National Day is quickly approaching. Time to do your last minute National Day gift shopping and getting ready for all the National Day parties.

Are you open for business on Monday, Oct 2? How about Wed, the 4th? This weekend? Next weekend?

Ask 10 China managers those questions, and you will probably get 12 or 15 different answers. Some people are shutting down for a full week, others just for two days. Many others will be open, but with reduced staffing.

Have you bothered to let your clients and prospects know what YOUR schedule will be?

Part of the fun of running a company is being able to decide on your own schedule – but what are you doing to tell your clients, customers and suppliers? Most of your overseas contacts have NO idea about National Day schedules. Hell, I live here in Shanghai, and I’m pretty confused about what the policy is. Is it 2 days or 2 weeks? Are businesses legally required to be open this coming weekend? Will it be impossible to find a taxi this year?

I subscribe to 20 or so email newsletter lists from China-based companies and as of this morning I had only received 1 notice about vacation policy. Have you emailed clients — or posted on your websites– what your schedule will be?

As China’s economy develops, people’s attitude towards holidays is changing. When I first came here companies seemed willing to shut down for two weeks at the drop of a hat. Mid-autumn festival, Chinese New Year & Spring Festival, Confucius’ birthday, Christmas, Peruvian Flag Day, you name it. It seemed like people were always getting ready for a break or recovering from one. And those mandatory working weekends… It was a planning nightmare.

Now, however, that the number of hours on the job directly relates to the amount of money in the bank, businesses are maintaining more stable schedules. But there are still a lot of questions about when people do business. This is the perfect time to explore the possibilities of an email newsletter for your operation.

You’ve probably been collecting client contact information in some form or other – a customized database program, an Outlook file, a spreadsheet, a shoebox full of business cards – something. Well, a great way to put that contact list to good use is to institute a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program. You can make it as simple as a blanket email announcement of when you will be closing for holidays, or a complex multi-tiered marketing program.

The point is for you to establish a 2-way dialogue with your clients and prospects. China is getting more competitive in general, and the pressures at the high-end of the market are becoming truly fierce. Give yourself an edge by reminding your existing contacts who you are and how to reach.

And telling them when you plan on opening for business in October wouldn’t hurt either.

Enjoy your break.

– ChinaSolved.com will be publishing on Friday, Sept 28, and will resume daily posts on Tuesday October 3. May you all have a pleasant holiday, a safe trip, or an easy day – whichever applies to you.

I know many China managers who constantly run flat-out and routinely over-schedule themselves. These are the same people who don’t have time to adequately train their staff or meet their own consultants and outsourcers. They feel pressured to roll-out new products and like forging cross-branding or promotional strategies with other companies. How will these people pick up on early warning signs of PR problems? How will they handle those first crucial hours of a media melt-down?

China is potential PR nightmare for foreign-run companies. You don’t need to see the list of victims again. Your job as a key manager or owner of a business here in China is to have a plan for dealing with YOUR potential media nightmare. You may not know exactly where it is coming from – but it may very well involve your newest, lowest level, least trained front-line people.

EVERY orientation training program in China should include a communications policy and an emergency procedure for getting information up to the right people immediately.

1) If you are in the public eye, you already have a public image. Either develop a relationship with a PR pro or do the reading yourself. Have some idea how you are perceived in the market place. Know your own vulnerabilities. Have a sense of what image you want to project to the market. Some of the companies that do a great job branding their products have no sense of how to build their own corporate identity.

2) Have a plan. When an irate customer (or a reporter who has just spoken with an irate customer) calls your office, what’s the first message they will receive? Will your new receptionist tell them you are on vacation in Paris, or that they don’t know what’s going on? What is your plan for dealing with dissatisfied customers? You may have no idea what your PR crisis will look like, but there’s a really good chance it will start with an angry customer or a reporter confronting your front-line customer service people. Do they know what to do? Do you?

