Doing business in Asia, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Russia.

What parts of the Past Can China Build On?

Hi Bill, thanks for the invite to add my two-bits to a terrific blog. Your travels and stories reminded me of a question that arose from one MBA class I taught there: Students investigate this question for their leadership class: “What parts from the past can China build on to create a better future for all its people?” Seems a good question for leadership to investigate too… What do you think?

Even though I also work in SA, Europe, , , and many other places, China etched a deep place within my soul. It was June 7^th, 2004 when I headed off to teach MBA students and several leaders along the Yangtze River . The courses in Business Ethics and Leadership are part of an International University with roots in California .  I also taught brain based business leadership tactics to the Chinese leaders there, and they created brain based tactics to improve business practices. Now there is a mouthful for another entry….

Often I ask myself what is so different about my work in China? It boils down to the people. I’ve concluded that after so many years of Mao’s oppression, people there are hungry for openly shared knowledge. They welcome new ideas, and appear eager to try stuff out, regardless of cost or effort. Do you think we’ve lost that raw hunger as Americans?  I was surprised to discover that my recent books were translated by the VP of the University of Beijing and distributed across by their publishers there, after a talk I gave on  brain based tactics, in Singapore.

The city of Chongquin  has 30 million although I’d never heard of it before being invited to teach there. Why, I wonder? What a life-changing experience …  we stayed in a villa near the university campus, and they had armed soldiers guarding at the gates for some reason. In contrast to passivity that describes some more developed countries, I saw  curiosity and a penchant for new approaches, a trait that seems lost lately in traditional systems that restrain our country. Yet the Chinese people I met spoke well of US and many wished they could come, even for a visit.  Some will.

Graduate students and leaders there took us for meals daily after class, and after a great deal of practice my chopsticks held only a few morsels.  American friends advised me that if I felt I couldn't eat the "goose heads" on my plate, not to tell Chinese hosts that I disliked them. Better to say that I had “an allergy to goose heads and my doctor has advised me not to eat them.” 

Goose heads aside,  Chinese business people like small gifts I learned, and they give gifts back, so I packed trinkets from my area in Rochester NY to bring along. It was fun to learn from people I taught, and I was struck by their genuine care for and protection of one another. People stood in for missing workers and even lied to cover them. Did that trait come from Mao’s oppression that robbed many of their friends and family?  

Thinking back to my MBA students’ question, and the investigation that framed my leadership class in China, I wonder what parts of their past China and the US could build on together to create a better world across both sides of the pond. What do you think?