China Apprentice

I’m excited to take part in this year’s Lingnan Sun Yat-sen INDUSTRAT competition. Though the course may be an elective and I’ve already taken the required number of MBA elective courses (actually well over the required three), I was compelled to sign up. I’m interested to see what a “capstone” course for an MBA could be all about. I’m also a little scared to think that this intense four-day simulation could test all the things we’ve learned in this MBA over the past year and a half. A guest professor in from Hong Kong coupled with a famous simulation program developed by the great minds at one of the world’s best business schools, INSEAD, makes me more than a little curious about the 2007 Business Strategy Simulation.

I remember it was a mad rush to register for the class when it came available. A new online registration system at Lingnan like any new online system, didn’t work when it was supposed to let us sign up for the course. With suspense building, when the course finally was released to the Lingnan masses, it was a swift dash to find an open cable port for the student’s laptops and log in to the system. I slipped in the course just two people from the course limit.

And I’m glad I made it. It was enough to pique my interest when I first received the preparatory course materials for this course – 孙子兵法 or The Art of War by Sun Tzu (full text translation). A longtime enthusiast of Chinese philosophical thought, I was delighted to learn this strategy course wouldn’t be all about western ideas but would focus on possible the father of all strategic thought, Sun Tzu.

I’ve advocated before that I think Lingnan should focus more on some of the decidedly Chinese contributions to management theory and practice. The emphasis these days in MBA programs is so much focused on the ideas of a bunch of gray-haired white guys. The world is waking up slowly to the fact that China has a lot more to offer to the greater education community. This course is just one example.

The professor, 赵越 Oliver Yue, got me interested the minute he walked in the room and started to introduce himself. I was particularly inspired by what he claims is a theme in his life stemming from the repetition of a particular Chinese radical in his name, 走 which means to go or walk or otherwise indicate movement. Whether inherited from birth or motivated by the aspirations of his parents, Dr. Yue, makes a point to live his life reflecting a common Chinese proverb, 读万卷书，行万里路 or read 10,000 books, travel 10,000 miles. I don’t know about the books (though a PhD probably gets close), but he’s certainly made his round of travels. He’s been to all seven continents and snapped some fantastic photos along the way. Now, a man who lives by such mantra, enjoys the art of photography AND studies the application of ancient Chinese philosophy to modern business is a man of interest in my book.

In fact, not only do a frequently quote the same Chinese proverb and take gazillions of travel photos, but it was just yesterday that I gave a very similar final presentation in my Strategic Management class on the management interpretation of The Art of War. I was surprised to learn that the Dr. Yue’s lesson preparing us for the first day of simulation drew some very familiar connections in strategy with Sun Tzu.

In many ways I agree that a war’s battlefield can be much like the business environment （孙子管理思想？）. Perhaps Sun Tzu’s most famous line 知彼知已者，百战不殆 epitomizes the importance of having valuable information both about your own company and your competitors (to include customers, users, key actors, suppliers, etc.). To evaluate yourself, your enemy and the environment, Sun Tzu tells us凡此五者，将莫不闻，知之者胜，不知者不胜.

There is no general who has not heard of these five factors. Yet it is he who masters them that wins and he who does not that loses. When assessing the outcome of a war, compare the two sides in terms of these factors and appraise the situation accordingly.

The five factors he refers to are now often quoted in business strategy texts. 故经之以五事，校之以计而索其情：一曰道 – The Way, 二曰天 – Heaven, 三曰地 – Earth, 四曰将 – Command, and 五曰法 – Doctrine.

Modern theorists (relatively modern that is compared to 300 BC) have developed strategy frameworks that conveniently match some of The Art of War’s basic ideas. 天者，阴阳，寒暑，时制也. Dr. Yue highlights the relationship between Master Sun’s factor of “heaven” and David Baron’s market and non-market environment summarized in the acronym PEST – political, economic, social, technological not to mention the public and the media. Not only do these aspects affect the “business climate” represented by the heaven factor but we can also consider Michael Porter’s 5 Forces - Suppliers, Buyers, New entrants, Substitute Products, and Competition.