3) Have a message. There are still companies in China with no web presence, no blog, and nothing to say to the world. Do a web-search of your own company and your own management team. If you don’t have control over your own message, someone else will.

4) Solve your problem once. Be quick about it. Have a definitive answer and execute correctly. Get the right input. The latest MNC media event was made worse when company lawyers convinced management that angry customer should sign a liability waver before getting their refund. A PR or media crisis is as much a marketing problem as it is a legal one. Companies that seem adrift or bumbling in the first few days of a media event are the ones that attract the sharks. IT IS MUCH EASIER TO FIX YOUR PROBLEM IF YOU HAVE ALREADY DESIGNATED A CRISIS TEAM AND A COMMUNICATIONS POLICY IN ADVANCE.

5) Follow up. PR problems are more like earthquakes than lightening strikes. They may seem random the first time, but they tend to repeat along the same or connected fault lines. Companies that survive PR crises are the ones that are both reactive and proactive. Figure out a way to deal with the problem so that it doesn’t come back to haunt you again.

During the Eastern Han Dynasty (around 25-220 AD), China experienced a time of unrest known as the 3 Kingdoms period. Everyone wanted to be ruler, and hundreds of petty warlords bankrupted their territories as they devoted all their resources to destroying their neighbor.

Nowadays we are much more sophisticated. Some China-based businesses have department heads fighting for dominance within our companies instead of peasant armies killing one another in the countryside.

How can you tell if this is a problem in your operation?

It’s really a 2-part question. Is there tension between your department heads? Is that a problem? A smart manager can use tensions between department heads to his advantage.

Good news and Bad news.

We love the idea of our company as a big happy family united in fellowship and working towards a common goal, but the truth is that business is not about brotherhood. While it may be pleasant showing up at an office where everyone genuinely likes one another, there can be a downside to this. Business is about competition and problem-solving. If your team is all focused on defeating a top competitor and growing sales, then that is great. But if everyone is too relaxed and friendly, then you may not be getting all that you can out of your staff.

People tend to be the most relaxed about their jobs when they feel they don’t have a personal stake in the outcome of any decisions. China has a tradition of consensus and harmony – but that often translates into a “lowest common denominator” approach to problem solving. Managers agree readily when they feel that have that their opinion has no impact on the ultimate decision or they don’t really care about the future of the enterprise. I’ve seen more than a few private businesses where relationships among staff were a little too cozy.

Common Enemy

Your people should be fired up and united by a common goal. Good managers unify their team and promote “goal congruence”, or a single, unifying goal system that everyone in the organization recognizes and understands. This might be to best a major competitor, raise sales or hit a specific target. Or it could be to thwart your efforts. Many international managers are in fact uniting their teams in the most counterproductive way imaginable – they are becoming the common enemy.

Make sure that your team has a more positive unifying principle. The best unifying goals can be easily understood, visualized and charted. Raising sales to a specific point is a good one. Gaining market share. Out-competing a specific rival. It works even better when you can pay a company-wide bonus or incentive when certain milestones are hit.

Some conflicts that are less positive:

Everyone vs. You. Is your staff defining success by your failures? In Shanghai, it’s normal for your staff to speak Shanghaiese and cover for one another, so hold that paranoia in check. But if you get the feeling that your team isn’t really supporting your efforts – you may actually be right. The bad news is that once this happens, it’s hard to reverse. The good news is that you can count on most of these people quitting within a few months. Advice: Review your company’s orientation training program and take a larger role in the hiring process. Make sure you can count on your personal assistant and the ranking financial person.

Sales vs. Marketing. If they are separate departments, be on the lookout for trouble. Is marketing in China, or overseas? Are your sales people using the marketing material? Does Marketing have an orderly way of getting information from Sales? These guys should be cooperating. If not, your marketing budget is going out the window. If your sales people are blaming marketing for lack of leads, you have a problem.

