Well, we’ve got another long holiday on our hands in China. Now, if I know my hard-driving ChinaSolved readers, you probably think that relaxation and down-time are for wimps. But how can you be productive when your staffs and clients are all off in their Deng-Thought Study Groups celebrating the glories of International Workers Day?

This is the perfect time for putting together an Orientation Training plan that will help you get your new hires up to speed a little quicker – and help reinforce your positive Corporate Culture from the first day.

Bosses of the World, Unite!


What is Orientation Training? When a new hire joins your team, they have two types of knowledge and skills to master. The obvious class of skills has to do with executing the mechanics of their jobs. You probably already have a plan for training people about products, services, procedures and processes that they are required to master. But don’t overlook the “softer” skills, such as understanding your company’s mission, attitudes, and group dynamics. That’s were Orientation Training comes in.

Vague – but Vital
Many SMEs ignore Orientation Training, because in the west we tend to be very informal about it. When we join a new team in the US or Europe, we usually look to an experienced colleague or department head to set the tone and fill in the blanks. This can include formal procedures, such as payroll data and company paperwork, or it can be fuzzier concepts, such as company culture or attitudes toward clients. That may work fine with established organizations with long histories and mono-cultural teams. But in China, your Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is probably very different from the norm for most of your staff. It’s important that you take the time to teach them about your expectations, goals and standards. If you don’t teach them about these basic, big-picture concepts, then you are forcing them to guess, rely on their own preconceived notions, or pick up the story piecemeal from their colleagues (who may not share your ideas and values)

Orientation Training Basics
Orientation can be thought of as teaching new staffers about your WHOLE business - not just the procedures or products. In its simplest form, an orientation training plan should cover these three general topics:

Philosophy and mission of the business
Why was this business started? What do you stand for? What are the values and priorities of the founders? Don’t laugh this part off – this is precisely the kind of big-picture issue that so often causes “disconnects” in Chinese business. If you’ve ever seen a Chinese salesperson drive away an important client in an effort to squeeze another 1.5 rmb out of the deal, it was caused by this class of misunderstanding.

Expectations and attitudes
What do you expect from your employees? What should their attitudes be towards quality, customer service, colleagues, honesty and rules? If you think that these things are so basic that you don’t need to discuss them, then think again. You feel your people should stay with you for at least 2 years, right? Do they know this? Do they know what is required to be successful or to get a promotion? When it comes to China HR, you are best off with the mantra: ASSUME NOTHING.

Chain of command and SOP
What is the organization chart and standard operating procedure at your firm? Again, you have your assumptions about what “everyone knows”, but they are not universal. Chinese teams are famous for developing a “shadow leader” who tends to act as an informal mentor for young employees. If this is the department supervisor or HR manager, then that is great. But if it’s the pissed-off salesman who has been passed over for a promotion, then you have a real problem on your hands. Make sure you have a clear organizational structure – and that everyone is clear about it.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that this sort of soft knowledge will sort itself out naturally. It will – but not the way you want it to. Likewise, beware of delegating this to HR or department heads and forgetting about it forever. There is no autopilot in China business. It’s ok to task the HR manager with orientation training, but this is one area where senior people should play a large & consistent role. If your new hires don’t know why they are showing up for work in the morning, they can’t be blames for getting the wrong idea about what they are supposed to be doing.

Corporate Culture sounds like one of those MBA buzz-words that management consultants use when they want to sound smarter than they really are. Usually, it is. But when it comes to small start-up firms operating in China, culture is actually very significant – particularly if you want to retain staff.

There are basically 2 broad lenses through which you can view your company’s culture.

The two dimensions of corporate culture are Appropriate vs. Inappropriate, and Strong vs. Weak.

Appropriate for your business?
Are you the kind of manager who TALKS about being a bold risk-taker but blows his top when someone tries and fails? Do you talk about innovation and creativity but look over everyone’s shoulder to make sure they are doing things ‘the right way’? Are you a penny-pincher in an industry that favors investment?