Modern theory coincides even more with Sun Tzu’s famous work. Henry Mintzberg’s Five P’s, Perspective, Position, Ploy, Pattern, and Plan match almost perfectly with Sun’s 5 factors, respectively. 道者，令民与上同意也。故可以与之死，可以之生，而不畏危. The Way can be compared to modern corporations’ core competencies and social responsibility. 地者，远近，险易，广狭，死生也. The idea of Earth representing distance, terrain, land, and place can be related to the company through internal analysis of resources, labor, capital, transportation, etc. Jay Barney uses such a resourced-based view to evaluate a firm’s financial, physical, human, and organizational capital thereby helping companies capitalize on resources with value, rarity, imitability, and organization. 将者，智，信，仁，勇，严也. Command, on the other hand, is the ability of the company leadership to implement strategy using the five characteristics of a general that also apply to any organization’s leaders:

Wisdom – recognize changing circumstances, active involvement in planning process
Sincerity – towards employees for soliciting their feedback and input
Benevolence – incentive system
Courage – no hesitation to make decisions which capitalize on an opportunity
Strictness – discipline for self and others

法者，曲制，官道，主用也. The last of the five factors, doctrine, is modifying the structure of the organization to facilitate strategy. This must happen at all levels of the organization: corporate, business, and functional. Though Sun likely didn’t have common business-level strategies in mind when he penned his words, concepts of specialization, diversification, integration, outsourcing, and strategic alliance are found in cryptic form throughout the text. Gary Hamel’s idea of Business Concept Innovation (BCI) is but one way to create a unique strategy that creates competitive advantage over competitors.

Sun Tzu tells Generals to evaluate the competition with the five factors by asking a series of questions. These questions can be directly related to key business strategy concepts:

Vision/Core competencies - Which sovereign possesses more moral influence?
Leadership - Which general is more capable?
Market/Resources - Which side has the advantages of heaven and earth?
Organization/Structure - Which army is better disciplined?
Competitive advantage/training - Whose troops are better armed and trained?
Incentives/Vision - Which command is more impartial to meting out rewards and punishments?

Even though we may evaluate our company today based on these questions and factors and then create an ideal strategy, tomorrow the environment could change. 夫兵形象水. 水因地而制流，兵因故变化而取胜. As the water changes its course in accordance with the contours of the terrain, so a warrior changes his tactics in accordance with the enemy’s changing situation. A business must have similar flexibility to realize strategy is fluid and ever-changing.

It’s amazing a text from over 2000 years ago still holds such significance in world affairs. The interpretations and applications of this little book are very practical for any business, small, medium, or large. I look forward to analyzing this simulation more and finding inspiration in this ancient wisdom.

谐音成语

Originally uploaded by chenta.

This is me when I don’t do my homework - REALLY! My handwriting isn’t nearly so perfect as Bart’s though.

I’m suspicious but here’s one site’s list. Some seem a little too “creative” to be modern Chinese. Even ancient tortoise shell characters 甲骨文 didn’t look much like some of these. Can anyone confirm the validity of any of this?

Ok, so this has been circulating around the internet for many years. If you’ve never seen it and you’ve been to China, then enjoy. Or just read it again for nostalgia. It makes me smile every time. Can you think of more???

1. You’re at an expensive western restaurant and don’t even notice the guy at the next table yelling into his cell phone
2. You enjoy karaoke
3. You walk backwards in the park listening to a transistor radio
4. The China Daily is your source for hard hitting, fast breaking, investigative journalism
5. You smoke in crowded elevators.
6. All white people look the same to you
7. You like the smell of the bus.
8. You find state-employed retail staff helpful, knowledgeable and friendly
9. You no longer need tissues to blow your nose
10. You find western toilets uncomfortable (more…)

This entry was a work in progress that finally got finished. I left out the part about Eastern Europe. I’ll get back to that in a later post.

Finally back in Guangzhou after a couple long flights and a night on the floor in the Dubai airport surrounded by the buzz of sheiks and Africans all apparently buying gold necklaces. Apologies to anyone who may have been keeping track of our travels. I seem to have lapsed in writing for a couple weeks. My only excuse is an intense last portion of our journey punctuated by many long train rides, very hot weather, and an overdue bout with food poisoning. This post should make up for a long span of missed ones.

In case you haven’t noticed, I try to get myself in quiet inspirational settings when I write these posts. Could I ask for better in China. Well, probably yes. How do you get away from all the people, you ask? I’m currently relaxing close to the registration building on Sun Yat-sen University campus as I wait to sit down with the professors and convince them to let me take classes. Southern China takes a siesta (小觉 or literally “small sleep”) after lunch till about 2:30. This always allows me some extra time. Classmates ask me why I don’t sleep insisting that it’s good for my health. I tell them it’s because I don’t stay up till 3:00 am like them doing homework or playing video games. That’s how it works – no nap = regular sleep schedule. But Chinese still believe that the nap is a necessary part of the day so schools and businesses duly respect that.

And that’s just fine by me. The worst of the Guangzhou summer is passed and now the days are comfortably bearable. I found a spot next to a tastefully preserved brick building from Sun Yat-sen University’s better architectural days back when it was all Lingnan property. The building ironically stands next to an open pit of rubble where buildings like it were recently toppled to clear way for more dormitories or classrooms. It’s a starkly beautiful scene to wait out the 午觉.