HR vs. Everyone. This is the typical Line vs. Staff conflict, but in China you have to pay more attention to the HR relationship. Line managers often feel HR doesn’t know what’s going on. HR feels that Line managers are Neanderthals. Look at your turnover rates. If you are losing key people on a regular basis or you can’t fill key positions, you may have to step in and deal with it. Another key indicator of trouble is if performance appraisals, job descriptions and other HR tools aren’t being supported by Line managers. If HR isn’t running your recruiting process, you have a serious problem.

HR vs. Sales. Who makes the hiring decisions? If Sales is going around HR to hire, you have a problem. If Sales managers aren’t supporting HR on training and coaching issues, you have a problem. Sales people are notorious for being independent and performance driven. HR has a bad reputation for being overly bureaucratic. If you have a problem with you HR management, it will show up here first.

Finance vs. Marketing: Finance saves, Marketing spends. It’s normal to have a little tension here. As a matter of fact, it is probably positive as long as it doesn’t get personal or threaten operations. Make sure that Marketing is sticking to the budget – which includes paperwork and reporting, not just spending.

Sales & Marketing vs. Operations: Sales/Marketing and Ops are natural enemies so there should be some tension here as well. In general, salesmen like quick changes and big promises. Operations like budgets, schedules and stability. This is another area where too much compromise and cooperation can be a warning sign. If your marketing department is letting the operations people take charge of new product development, you may be giving up too much ground to the competition.

Finance vs. Everyone. Are expenses getting paid? Are bills getting paid so slowly that your operations people are negotiating at a disadvantage? Are your salaries below the industry average? Does it take too long to approve credit applications or correct billing errors? It’s normal for finance people to count the fen, but if they are considered unfair or dishonorable by your staff then you probably have a similar problem within the industry. Accountants should be sticklers for details, but they shouldn’t make up their own rules. Be very sensitive to staffers who feel the accounting people are draconian or difficult to deal with – it may mean your suppliers feel the same way. On the other hand, you don’t want your accounting staff to be too cozy with other department heads – particularly sales. Ideally, your head finance people should be viewed as tough but fair and just a little bit scary.

In the US a management retention plan might include 401k programs, medical & dental insurance and a nice kitchen stocked with Snapple and microwave pizzas. As many international managers have learned, these perks don’t really have much of an impact in China.

How long is long enough?
In US companies, 2 years seems to be the magic number for profitable staff retention. In China, we may have to accept that our average staff retention period may be significantly lower. 1 year is reasonable, but 6 months is probably closer to the average.

How can we stretch this out? Design incentives and perk programs that mean something to your highly mobile Chinese managers. These people are probably not going to retire from your company. They probably have no idea that anyone expects them to. You and I know that eventually they are going to pay the price for a lifetime of job-hopping, but that day is far off in the future.

To get your hot managers to stay, you have to offer immediate gratification and raise the TANGIBLE cost of jumping ship.

MD programs.
We’ve already mentioned this, but since it works better than just about anything else, it’s worth restating. Let them know what their options are inside your own company. Talk about where they could be in 6 months, 2 years, 5 years and longer term. Remember – Chinese graduates have never seen anyone retire comfortably from an honest, private career. Most Chinese men want to start their own company – but you have to identify those that don’t. In the US, successful job-hoppers over the age of 30 are relatively rare. Here, that’s still the basic model of success.

Bring in a career counseling coach. Institute a mentoring program, where your top managers work with younger fast-track staff to help build their career. If your company has a reputation for delivering high-quality training on a regular basis, you will hold on to more people. Training and career counseling are 2 perks that work.

Pay as they stay.
Incentive programs work best if they are measurable. Paying for school or outside training are benefits that have a quantifiable renmenbi value for staffers. They know how much Wall Street English charges, and they know how much Strathclyde University charges for an MBA. The upside of these name-brand programs is that they hold on to key people until the course is over. The downside is that they work best when you are sending people to pricey, famous schools and institutes.

