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.