In fact that leads me into the first topic of this post - an Eastern Europe/China comparison. Damn! Screw the aforementioned beauty of this place – the mosquitoes are still going strong in Southern China – I’m moving to the library! Pick this up later…

Never made it to the library. I managed to get a copy of the class schedule and in fact it has been some time now since registration. I spent a good week sitting in on various levels of Chinese class trying to find the best fit for my abilities/interests/goals. Students and teachers kept asking me which class I was supposed to be in and I kept saying I hadn’t decided yet. I told them all I was just “sitting in” to try out their class. There didn’t appear to be any other students doing this. At Jinan it was standard drill for the first couple weeks of class. Inevitably in this way, the better teachers all attracted the most students. It’s the free market approach to Chinese course selection. It’s a fun way to take tastes from the buffet selection of courses available. Anyway, I finally decided on a study approach that has been a part of my strategy throughout the first two years of learning this crazy language. I opted for challenge.

Sounds trite but let me explain. My entire experience studying Chinese in China has been characterized by discomfort. And ironically, I mean this in a good way. From day 1, I didn’t speak any Chinese. My wife and I landed in this amazing country not even knowing how to introduce ourselves or tell a cab where we wanted to go. With that foundation, I enrolled in the “Speedy Chinese Course”. I’ve pontificated before about my experience in that class. It was essentially all overseas Chinese students who had grown up with Chinese in their home but had never taken the time to formally learn it in an academic environment. This was a challenge for the greenhorn beginner. I was always behind. I always had to work really hard to keep up with my classmates. It was the brute force approach to Chinese study. And it worked.

After 4 months at Jinan University I jumped from Speedy Beginner class to Intermediate class (most students need an entire year before that move). I was in a hurry to learn and had grown accustomed to the discomfort that comes from being behind and needing to catch up. It’s this sort of challenge I think that works really well when learning a foreign language. If you’re the smartest one in the class and the teacher loves you because you know all the answers, it’s time to change classes. I’ve never been that guy.

So as I try to juggle MBA courses and Chinese classes this semester (only two more to go in the MBA program), I have again chosen challenge and I just hope I can hang on again. That’s ok, I like hanging. But I noticed, whether it was my study approach or the level of instruction at Jinan, I find the overall product delivered at Jinan is better than that at Sun Yat-sen. Feel free to argue with me on this but I think the biggest difference in the caliber of students that the two schools produce is the effect of one little teaching method called the 听写. Jinan has ‘em, ZSU doesn’t. These little vocabulary spelling bees are the key to learning Chinese characters and actually remembering them for years to come. I’ve written about them before and how much I hated it. But they worked.

I’m taking a mishmash of courses from the 高级班 and 本科 levels. These are the two highest levels in the Chinese department. One is simply called “High Level Class” and the other is the 4-year undergraduate course for those that major in Chinese. Both are probably above my everyday street conversation level but I find I can follow what goes on in class and, more importantly, I’m very interested in the subject matter. Finally, I’m using Chinese to actually learn something! It seems like it takes so long to get to a level in Chinese where you can read a newspaper about today’s news (not a watered-down textbook version), watch a TV show from last night (not a dialogue crafted for foreign students), write a professional letter (that doesn’t sound like a 5-year-old), or read a scholarly paper about Chinese history, culture, or current events. The courses I’ve chosen focus on all of these. Finally I feel like I’m not just learning Chinese but actually using the Chinese language as a means to learn other things. Finally.

Schedule conflicts aside, highlights this semester should be Chinese Culture, Business Writing, Business Conversation, Chinese History, Intensive Newspaper Reading, Ancient Chinese, Chinese Poetry, and Television Watching (if only college kids in the US had a class like that!). Granted, I’m still at the undergraduate level here but just to kick it up a notch, I enrolled in the graduate Chinese Economics (oh yes, it is different from the Western version) class. I’m trying my best to keep up – learning hundreds of new words every day. As a wise China hand who had studied in China for several years once told me, “quite possibly the best thing to study in China - is Chinese”. Now I think I know what he meant. There is so much to “Chinese” that goes way beyond just the language itself. If you really want to study something authentically Chinese, then Chinese – the language, the history, the people, the literature, the thought, the culture and so on are it. Most everything else is non-native and has been adopted/translated from abroad. At least for now.

I get really excited when my professors at Lingnan bring out a case study that they personally developed from their research in China. I love it that some of the professors have published their own textbooks and now teach from them. I think it’s the cat’s pajamas when the professor tells stories and gives experiences from his own work at companies in China. That is what makes studying a Chinese MBA in China special. That is what I’m here for.