Retention-based compensation
Simple, transparent, reliable incentive programs are still the best benefit plan. They work when they are simple to understand and implement, tied to retention, and rock solid. I started out my sales career at an insurance company were 60% of the staff was under 25 and 20% were over 45. Why? Because insurance companies pay high commission when the client signs, and low commissions when the client renews each year. Those who are successful and sell a few dozen policies their first couple of years find that they can’t afford to switch and start over somewhere else.

Find ways to make it hard for your people to quite without breaking your own bank. Consider paying commission or incentives for referrals, renewals, and other kinds of targeted client behavior.

The rule for performance-based compensation – make sure you are paying for the behaviors you want to encourage. In China, that might mean bonuses and higher commissions for longer-term workers.

Better selection & hiring
Ask them if they plan on setting up their own business. Ask them what their long-term plans are. You’ll be surprised at how many young Chinese managers will tell you outright that they plan on setting up their own business. You can probably screen out a surprisingly high percentage of applicants by asking if they would ever stay with any company for over 2 years.
Managers who have a career plan that meshes with your operational goals are your best candidates. In China, the fancier the CV– the flightier the candidate.

Intrapreneurialism programs.
Ok – sorry for the buzz-words, but this is an idea worth looking at in specific situations. Let’s say you’ve got a hot manager who can make things happen on the sales floor or in the meeting room. He is already planning his next step, and hi is going to take your client list and IP with him. It’s already on his hard-drive at home. You know this.

What can you offer him to get him to stay? Probably nothing. If he’s like most Chinese managers between the ages of 22 and 45, he defines success as his own start-up company.

Is the situation hopeless? Maybe not. You can cut your losses and maybe build an important relationship by making it
easier for him to set up his own shop and being a partner instead of a competitor. Sit him down (preferably outside your office, at an expensive bar or restaurant) and play to his ambitions. Find out if he has ever thought of setting up his own company. You may find out he is already pretty far along. Now find out what he needs to get started.

The goal here isn’t to become an actual 50-50 partner with the kid. That isn’t going to happen. A more realistic goal is to get him to use that client list of yours to complement your business instead of competing with your directly and undercutting your prices.

Will this work? Maybe. It didn’t work out too well for HuaWei and Harbor, but you may at least be able to stall the inevitable. You will also be able to negotiate a predictable exit date and make sure your clients have a fuller understanding of the situation.

If you spend a lot of time talking about business in China, you are may at times be tempted to stray beyond the limits of inter-culturally sensitive boundaries (i.e.: say rude stuff). I think that the international management community needs to re-enable their vocabularic tendencies in an effort to enhance harmonic co-existence.

We have, however, beaten the phrase “Cultural Differences” to death. It has been great for describing EVERYTHING that could possibly go wrong in China, but I’m afraid we’ve used it so much it is starting to lose all meaning.

ChinaSolved’s team of lexigraphic engineers (BS artists) have stepped up to the challenge (had nothing better to do with their time) and supplied a much needed Dictionary of Politically Correct Management Terms for the International China Managers.

Stealing IP –> Differently creative

Poor quality –> Alternatively standardized

Sleazy bastard –> Innovative

Overpriced –> Other-valued

Disloyal –> Ethically liberal

Bribe –> Enabled

Xenophobic –> Patriotic

Price gauging –> Economically hyper-opportunistic

Inefficient –> Innovatively allocated

Guanxi –> Bureau-capable

Job hopping –> Laterally enabled

Collusion –> Consensus orientation

Bureaucratic –> Process oriented

Protected industry –> Economically enhanced

Corrupt official –> Motivated public servant

Gone nuts –> China-capped

Example: Yesterday some sleazy bastard from marketing downloaded the entire database of our client list AND the new product specs for our entire product line. I have no idea how he got the passwords – probably paid off one of the IT geeks. He didn’t even have the balls to give notice. I found out because 2 clients that I know personally called me up and told me that they got an email with OUR company’s logo over a different company name — offering our identical service at 20% lower cost. What an asshole.