Your company’s culture has to be appropriate for your industry and competitive environment. If you are in a fast-moving, rapidly changing industry, you need to encourage creativity and risk-taking among your team. If your business is about trust and stability, your company must project an image of reliability and conscientiousness.

Strong or Weak culture?
Does your company have any traditions, stories or heroes? Or is your company’s culture so vague and subtle that you are the only one who really knows it exists. Having an appropriate culture is only half the challenge – now you must find a way to rally the troops and convey to everyone what your values, priorities and standard operating procedures are. A lot of Japanese and Korean firms take their culture to the extreme – they have anthems, flags, uniforms and pledges. You may not want to go that far, but you still can have customs and a consistent style that will allow new hires, clients and suppliers to get a sense of who you are and what you’re about.

When it comes to culture, just remember that your company will have one whether you design it or not. Good managers realize this and put in the time and thought to design a company culture that they think will benefit their company. Otherwise, you may find that your weakest employees are the ones imposing their values and habits on your company’s culture.

When hiring in China, don’t confine your candidate search to the typical “blue-chip” model of Chinese professionals. Spend a little time in Shanghai or Beijing and you may get the impression that the entire Chinese economy is being driven by Fudan or Beida graduates who grew up in major coastal business cities. But China is a big place, and there is more to it than just a few brand-name universities.

If your job description calls for a strong networker or a passive team player, then these guys will work out just fine. But if you need an aggressive closer or a self-starting manager, you may want to widen your search.

Consider the Provinces for Salesmen
Your big-city HR guys may tout the virtues of maintaining harmony and homogeneity by hiring from their alma-mater and extended network of contacts – but when it comes to sales pros you may want to try rocking the boat a little. For most Shanghai salesmen, building relationships and working the network are the keys to their success – but not necessarily to YOURS. Locally bred dilettantes are good for morale, but not always great for top-line sales. They tend to wait for prospects to initiate transactions – and then seal the deal with deep discounts and favorable sales terms.

Try adding a little variety to the sales mix by hiring an out-of-towner from one of the less prosperous provinces – even if the candidate isn’t a product of a name-brand university. Your HR managers may look down their noses, but these rough-around-the-edges outsiders have a lot of the attributes that you look for in a sales professional. First, they tend to need the job, and won’t have the sense of entitlement and attitude that many international managers find hard to work with. They tend to be more proactive – dare I say aggressive – than their local counterparts. And since they may be coming from non-privileged backgrounds, will respond well to commission plans and other performance-based incentives.

Manage diverse teams more carefully
Diversity is great, but may require a bit more management attention than a locals-only approach. Your new hires may be a little rough around the edges, and may not communicate well with your existing team right off the bat. Spend a little time on team-building – and make sure that all supervisors and managers are on the same page. Remember: an aggressive salesman can be trained to present well and wear a nice suit, but a meek yes-man can never be taught to fight for an order or close a tough sale.

The lady from Virginia just shut my mouth. I was trying to impress a potential partner in the US with my shocking revelation that HR was a huge problem in China and that qualified middle-managers were just about impossible to find and retain. “Join the club”, she told me. “It’s the same all over”.

In a hot economy, ALL managers have to work hard to protect their human assets. US managers learned long ago that building a good team takes time. Shortcuts and quick fixes can leave senior managers playing an endless game of catch-up.

Poaching Bad.
China-based managers like hiring from the competition more than their western counterparts do. There are instances when it makes sense. If you know of a specific person with skills or clients that you have an existing need for – then go for it. But poaching has a number of down-sides. First, your new hires tend to be expensive – and everyone knows it. So if you’re paying your hot new hire 30% above the rest of your team, expect your existing team to know all about it (or worse, assume the situation is even MORE unfair). You’d better have a plan for keeping your present staffers happy on the job – or you may end up taking two steps backwards. The other problem with poaching is that you now have people on your team who believe that the road to success lies outside your door. Are they jumping ship because of your powers of persuasion and charm – or because that’s their standard operating procedure? And don’t forget the issue of Corporate Culture – when you bring in highly-paid outsiders, they are going to have a big impact on your team’s attitude and style. You have to pay attention to how the newcomers are influencing your team’s SOP (standard operating procedure).

