Reviews and Updates

In the US I am a dedicated practitioner of management by walking around (MBWA), routinely spending more time away from my desk because that’s how I learned what people were really doing. These days we don’t see too many written reports any more, leaving many teams to rely on email or PowerPoint-style presentations to share ideas or provide status reports. Too me, however, these are one-way communications with little opportunity for real-time dialogue to provide course corrections or reinforcement of key messages.

That’s harder for me in China simply because of the language barrier. I am very fortunate that many people in my department speak and understand enough English to enable us to communicate. I’m afraid that despite my best efforts my Chinese will never be more than amusing. However even those people with good English skills are easily intimidated by questions from a senior manager who walks into their work area.

I still get out of my office a lot, but these days I’m relying more on regular weekly or monthly meetings with the teams to review their accomplishments and goals. At first I was reluctant to schedule one more meeting that forced the team to spend hours preparing slides. I was probably creating more stress as the leads tried to figure out what I wanted to hear, with presentations based on their best guess. I kept the objectives at a high level – What did you do? What do you plan to do next? – but I don’t think they were used to that kind of open-ended request. I realized that the only way I was going to get the information I needed was by creating slide templates (“just add data”).

I ask questions and make observations to provide the same course corrections and message reinforcement as I would in an MBWA encounter, but it’s a less threatening environment. There’s an added benefit of reaching more people at one time, and I’m hoping that I’m catalyzing some discussion (in Chinese) among the staff that may ultimately lead to some unexpected initiatives. The real breakthrough will come when the team throws away my templates and demonstrates their ownership of the responsibilities, moving from answering my questions to answering their own questions.

Can You Read My Mind?

Earlier this year I met a senior manager, another ex-pat who has been living in Shenzhen for several years. He told me that after spending his first few months in China he was sure he could write a book. After a year he thought he might be able to write an interesting magazine article. Now he’s not sure he could write anything remotely insightful. He says, “The longer I’m here, the less I know.”

I guess that means I’d better write it all down now, before I start realizing how little I’ve learned. My goal is one post a week. There’s definitely enough subject matter to fill a book. We’ll see.

I’ve always tried to apply my teaching skills throughout my career, and China certainly presents many opportunities for coaching. It’s not too hard to teach something concrete like how to make a control chart or apply a t-test. It’s another thing to teach new ways of thinking, like how to look at a set of data and ask that next question that leads to deeper understanding.

A few months ago I was sitting in a conference room listening to a monthly review presented by one of my teams. One of the slides in the presentation provided a “teaching opportunity” that seemed like an easy confidence-builder. The slide showed a graph with manufacturing yields for four different products, comparing the yields for two consecutive prototype builds. The graph had four straight lines, with exactly two data points for each line. What was striking about the graph was that three of the lines were almost overlaid on each other with nearly the same slope, suggesting virtually identical yield improvement. The fourth line had a dramatically different slope because the previous yield was much lower while the current yield was once again almost the same as the other three products.

I saw all of that in a few seconds, and I was pretty sure it would be just as apparent to my Chinese subordinates in the room. I turned to my second-in-command and asked, “Can you read my mind? What do you think I’m going to ask next?” He stared at me, looked at the slide, looked at me again, looked at the slide again, and the second hand ticked on the clock. I waited as long as I could before I gave up. It seemed so obvious that I couldn’t even come up with a helpful clue.

I said, “What happened here? Why is the slope of this line different? Was the previous yield that much worse? Or, did we do something really dramatic to bring it back up with the other three? If so, can we do it again?”

I was looking for some critical thinking, but I didn’t even get the recognition that one thing was not like the others. I don’t know if I embarrassed the poor guy, and I definitely didn’t want to make it worse so I moved on. I’ve thought about it a lot since then. I don’t know if he really didn’t see what I saw, or if he was afraid of getting the wrong answer to a stupid question.

I have discovered that pattern recognition and trend analysis does not come naturally here. Every presentation of data should lead to questions, but unfortunately the team seems to think that the graphs are the end point, not the starting point. Why is that trend going down? Why is that trend going up? Is the change statistically significant? If so, what are doing about it? Why is it happening here (or today), but not there (or yesterday)? I’m going to keep trying, but I’m getting the feeling that it’s not a common characteristic of engineers in this part of the world.

The Written Word

English is almost certainly the most common second language in China, and I would guess that it’s taught from an early age throughout the country. Many of the people I work with have an extensive vocabulary, and by reading between the lines I can figure out their message in almost every situation. Obviously that’s a big break for me because while I’ve learned a few words and phrases in Chinese, I will never have the listening, speaking, or reading ability to conduct business in that language.