Becomes…

Recently a self-directed individual from our marketing department opted to pursue more independently oriented activities. Before leaving, he decided to avail himself of some materials which would enable him to maximize the value from time he spent with us. Various members of our IT family took it upon themselves to help him compile a meaningful collection of mementos. Always considerate, he decided not to burden the overworked HR team with unnecessary paperwork. Several mutual acquaintances received helpful notes that reminded everyone that our friend was still active in the community. We wish him the best.

In the last couple of days I’ve noticed things around Shanghai are breaking down. The cool flat-screens in the subway cars are running endless loops of error messages. Escalators on the pedestrian overpasses near Nanjing xi Lu are out of order. That big Carrefour sign in Gubei is missing half the lights. A quarter of the treadmills at my trendy Xu Jia Hui gym are out of order.

These aren’t broken windows in derelict buildings or burnt-out streetlamps in sketchy parts of depressed urban neighborhoods. We’re talking about name-brands in China’s showcase neighborhoods.
In every case, someone somewhere probably made a conscious decision to save a few rmb per year by refusing a service contract or cutting back on maintenance.

Which brings us to the question of the day: What is happening in your own office when if comes to maintenance schedules? And how secure are your sources of materials, sources and supply-chain?

You’ve got two options when it comes to maintenance. Schedule it, or plan on stuff breaking down.

Scheduling maintenance means budgeting, assigning (or hiring) people who know what’s going on, training and overseeing. It’s pretty involved, and most people would rather just not deal with it. In a lot of offices, people will look at you blankly and give a half nod when you instruct them about maintenance. They are waiting for you to go away. They know better than you do. Foreigners and overseas Chinese waste money on such things all the time. We don’t have to behave in such a foolish manner.

Getting your own people to institute a basic maintenance program on machinery and equipment is one of those ‘China things’ that is MUCH harder than it seems it should be. Preventive maintenance is simply not the way things are done. It makes as much sense to locals as telling a New Yorker to roll up a $20 bill and throw it out the window every hour on the hour. Of course you won’t do it. This is particularly true if the equipment in question is extremely complex and expensive.

When things inevitably go wrong, no one ever makes the connection to lax maintenance routines. “The supplier is a fraud.” “Chinese humidity is too much for the flimsy equipment.” “Famous brands are no good after all.”

This is a situation you will eventually have some degree of control on – in your own shop. But what about your sources and supply chain? Who is guaranteeing that they will be able to keep you well stocked and supplied with goods and services?

No one. So that’s where having a Plan B comes in. There are few certainties in life, but I think we all know that somewhere in your supply chain, someone is busy repairing a copying machine with a hammer or fixing a cracked foundation with a paintbrush and some flat-finish eggshell white. I can’t tell you exactly where or when, but we can narrow it down to “somewhere critical, at some important time”.

We can hope it won’t happen. Or we can figure on the Plan A process breaking down and develop a Plan B. Figure out your “critical path”, or the short list of processes that will sideline your entire operation. It might not be expensive or seem important. I once had a local real estate guy spend days getting first shot at a great apartment he wanted me to rent. We finally worked out everyone’s schedule, and all the interested parties met at the right time and place. The property owner, the realtor, the prospective renter, the representative from the renter’s employer – everyone was at the right place at the right time. Well, except for the old guy from the little snack-shack across from the dumpster in the courtyard of the building – the one with the keys to the apartment. It seems that no one told him he was part of the critical path.

Don’t rely on single sources. Institute regular audits on the quality and procedures used by key suppliers. Make sure that the people doing QA (quality assurance) are different from the people making the purchasing decisions. (It doesn’t hurt if the QA people don’t even like the purchasing people. I’m just saying…) Figure out a simple system for tracking the reliability of your suppliers – on a regular basis. Constantly be on the lookout for new sources. (Oh – one of the many meanings of Guanxi is “lower the quality standard”. Be on the lookout for cozy relationships.)