Training Good.
Long term success in China – or anywhere else – depends on your ability to develop your own team. You may give in to the professional Headhunter’s sweet siren song or not – that’s your option. But if you don’t have a training plan – including a new employee orientation program, a basic skills-training plan, and a deep source of outside specialists – then you are just treading water. In-house training is how you build a deep bench that knows how you operate and may even develop a tiny bit of loyalty to your company (anything’s possible). I know — the track-record in China has been mixed. But going forward, the ability to train new hires into seasoned pros is going to be the hallmark of excellent companies in China – and successful senior managers.

Why should they turn down other offers?
This isn’t a smarmy rhetorical question – it’s the key management challenge in China right now. Your people are going to get better offers all the time – and you need them to say “no”. Why are they going to turn down a 25% bump with a better title? Chinese workers are similar to staffers anywhere else in the world – if they feel appreciated by management, engaged by their jobs and optimistic about their future prospects, then they won’t give a headhunter the time of day. But if Chinese managers and workers feel that they have nothing to lose by walking away, then no one will be faster to hit the road without a second thought.

Insurance agency sales managers understand the China HR situation better than most people. They find it easy to hire green grads and provide them expensive training, only to watch most of them drift away when the job gets tough. They’ve developed a special method for dealing with this HR pattern: residual commissions. Salesmen get a small commission payment for all renewals forever.

Can this work for your operation?

Pay for behaviors
Residual compensation programs work this way. Client A buys product or service X from your company. When the contract gets signed, Salesman Bob gets a 25% commission (or whatever is considered a strong incentive in your firm). That encourages Bob to be aggressive about signing the contract, which is ONE very desirable behavior. But the next year, when Client A renews the contract (or buys a replacement or upgrade), Bob receives a 5% commission – EVEN THOUGH HE DIDN’T REALLY HAVE TO DO MUCH. Once Client A has bought the insurance policy or the industrial machine, it doesn’t take much sales effort to get him to renew or buy the parts or maintenance contract. In fact, Client A is locked in and doesn’t really need to speak to Salesman Bob at all. So why continue paying Bob a residual commission? Because of the SECOND useful behavior that you want to encourage – Bob is going to stick around to collect his annuity on Client A (and B, C, D etc).

Slow and Steady
There’s a catch here – residual programs don’t appeal much to sharks and corporate climbers. They are best for holding on to the sure & steady family man who wants to build a long-term future with a single company. And they don’t really have a powerful appeal until year 3 or 4, when those little residual payments start adding up to some serious money. So you have to start with your job specification and profile on the person you want to fill those sales positions. If you are looking for flashes of brilliance, then this sort of plan won’t really do much for you. But if you want long-term, reliable, team-players, then this may be a good tactic to use.

Leverage for Management
Once someone is collecting residual payments worth 20 – 25% of their total compensation, senior managers will find that they have greater leverage. In an economy where the average length of employment is about 18 months, many employees find it very easy to look for greener grass over every fence. But with residual commission plans, sales pros feel vested in the company’s future. They know that if they work to hold on to their existing accounts and add a few new ones every quarter, they’ll do great.

Commission Plans That Work
The Residual Commission approach is just one example of a compensation plan that helps implement specific HR or management strategies. Remember one of the basic rules of management: If you pay someone to fill a chair, they’ll fill a chair. If you pay them to perform, they’ll perform. The catch is that you have to structure the plan to fit your specific needs – and the specific needs of the people you want to retain at your company. Pay them for the behaviors you are interested in developing within your company.

Is your customer service getting better, or are your standards getting lower? I was thinking about just that while confirming my flight back to China on United Airlines. The trip from Shanghai to NY was pretty weak – with each leg of the flight delayed by at least 2 hours, an overbooked US flight, and a level of customer service that peaked out at “indifferent” and was downright hostile most of the time.