You might think there’s really no language barrier at all, but I still encounter misunderstandings almost every day. I learned years ago that idioms and slang expressions are not useful when communicating with non-native speakers, and I think I’ve been fairly successful in eliminating them from my verbal repertoire while in China. The problem is listening comprehension, and I believe this is a universal issue that’s not unique to my colleagues here. I’m not an expert on brain function, but I think it’s extraordinarily difficult to quickly process spoken words and piece them together into complete sentences, particularly when discussing complex technical issues, and it can be embarrasing and/or frustrating to keep asking the speaker to repeat themselves.

My solution has been to “get it in writing.” I have a whiteboard on an easel next to my desk, and I use it everytime I want to communicate an important decision or action plan. When I want to check my understanding, I write it down for everyone to see it, edit it, and confirm it to make sure I’ve got it right. I’m never far from a whiteboard in our various conference rooms, and a pen and a piece of paper works just as well. We use teleconferencing and real-time file sharing for multi-site meetings, and again it’s been very effective to write things down on a “virtual whiteboard” that’s visible to all the participants.

This may seem simplistic and untrusting, but it works. The goal is effective communication, ensuring that the message is received and understood. When I take a taxi here in China, I like to have the address written on a card that I can show the driver. What better way to make sure you get to your destination?

E-Mail Overload

I’ve just returned to China after two weeks in the US on home leave for the holiday season, and I’ve been fighting an uphill battle against a huge backlog of e-mail, with over 400 messages in my inbox. I’m sure this sounds like a very familiar story to anyone who’s been away from the office and unplugged for more than a few days. It can make you wonder if it was such a good idea to leave in the first place, and certainly whether you should have come back at all. That “out of office” auto-reply doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.

As you might expect, a high percentage of the e-mail I received while I was away wasn’t addressed directly to me (I was “cc’d”), and I don’t think a reply of any kind is expected most of the time. In that sense it’s no different than the e-mail I get when I’m in the office. I think there’s a very powerful urge for e-mailers to add the names of “possibly interested parties” to their distribution lists, particularly when it’s so easy to do so. Of course once your name is on the distribution list for the initial message you end up being copied on all the subsequent replies and side conversations until the thread finally fades out.

Again, that probably sounds pretty typical, but during my short time working in China I think I’ve received an unusually large number of these CYA (cover your ass) e-mails. The information shared in these messages often seems very mundane and hardly worth the time to read. Other times I feel like I’ve been invited to witness a conversation between two or more people, perhaps to make sure everyone stays well-behaved. I mentioned this to one of my local colleagues, and he told me that it’s very common for employees to automatically copy their manager on all their e-mail communications, and in many groups people who send routine e-mail to another organization are actually required to copy both their manager and the manager of the recipient.

I don’t believe anyone has the time to read all this e-mail, and I think the senders have to understand that as well. So what’s going on here? Is it really that hard to figure out what issues I care about? Are folks afraid of what might happen to them if they err on the side of less information? Do they feel less-empowered to exercise their own judgment? I hate to generalize, but so far it seems that in China the answers to these questions is most-often: “yes.”

First post, second blog

In mid-September 2009 I started a new job as director of quality engineering for a major consumer electronics contract manufacturer whose primary production facility is located in Shenzhen, China. This position requires me to spend extended periods of time at the factory in Shenzhen, managing a team of approximately 500 people that includes direct and indirect labor supporting multiple production lines.

I’ve been a manager for over 20 years, but this is a very different and challenging environment than what I’m used to. It’s one thing to manage a multi-cultural team in your own native country, and another thing entirely to manage a team in a foreign land. That’s not to say that this is a completely new experience. I’ve traveled to China over 20 times during the past fifteen years, playing the role of a customer visiting local suppliers. I’m proud of the fact that wherever I’ve been in the world I’ve always tried to learn something about the local culture and customs. I never wanted to be the Ugly American. Along the way I picked up a few phrases of Mandarin, although I know I’ll never be fluent and I’m sure my pronunciation is terrible. I also seem to have a lot of trouble with listening comprehension. I can ask a question, but I can’t understand the answer, but fortunately (for me) I’ve been able to get by with English.

I certainly don’t claim to be an expert on the topic of managing in China, and this blog is nothing more than a collection of my own observations and learnings. I’m interested in your experiences, and I’m certainly open to any suggestions you might have.