Yes, this is all a huge pain in the neck, and it’s much easier to just hope for the best… until that moment the biggest prospect of your career is waiting for your presentation and the electricity blows. He might wait around until your receptionists’ father’s classmate can pedal over to patch it up with some twigs, a piece of leather cut from a hatband and a short length of twine. Or he may have lined up a Plan B option of his own – one which doesn’t include you.

A US manager located here in Shanghai commented on a recent ChinaSolved post about building up a knowledge bank to lessen the impact of high staff turnover. “It’s a nice idea, but it will never work in China”. Well, here’s a practical example of how you can MAKE it work.

I was at 2 big networking events in Shanghai yesterday (and still had to turn down 2 other invitations). The first was free to enter, but was located in far-off Pudong. The other was a rmb150 Chamber of Commerce mixer at a hotel in Gubei.

There are a lot of accountants at multinationals and medium-sized companies in Shanghai getting expense-account receipts for taxis, meals, and admission tickets this morning.
Are you, the international manager, getting anything in return?

Well, you need to start. Require everyone who attends these events to furnish you with copies of at least 5 business cards of viable prospects including comments on what kind of transactions they might be interested in. Make it clear that this will be part of your company’s extended marketing database. If you don’t have a company newsletter or CRM system in place, this is a great way to get started.

This is really just a starting point. You will eventually introduce a more detailed system that includes written reports (brief, but structured) describing the event and the prospects.
These events are expensive in terms of money and time, and you should be getting some kind of tangible return.

What if your sales team only gives you low-quality leads or none at all? Well, you haven’t paid those expenses yet, have you? I hope not. This is one of the few times in your China managerial career that you have actual leverage. You shouldn’t be offering your sales team a “blank check” when it comes to networking events. Make some kind of reporting and lead-sharing a condition of getting reimbursed for network expenses.

You should also be including these leads (and all other networking activity) into an integrated sales-tracking program that enables you to institutionalize your team’s collective knowledge.

As a China-based manager, you can expect your team members to head for the door at a faster clip than they would back home. That doesn’t mean, however, that you have to be a doormat. If you are paying the bills, you should be getting something in return.

Any China-based manager or owner can tell you that the Chinese market is getting steadily more sophisticated and competitive. There was a time when simply offering any western-style brand or service gave you a market niche. Look at the wine market. Only a few years ago the potential problem was that the market might not accept the idea of wine made from grapes. And in two colors? Something must be wrong with this bottle!

Now in Shanghai alone there are several dozen wine tastings every month, and the only barrier that sellers face is “how high can you go?”.

So how can other China-based businesses differentiate themselves and deal with the new hyper-competitive marketplace?

Simple. Figure out what scares people.

The very top of the market has always understood this principle. They’ve been selling “status insecurity insurance” for years in China, and doing well. It’s not a financial instrument, though. It’s the Benz, the Rolex and the Villa. High-end toys have always been used to insure the hard-working success stories that they wouldn’t be laughed at or looked down on (publicly) by their more aristocratic comrades.

Does it work on other levels of the economy? Oh, yeah. The trick is understanding who your market segment really is and selling to that.

Western managers accept this idea readily enough, but now you have to train your team of ambitious local salespeople to understand this. As someone who spends a lot of time training and coaching sales teams in Shanghai, I am always surprised to hear how selfish people can be.

“My company…” “We are an international company…” “We have the biggest R&D budget…” “Our clients are the biggest and most famous…”

Who cares? Why should your clients care?

Managers and owners have to get their teams to understand – it’s not about the features or the pedigree. It’s about the client’s perception.

Chinese consumers are afraid of looking uncultured, low status, and unsophisticated. (I know, most other markets are the same way – but we are discussing sales in China right now). You should be selling comfortable, safe solutions to those problems. Image boosting, reassuring, crowd-accepting solutions to your customers’ insecurities.

Recent ex-pats are insecure and nervous about living in a strange place. If you are selling them apartments or services you need to talk about how safe and happy their family will be.

