Euroasia: Language, Culture and Travel

Understandably, the foremost issue in the mind of most managers today is how to deal with the global recession. The focus, at least in the short term, is how to survive the downturn. This should be the time to be thinking about how to capitalise on the next upturn. Recessions do not last forever, and we’ll no doubt get out of this rut. Which leads me to the point of this article. One significant management challenge in the coming decades is how we manage global talent flow.

Research by consultancy KPMG has argued that managers will need to be prepared for a completely new, international management environment over the coming decades as the flow of skilled and unskilled labour between the developing and developed economies increases.

This convergence, or a net flow of skilled and unskilled workers migrating between the developed and developing worlds, will mean companies will need completely to rethink how they manage their workforces, argued the author of the KPMG report.

Organisations are pretty unprepared for this. Global migration is a recent phoenomenon, driven by cheaper airfares, and Gen Xers who surf the net every day researching new destinations and sharing travel and OE stories. It seems to me that people will continue travelling despite environmental concerns. The only difference is that we seem to feel a bit more guilty about it. Somehow I don’t think we’ll see a drop in air travel figures anytime soon.

The successful organisations of the future will be highly innovative, truly understanding how to harness diversity and capture talent from around the world. The offices of the future will have people speaking different languages dealing with clients and suppliers from around the world. The essential skill to have in that environment is the ability to understand and work with people from other cultures.

I had an interesting chat this afternoon with one of our Japanese students enrolled in the Chinese language course. We don’t have many international students, seeing 90% of our clients are Kiwis. I was quite keen to explore how a Japanese person approaches language learning, compared to a Kiwi.

I managed to extract some interesting insights. In response to my question of what’s hardest with learning Chinese, he said that he had great difficulty pronouncing “he” (river in Chinese). Differentiating between the 4 tones is difficult, and he can’t seem to get it right. His advantage though, is that he can read kanji (Japanese script). This is very similar to Chinese script, and he can pretty much figure out what’s written.

I cracked up when my Japanese friend noted that when he was learning Chinese in Japan, the teacher told the class to start off with massaging the muscle underneath the ears, by the jaw bone, because Japanese people do not use that particular muscle when speaking, and the Chinese do.

Today is the anniversary of Chile’s independence from Spain. Our Spanish teacher, Jose is from Chile.  He and his friends are putting together a celebration next Saturday.  I thought maybe I should do some research to understand a bit more about Chile.

This from the CIA Factbook:

Prior to the coming of the Spanish in the 16th century, northern Chile was under Inca rule while Araucanian Indians (also known as Mapuches) inhabited central and southern Chile. Although Chile declared its independence in 1810, decisive victory over the Spanish was not achieved until 1818. In the War of the Pacific (1879-83), Chile defeated Peru and Bolivia and won its present northern regions. It was not until the 1880s that the Araucanian Indians were completely subjugated. A three-year-old Marxist government of Salvador ALLENDE was overthrown in 1973 by a military coup led by Augusto PINOCHET, who ruled until a freely elected president was installed in 1990. Sound economic policies, maintained consistently since the 1980s, have contributed to steady growth, reduced poverty rates by over half, and have helped secure the country’s commitment to democratic and representative government. Chile has increasingly assumed regional and international leadership roles befitting its status as a stable, democratic nation.

One of the readers of this blog asked a very good question: Why is Asia so brand conscious? This was in response to a photo I posted of the queue I observed outside the Louis Vuitton store on Orchard Road, Singapore. Why do people queue up to enter a store that sells two thousand dollar handbags?

Well, precisely the reason they can get away with selling two thousand dollar handbags

One interesting fact is that Japan consumes luxury goods twice as much per capita compared to the U.S.; AND luxury goods consumption in Japan is largely unaffected by recession, as evidenced by strong demand during the prolonged economic slowdown.

Hermes and Bulgari have high exposure to Japan, with about 30% of all product sales coming from that country. Louis Vuitton generates about 33% of its revenue from Japan.

I remember coming across an article in the Shanghai Daily where they described a poll of Chinese citizens. When asked what would be the first luxury item they would buy, almost invariably, respondents said a Swiss watch. A Swiss watch is a symbol of luxury, much like a German luxury car. It’s a statement that you’ve made it. Everyone wants to be seen as having “made it big”. This is very important for a person’s mianzi, or face.

The irony is that those in higher positions care more about mianzi than those in lower positions. ie the more money you have the more important it is to maintain mianzi. A Chinese businessman friend of mine once related a story to me. He went out to see a potential client in his Japanese car and was asked the question: “Why are you driving a Toyota?” He promptly disposed of his car and bought a BMW.  Chinese customers need to see that you’re “successful” before giving you work. It’s easy to understand why that is. It’s difficult to ascertain if someone has the capabilities to deliver, so we look for shortcuts to see if someone owns the symbols that we associate with success.

In New Zealand, this is rarely the case. People generally do not care about how they are perceived, and are less likely to judge a book by it’s cover. I must say in my personal experience, I’ve noticed an increase in Euroasia’s revenue after I sold the Audi and started driving a Nissan (the Audi is pretty costly to maintain). I don’t think my clients think any worse of me simply because I’m not driving an Audi.  I need a car simply to get from point A to B, so all I need is a reliable vehicle.