When we finally arrived in NY the pilot announced how happy he was that, although late, they had managed to get us to our destination. As opposed to what? Accidentally bringing us to a different city?

If you lower the bar far enough, your customer service is always going to look good. Deciding WHAT to measure is as important as deciding HOW or WHEN to measure.

Metrics
Feedback loops – otherwise known as finding out what the hell is really happening – work best when you are measuring FORWARD LOOKING indicators of CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS. That’s a lot of capitalized jargon, so let’s take a look at this in a little more detail.

FORWARD LOOKING METRICS
The thing you’re measuring should predict future sales or growth – not the past. That is the problem with looking at last month’s sales or profits – by they time you spot the trend it may already be too late.

Every business has three kinds of indicators: Leading, Coincident (at the same time) and Lagging. Lagging indicators are the easiest to measure, but help the least. Coincident measures are OK if you are in the shop at the time (hmmm – it’s 12:10 and every table is full – NICE) but tend to be ineffective for strategic planning. Leading indicators are the most effective – but the hardest to figure out. They require analysis and a deep understanding of your business process.

CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS
CSFs are what help you to determine your leading indicators. CSFs are the issues that help you predict what business is GOING to be like, as opposed to what it WAS like last period. If you are in retail, foot traffic is a good CSF. Shippers like to use economic activity to predict business volume. Every business has a different set of CSFs, but your job as a manager is to figure out what drives your business. For many sales organizations, the CSF is the number of inquiries calling (or emailing) in to your company AND/OR leads that salesmen are generating.

MEASURING
In general, measurement systems should be simple, consistent and quantitative. Restaurant owners often measure the “spend” per table. It is not as good a measurement as, say, satisfaction level or customer reaction to each dish – but you can’t chart and compare emotional responses easily. Spend per seating or per table is easy to measure and compare.

Good managers have to be good at figuring out how to predict their own business flow, and then putting a system in place to PREDICT how well their team is doing. If you don’t have objective standards for your own performance and a good way to test your progress, you just end up declaring victory for moving the goalposts.

What HR model works best in Shanghai? It’s a seemingly simple question – the kind that I do great with on my third beer when someone else is buying. But when someone asks you point-blank what really makes China teams successful, it’s a bit of a challenge. It is always so much easier figuring out what other people have just done wrong…

Well, here are a few ideas that I’ve gleaned from people far more intelligent and far more experienced than I am about managing teams in China effectively.

What DOES work in Shanghai HR?

1) Intense, big-picture training
What’s the MISSION? Why is your company doing things this weird, cumbersome way? In general, ex-pat run firms invest more time in each transaction and spend more on infrastructure. You see it as a commitment to quality and long-term value. How do your local staffers see it? Maybe they share your vision – or maybe they think you just don’t get China. Share your vision with them, and keep doing it. Make it part of your orientation policy, your regular training, your performance appraisals and your coaching.

2) Highly specific job responsibilities that keep getting bigger
Your Chinese team likes structure more than their western counterparts. Be honest – when is the last time YOU looked at a job description for your mid-level, 3 – 5 years-on-the-job managers? ‘Flexible and dynamic’ read well in the promotional literature, but if your manager’s think that they aren’t getting enough guidance then they may feel frustrated and adrift. Everyone likes moving up and making progress – in China you’ll want to make the steps very clear and space them out very regularly.

3) Small teams, vested in the future of the company
Beware of STAFF BLOAT – a very big problem in China. Once your team has grown to over 20 people, the dynamic changes drastically. It starts to feel ‘corporate’, which is ok if you have formal plans for career development, performance appraisals and incentive-based compensation plans. If you don’t have those systems in place, large teams can feel chaotic and uncaring. People like family and they like career. If your team has gotten too big to be a family, then you have to make sure that your managers see it as their career.

4) Highly engaged management
Don’t send your middle managers off to a team-building weekend while you go play golf. It’s insulting and counterproductive. You may be a numbers-oriented, hard-nosed manager who wants to see results – but if your top managers see you as a cold-hearted interloper who doesn’t care about them or their culture then they will find it very easy to leave. Your managers want you to be more involved. The ball’s in your court.