How technology globalization can be so square

It isn’t round like Columbus said it was. It isn’t flat like Thomas Friedman explains it is in his bestselling book. The world is cubic. Well maybe not exactly cubic. Perhaps more like a die with rounded corners. And I’m not too sure that there are exactly six sides either. But the world is definitely still some sort of polyhedron. Not round. And definitely not one-dimensionally flat.

What am I talking about? I’m referring to Mr. Friedman’s last in his list of “flatteners” that contribute to globalization in business. What he calls the “steroids” that put the power behind other globalizing factors like outsourcing, open sourcing, and supply chaining. The steroids are things like PDAs, iPods, VOIP and other technology that enables globalization. Despite the wizardry of these gadgets and gizmos, they still manage to keep our world decidedly cubic - with very distinct faceted sides. (more…)

As usual, we’re still reading our mid-May edition of The Economist in early June. Why? Well, likely because the latest pubs haven’t made it through the censors at the Hong Kong border. No telling if they’ll ever actually make it through. We just get used to reading news a couple weeks late. For the important stuff - TVB Pearl and the internet keep us relatively well-informed. Three magazines at once will likely show up tomorrow.

Fortunately for us (and our three regular readers), we have friends in D.C. (headed to Nanjing soon) who keep us up-to-date on little bits of newsworthy wisdom that we miss. They recently reviewed an Economist article out of the June 2nd edition that clued us in to some fascinating new research in genetic linguistics. For fear they clobber me silly for writing about the same thing, I’ll leave a plug for them here as blog-payment. If you’re moving to China you need to check out their site - they’ve kept a meticulous record of all the hoops and hurdles they’ve encountered in the build-up to their move to China. Really helpful tips. If you can find the time, I think everyone should keep a blog of their overseas living experiences. It becomes a great memory and just might help out others. We wish we had started earlier.

The article in The Economist (that you fortunately can read online - not nearly as fun as reading articles about China while sitting on the bus in China but…) references a gene called FOXP2 that’s responsible for grammar and articulation in humans. But it also points out that:

the half-century old “interdisciplinary marriage” between biology and linguistics “has not yet been fully consummated.”

The University of Edinburg, considerately enough, is turning the lights down and putting on some romantic tunes in the lab. We have foreplay among the fields of biology and linguistics! “Two microcephaly-related genes that matched 49 populations” appear to be responsible for those of us that either think tones in languages (like Chinese) convey valuable meaning or are just national conspiracies to prevent foreigners from ever even approaching something resembling mastery of the language. These two genes are the “tonal” genes. They appear to be what gives the same Chinese syllable a litany of different meanings depending on its inflection.

Unfortunately testing this theory is difficult. As the article points out, finding mice that speak Chinese (or even less-genetically evolved English) is proving to be a challenge. For now, a big dose of brain radiation appears to be the trick to discovering your potential hidden talent for tonal languages. At your next physical see if you can get the doc to do up a scan of the “white matter” in your “heschl gyrus”. That’s science-speak for “enlarged tone-comprehension central command center” in your noggin. The more you got, the better you are.

But don’t take our word for it. Read all about it at a little out there and check out some of the other references. If tones still don’t stick for you, we recommend banging your head against the wall to see if that helps. Then get back to your flashcards.

If you’re Chinese, I can almost guarantee that you’ve already seen this. It’s a rather famous clip where a chef is studying English. If you understand just a bit of Chinese, you may find this very funny. If you’re Chinese, enjoy the nostalgia.

This clip is embedded from the Chinese web answer to YouTube called “Potato“. At least that’s the English translation. Many good Chinese-language videos on there including funny episodes from danwei.com’s Sexy Beijing. More coming soon…

Is it the characters, the tones, the vocabulary, the grammar?  Anyone who has studied Chinese longer than a week will find this essay very interesting and likely very funny.  For those curious about what makes Chinese so challenging to learn, read this for a glimpse.

In my experience starting from Mandarin level zero, you will learn how to read and write Chinese *words* very well in China but learning how to craft *sentences* and how to speak are poorly taught.  Part of this has to do with the fact that I think the best way to learn how to write a proper Chinese sentence with proper Chinese grammar is in your native tongue.  Am I saying you won’t understand when the teachers explain how to use a new grammar tool?  No.  You can understand everything they say but a large part of your time will be trying to figure out how you would say the same thing in English otherwise you’ll always have subtle misunderstandings of certain structures.  Learning Chinese in Chinese is a great idea for improving your listening comprehension.  However, grammar really needs an English explanation. (more…)