Going to St Lukes in worn out clothes, and without makeup is pretty acceptable. Although I must say this has changed in the past few years. I’m beginning to notice that people tend to care a lot more about how they look. Either that or people these days are simply better looking.

I’m still undecided as to whether that’s a good thing or not.

Data has just come out of the UK showing a drop in the number of people taking foreign languages at GCSE level (roughly NCEA Level 1). In analysing why this is the case, a major newspaper interviewed various academics and bureaucrats.

Greg Watson, the chief executive of the Oxford and Cambridge and Royal Society of Art exam board, blamed the fall on “signals from the outside world”. He said: “Young people are particularly sensitive to the force that qualifications have. I think you hear loudly and clearly from the jobs market it would be good to have maths and good to have some science. I don’t think they hear a very loud signal from employers that a language is required … It is pretty hard to see any reflection of that in job adverts.”

Throughout the article, the reporter did not bother interviewing anyone from industry, and the headline read: “Business blamed for slump in foreign language entries”

It’s highly unfair to blame businesses for the current predicament. The reality is learning a language is hard work, and given a choice, students would far prefer easier subjects. This doesn’t mean that businesses do not value language, and far more importantly, cross-cultural skills.

I scanned through the letters to the editor subsequent to the publication of the article, and found a response by Susan Anderson, Director of Education and Skills, Confederation of British Industry, London:

“Languages are growing in importance to UK firms, as they operate in an increasingly global marketplace. Three out of four employers value their staff having conversational ability in another language. Firms don’t necessarily want employees to be able to negotiate the finer points of contracts in a foreign language, but they do value the ability to strike up a rapport with a potential customer that might help a contract being drawn up in the first place”

“Young people should therefore be confident that language skills are wanted by employers”

Why didn’t the media bother asking businesses for their opinion?

I was on Radio NZ’s Morning Report this morning! Great publicity for our language school…

Sadly I missed it, but luckily a friend emailed me about it.

You can check out the story here.

Check out the audio feed here:

Surge in language students follows NZ – China trade deal

A group of us spent an afternoon last week at LanzaTech in Parnell. This little company tucked away in one corner of Auckland is doing some amazing things. LanzaTech has developed a technology to convert high volume industrial waste streams in the form of carbon monoxide into bio-ethanol using patented microbes.

Existing technologies work on converting corn or sugar cane into ethanol, and we all know that’s unsustainable. Which is why this new technology is so exciting. Exciting enough to attract Vinod Khosla, well-known founder of Sun Microsystems and legendary VC to put some money in.

It’s indeed heartening to see such an amazing company operating out of Auckland. The founder also said that he’s looking for a CEO. It’s courageous of him to be letting go of the reins at a critical time. It’s certainly not easy to decide that someone else is better at running the company you founded. When asked how will he ensure that the person he appoints will have the same passion as him, the response was “a business is not just built on passion and enthusiasm, but cold, hard facts”. “We need someone with greyer and shorter hair than me to convince people”. “No one’s going to give me $50m because I don’t have a history of spending $50m in a wise way”. Losing a bit of the humour as I translate this into text, but this guy is really witty. I don’t think I know that many scientists that are witty / funny as well.

He wants to get back into the lab to do what he’s good at, and let someone else who has learnt from his mistakes somewhere else to run the company. Sean reflects that he has “spent half the time trying not to get it wrong”.

Another question from our group: “What’s the greatest challenge of leadership?”

The answer came quickly: “Getting people to argue and still like each other afterwards”. Sean explained that his team members are PhDs and best in their field in what they do. It’s important that people not feel bad for suggesting an idea that’s not implemented, as well as feeling that it’s OK to criticise. “Getting it wrong is halfway to getting it right”. This is such an awesome insight.

I certainly hope that LanzaTech takes off. Then we’ll have a great story that will inspire a generation of young scientists at our schools and universities to strive for the impossible.

A friend of mine Justin invited me along for Skykiwi’s Miss Zodiac beauty pageant on Sunday night. I must confess I had fun, not just from looking at pretty girls but I was pretty impressed with everything else: performances, ambience etc.

the girls on stage. forgot my camera, so had to take this using my phone

The entire event was delivered in Mandarin, and there were parts I didn’t understand, but overall everyone seemed to have had a great time. Unfortunately, you get the jokers who keep their cellphones on, and even worse, answer their calls in public. I can’t imagine that happening at say the NZSO or Ballet.

I particularly liked the part of the competition where each participant gets a fan/friend to come up on stage to secure support from the audience. The “fan” explains why the participant deserves to win. These guys were pretty funny and creative.

It’s great that there are functions like this in Auckland. Great work Skykiwi! How I wished that there were more Kiwis there, although admittedly they would have difficult following what was happening. People need to see that Chinese people can have fun too. You wouldn’t be able to recognise the members of this boisterous crowd the next day as they revert to their daytime personalities, whether in the classroom or workplace.

I notice the Jekkyl and Hyde mode more because I observe these guys in different situations. Hopefully someday more Chinese people would speak up, be funny, loud and generally just be themselves at school and at work.