5) Active career management
Coaching, Career Development programs, high-level training, mentoring. This stuff is all expensive in terms of time, money and energy – which means that often is gets pushed down into the “low priority” part of your to-do list. Don’t fall into that trap. In the west, career development is the responsibility of individuals. In China, it is the responsibility of the company.

You’ll notice that while some of these tactics are expensive, big salaries aren’t featured on this list. It’s not that you won’t be paying a lot for good people – it’s just that high-pay is more of a threshold issue than a success strategy. Above average salary will help you get people in the door, and weak salaries may force some people to look elsewhere. But high pay alone isn’t going to turn a distracted, unmotivated worker into a superstar – but some of these other factors just might.

Many of your China HR woes can be traced to inadequate skills among your burgeoning front-line staff. One of the oldest ways of dealing with regular training is to have your more experienced staffers teach the newcomers how to perform basic tasks. But there is a big difference between knowing how to do a job and knowing how to teach a job.

Medical schools face a similar pressure to train a steady stream of new staffers. While your team may not be brain surgeons, they can benefit from this Train the Trainer technique.

Watch one, Do one, Teach one.
Doctors are taught to perform new surgical procedures through a system of Watch one, Do one, Teach one. The final step to their learning process is showing someone else how to perform the procedure. It is a very effective method of “burning in” the knowledge and experience needed to learn new tasks – and gives the trainee a much more thorough exposure to the new job.

Kind-of-sort-of knowledge
Young Chinese staffers tend to lack the confidence that comes with experience. Coupled with the traditional reticence of Chinese to ask questions of authority figures, this can result in lots of staff people who are vaguely familiar with many tasks that you, the boss, assume they know cold. They have seen someone else do them, and understand the ‘big picture’ aspects of the job. But they don’t understand the procedure well enough to do it really well or react to changes.

Knowing
Many front line staffers have been shown to do something. In China, this tends to satisfy the “75% rule” – where locals often figure that they have enough knowledge to assist someone more experienced perform a task. They never really seem to make the connection between understanding a process and envisioning themselves executing that procedure on their own – with clients.

Doing
This is where the experience gets built in. Once your people start performing tasks, they burn those little neural pathways into their brains and pass from understanding to real knowledge. Unfortunately, this is where traditional On The Job Training stops. You stand behind someone and give instructions and non-verbal cues to a new worker – and provide that all important safety-net which gives him the confidence to perform the task. He looks ready to do it on his own. He’s not.

Teaching
When you teach something, two things happen. First, you are forced to articulate the steps and explain them – thus uncovering any lingering doubts, confusion or vagueness in your own knowledge. Second, you are taking a leadership role that builds confidence in your knowledge of the task at hand – and in your own abilities in general. Teaching is the best way to really learn something.

Train the Trainer
Train the Trainer isn’t a new idea, but it’s one that many China managers should reexamine. You may find that a decent train-the-trainer program not only helps first-time staffers learn some basic skills, but also helps your more experienced managers develop more confidence and leadership skills. Just remember that training requires 2 distinct skill-sets: you must know the skills you are teaching, and you must know how to teach. Managers that ignore either one will quickly find that TtT programs are DOA.

There was a time when China-based senior ex-pat managers were so busy putting out fires that they didn’t have time for basic HR concerns, so hiring experienced locals working in the same field was the path of least resistance. But now, HR and hiring IS the fire you have to put out, and poaching expensive incumbents with bad attitudes and checkered pasts isn’t working.

It’s time to re-examine the numbers on Buy vs. Build. That internship program you shelved in 2004 might be looking better.

Until recently, Machiavellian corporate sharks in China liked to follow a strategy of “predatory poaching” – hiring away your competitors best assets in the hope of weakening his operation while simultaneously building up your own team. While that may work well when you have a small firm with 20 or so staffers, it doesn’t take the place of a well-considered manpower plan that will serve you as you grow.

