizzata come persona migliora la sua performance e si “fidelizza” alla società che ha reso possibile  il connubio lavoro-benessere.

Oggi l'elite è GREEN e le informazione del business dimostrano che stiamo cambiando di secolo, e che il GREEN è la nostra prossima evoluzione ( o se no , non ci sarà più evoluzione umana sul pianeta )