What about B2B? These buyers fall into 1 of 2 groups.

Group 1 is the owners and top managers who benefit from higher profits. You are selling these folks based on your ability to A) raise sales, B) lower costs; or C) destroy the competition.

The tricky part is that in China there is a second group. The HR department, logistics manager, and professional purchasers. These people don’t really care about how much the company earns – since they get compensated by straight salary. As many owners and top managers have figured out, profit sharing and long-term bonus structure don’t really work since they are already looking for a new job. What scares these people?

More work. Overtime. Problems. Staying late to fix things. These people are afraid of the orderly, routine process breaking down and causing them problems.

If your China-based business is going to survive and prosper in the next phase of this hyper-competitive marketplace, you are going to have to train your team to stop reciting lines from the company brochure and start figuring out what scares the hell out of your target market. Then just present your product or service as the perfect solution.

Everyone is scared of something, whether it’s falling profits, low status, lack of popularity, or overtime. If you make them feel safe from these terrors, they will find you and bang down your door with big wads of renmenbi in their sweaty clinched fists.

I apologize to everyone who turned up here after doing web-search on China and Sex. This is about staff planning and gender differences. Sorry.

Do women make better employees and managers than men do in China? In Asia? In general?

It’s a subject that comes up over and over for ex-pat managers who have been in China long enough to see their staff turnover rate hit triple digits. Despite lingering paranoia concerning political rectitude, I will jump in with both feet – since it seems to be a key consideration for newly arrived managers.

Women between the ages of 27 and 40 make the best candidates for management, (at least in Shanghai). If you can find someone from out of town, that’s even better.

A friend of mine who has run his own consulting business in Shanghai for over 10 years puts it this way: “Women have fewer opportunities for advancement than men within the big Chinese state-owned companies. As a result, they tend to be more stable, more loyal, and more competent – and aren’t going to leave with all of your IP and confidential information to set up a competing business in 6 months.”

Other China-based senior managers have told me similar things. In China, a common ambition among males is to set up their own business and be the boss. Working for ex-pat companies is seen as a kind of “commercial finishing school”, where they stay for a few months to learn the finer points of international business and collect some useful data before “graduating” to their own business.

But are women more competent? Another “old hand” points to the dreaded FACE issue to give his take on the situation. Issues like pride, status and face are much more important to Chinese men than to women. As a result, the men-folk are devoting considerable portions of their day to social/guanxi issues. It also gives their female counterpart an advantage when it comes to learning new skills and taking advice and training. Whereas men have a tendency to say they already know how to do things better than the boss, women are likely to ask for examples and accept criticism.

I worked in Taipei in the early 1990s when that city’s economy was going through a rapid transitional period, and I noticed a similar situation myself. I remember working in a highly regarded Chinese investment bank whose mid-management ranks were heavily weighted with women executives. They were all hired as assistants, secretaries and low-level administrators, but as business boomed they were promoted and pushed up the ranks. The men were all too busy running the family business or hawking chou-doufou out of the food cart. I remember one high-powered VP who spent weekends answering the phone at her husband’s medical office.

Eventually the situation stabilized. Men saw that their long-term prospects were better if they worked for a large, stable company, and they began to pursue corporate career paths.

If you run a company in China, you may want to pay attention to the gender bias in you staff retention ratio. More and more ex-pat managers are over-weighting their staff with women. I know the jokes that spring to mind – it has more to do with cosmetic or carnal impulses than anything else. But more than a few successful managers who only care about the bottom line have stepped up and said that – at least for now – gender really does matter when it comes to staff development and retention.

This is one subject where ChinaSolved would appreciate reader input.

International managers in China probably hate the formal Chinese banquet (yan hui) more than any other aspect of business life here. The baijiu toasts, the enforced smoking, the sea cucumber & ox spleen — it ranges from the merely bad to the improbably wretched. Followed up with an endless bout of KTV, it’s a sure-fire recipe for a terrible evening.

