Think Like Chinese!!

The difficulty Westerners have doing business in China is in the cultural differences that affect the commercial realities. Westerners identify an opportunity; thinking revolves around making that opportunity work financially in order to do the deal. If the figures stack up the game then becomes getting the customer, regardless of who she/he is, to sign on the dotted line. A new book Think Like Chinese written by husband and wife team, Chinese born and educated Zhang Haihua (Helen Zhang) and Australian born and educated lawyer, Geoff Baker quickly exposes the folly of this thinking. Haihua and Geoff, a former investment banker, have their own management consultant business China Time Inc based in Shanghai and their purpose for writing this book is to offer a practical perspective on the vexed issue of business dealings from the Chinese perspective. Their proposition is that it is important to understand the cultural thinking of the Chinese in order to understand how a business negotiation plays out. They identify 5 core elements that drive Chinese cultural thinking and

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Insights in Times of Turmoil

At its inception in Nov 2005, the Creative Leadership Forum presented a philosophy for creative leadership based on these principles. * Numbers are considered the measure for business success. * It is not the financial and performance targets that produce the outcomes or value. * It is the relationships and actions among people, clients, suppliers and their patterns of working and thinking together that produce the outcomes and the value. * A successful creative leader understands that to nurture the relationships between all stakeholders in order to satisfy customer needs is what produces immediate value and long term viability. When we presented these principles we generally received grudging acknowledgement spiced with a degree of cynicism around the numbers proposition. Still, the numbers have to work was often the parting comment!! When measured against the current backdrop in the world financial markets, this philosophy with its four principles not only holds up strongly, it proposes a way forward. Right now all the major financial media commentators agree on one thing - nobody knows where the world economy is going. It is in the area of paradox, ambiguity and uncertainty and there is no way out!! The most insightful commentary I have read on the current situation is George Soros' new book

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Creative Leadership and the Water Cube at the Beijing Olympics

I don't ever want to hear another engineer say I am not creative after attending a presentation on innovation and creativity by Tristan Carfrae, Senior Fellow at Arup, the designers and structural engineers in the consortium who constructed the Water Cube for the Olympic Aquatic Centre at the Beijing Olympics. What was particularly interesting about Carfrae's presentation was his proposition innovation in the building industry is very difficult and when you look at the simple physics of his proposition, he has a point. Every building is a prototype that mustn't fail. In structural engineering, you just cannot fail or the building will fall down. Engineering is calculable but it is not the calculations which fail. It is what the engineer chooses to calculate that will bring about the failure and in this sense, engineers' thinking can be compared to the way artists work.

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