China Peaking

Here’s another insight into the Chinese working culture …

Two of my Chinese senior employees each talked to separate former colleagues at a recent trade show about what the same competitor is up to.

(this is a sneaky, nasty, lying, creepy, moral-free competitor company BTW).

They both came to me with the information from their respective former colleagues.

Unfortunately the information I was told was 180 degrees different from one conversation to the next.

Separately I pointed out to each of them that this meant that at least one of them was repeating information that was incorrect.

Whilst they could see the logic of this, they had no interest in either confronting each other to discuss it or taking the matter up with their respective former colleagues.

All of these scenarios were deemed too face-losing, embarrassing or confronting, and the avoidance of these emotions was deemed much more important than the good health of their employer.

So I pointed this logic out to them as well. In both cases they suddenly got lost in language and embarrassed laughter and basically ran away never to bring the matter up again.

So what is there to be learned this?

Obviously the inability to face up to such minor disputes can’t be good for business. It’s a penalty for having all that old face-saving stuff.

But more importantly, their concern for their employer runs pretty shallow. You don’t have to dig too far to find out where self-interest over-rules the interests of their employer.

Another example; some time back I was talking to some manufacturing plant operators in China (that spoke English) with the aim of getting them to highlight features of the software that they were using to run the factory which could be improved and/or that simply annoyed them.

Nix, not a single feature was highlighted. And there was to be no innovation entered into by us either on behalf of our customers if we couldn’t do some strategic product marketing ahead of time.

My Taiwanese colleague pointed out that fixing any software features or adding features hitherto unexpected wouldn’t change the operator’s salaries or the number of hours that they worked.

As is also the case in the West in the short term; but in the West I suppose there is some inbuilt reward system for innovators – career enhancement and the like. Or even just the satisfaction of being both first and right. In any case, pointing out areas of potential improvement would be valued by the bosses.

In China the ability to participate in the innovation process is right at the bottom of the list of things that bring on promotion.

In fact, pointing out problems (a key input for innovation) is actually seen as the sign of a trouble maker.

So how did the Chinese get such a large market share of the world’s manufacturing? Well primarily because they used cheap labour (and lots of it), cheap finance (from their farm reclamation scheme and others) and Western technology (acquired largely from manufacturing tool suppliers).

Although they are investing heavily in the development of new technology capability (primarily because the Western supply is drying up as they kill them with cheap local knock-off’s) I can’t see any signs of the Chinese investing in creating a culture that rewards innovation.

So unless they do this I can see China peaking at some stage in the future when their costs blow out and they can’t push an innovation culture right through their supply chains.

It’s not just about the source of technology you know!