But is it really the infantile behavior, disgusting food and drunkenness that bothers us? Not really. In general we LIKE acting like boozy idiots and eating foul food – we just do it differently.

Many long-term ex-pats are finding themselves in situations where they have to act as hosts at one of these events. Well, the next time you’re called on to entertain Chinese guests, share the love and bring some high-quality western partying skills to the table. You spent 4 or 5 years at college preparing for just this moment.

Cuisine: Nothing says “I want to build a long term business relationship with your firm” like a big, steaming platter of noxious local delicacies. When you’re the host, you’ve got to step up to the challenge and bring a little bit of home right here to the Middle Kingdom. 5 years ago, we didn’t have too many options. Now however, we’ve got a few choices. Shanghai has one Taco Bell (789 Nanjing Road East), and while they don’t have private rooms with those big spinny table-tops, they do provide catering service.

Now, I know what a lot of you are thinking: How can we really do a Yan Hui American Style without White Castle? It’s true; The Castle hasn’t qualified with the WTO as an actual “food” product yet (soulless paper-pushers), so it may still be a long wait. But we live in the land of the cheap knock-off. IP laws are loose, and the locals are expert at reverse engineering. How hard is it to punch a few holes in 1.5 ounce of hamburger and fry it in extra grease? Wont’ even have to explain that last bit. Repeat after me… slie dah. Slie dah. There you go! This site ( http://www.whitecastle.com/_pages/secret.asp ) has all the information your ayi will need to reproduce the goodness right here.

Libation: Give the mao tai a break. Westerners have been putting themselves at a business disadvantage for generations by downing glass after glass of bai jiu. Well, if you’re calling the shots, why not make them tequila shots! Nothing tips the balances in your favor like a case of Cuervo’s finest. While you’re out it, you can stock the rest of the shelf with Budweiser, Pabst, Smirnoff, and our favorite Dixie twins Jack & Jim. Your new partner won’t know what hit him! Let him explain to HIS boss why he agreed to make YOUR idiot nephew the managing director of the new Zhejiang JV.

Business Philosophy: Get those sensitive negotiations started right with a little honest dialogue and discussion. Yeah, we’re talking about drinking games. That liar’s poker dice game that the KTV girls play isn’t bad, but you’ll probably want to opt for something a little more sophisticated and mature. Well, if Quarters is fun, then Kuai-ers is even ‘more funnier’. (You might want to wash the coins, first. Don’t want your hot prospects coming down with the plague.) This will set the tone for all your subsequent strategy planning, so make sure everyone on your side has the requisite skills and understands “elbow pointing” rules.

The Ministry of International Commerce says the deal isn’t done until your counter-party blows chunks in a parking lot. Lady executives – get a friend to hold that hair back! It’s may turn out to be a loooong night.

Negotiations. KTV and public singing are only weird because of the microphone and the music choices. Well, when you’re the one doing the entertaining you have to be open to ALL cultures and backgrounds – Wild Thing, Louie Louie, Freebird AND Sinatra’s New York, New York. None of those prima-donna solos, either. The entire room shouting half-rememberd lyrics is the only way to build a really strong relationship. And if discussions are getting bogged down on technicalities, it’s time to rollout Sir Mixalot’s “I Like Big Butts”. Yeah.

Teambuilding. I’ve asked several high-level Chinese executives, and NONE of them have ever mooned a crowd from a moving taxi. Unbelievable, I know. Share your culture and forge strong business ties. The danger here isn’t that they’ll hate the idea – it’s that they’ll be doing it all the time. Is it counter-revolutionary or is it empowering the people? Let the Beijing HR department figure it out! Take ‘em for a ride ‘round People’s Square and practice. One fruit basket for the crowd leaving Barbossa’s please!

Public Safety: Your friend’s at Malone’s want us to remind you: Safety first – then double doubles and semi-pornographic Filipino cover bands. Tai ban le!