The BUY part of the Build-Buy equation is starting to look weak for a number of other reasons. Three big forces are at work that make building more attractive than it was a few years ago.

1) You competition is staffed with weak, overpaid dilettantes who don’t like to get their hands dirty. (The good ones won’t leave for less than a small fortune and the weak ones are the ones you don’t want.)

2) Mass market requires a mass approach. You’ve got your strategy down, your model is working, and now you want to roll out a mass operation. You need a reliable system for pushing a steady stream of new staffers and managers through the pipeline. Development isn’t just for the Big Guys anymore. It’s mission critical, and predicting your own manpower cycle is as important as sourcing raw materials or developing distribution channels.

3) Training now makes economic sense – if you do it right. Hiring fresh grads at 3 - 5,000 rbm/month makes a lot more sense than hiring managers with 3 years experience who moved up the ladder too fast and now want 15,000 for “strategic planning” work. You have a corporate culture and a standard operating procedure now – which you might not have had a few years ago. That makes training and development MUCH more practical. Besides, these new grads have great skills, and are much more sophisticated than the 30-somethings were when they first hit the market.

Next: ‘Train the Trainer’ becomes fashionable again.

Media damage control is tricky anywhere—but particularly if you are unpopular MNC giants operating in China (i.e.: McDonalds, KFC). One thing that a China-based senior manager reporting to HQ doesn’t ever want to see is a headline that includes the word EXPLOITATION and his company name. Presumably, all the big MNCs have a plan in place for dealing with just such an occurrence … and yet here we all are.

Ok, sure – it’s funny when it happens to someone else. But time to stop chortling, Slick, and ask yourself: What would you do if you if you woke up one morning and found out that your subordinate’s subordinate was doing something unspeakably evil without filling out the right paperwork?

Multiple choice quiz: You open the morning paper and find out that you are the Evil Incarnate. Or more accurately, that you have stock options and a nice housing allowance from Evil Inc. Which policy option do you pursue?

1. Ignore
2. Minimize
3. Evade
4. Be born again
5. Divert attention (to something pretty and shiny)
6. Lie

Lie. If you chose #6, congratulations – that’s the right answer! Just kidding. You’re fired. Unfortunately, lying about a media event in modern China (i.e.: Corporate Blog/SMS Hell) is – hands down – one of the dumbest things you can do. And yes, lying about not knowing the truth is still a lie. You will be discovered, and you will be crucified for the lie as well as the underlying lapse in judgment that started the scandal in the first place. I’d go into more detail here, but if you are the kind of person who needs more details about lying to the media then you are not really going to benefit from further discussion.

Ignore. Ironically, this may be a winning strategy – sometimes. McDevil and KFC have a lot on their Styrofoam plates right now, and they can’t go firing up the global PR/damage control machine every time some kid in Guangdong whines about an extra fryolator shift. The truth is, too much damage control too early can cause even BIGGER problems. I remember one proactive MD who called the entire staff together to announce that rumors of the branch closing were unfounded. The only problem was that 90% of the company hadn’t heard the rumors – until he started them. Morale plummeted and the MD looked like an ass. Your kindergarten teacher was wrong – sometimes problems really DO go away if you just ignore them. The whole point of China-based damage control is to make your scandal less exciting and blog-worthy than the next guy’s. If you’ve got top executives jetting in from corporate headquarters to give press conferences, you’re just pouring gasoline on the fire.

Minimize. This seems to be what the Fast Food Brain Trust (FFBT) is trying to do now. ‘It’s simply a misunderstanding.’ ‘The rules aren’t clear.’ ‘What does ‘part-time’ mean?’ They’re trying to appear less like the “Exploitative Barbarian Overlord” and more like the lovable but hapless manager at ‘Arnolds’ from Happy Days (Kids –ask your Dads. It’s a GREAT analogy). ‘But Mr.Cunningham – those laws are sooo complicated, and Pottsie needs help finding The Fonz…’

Evade. Point that finger. It’s someone else’s fault or someone else is getting away with worse. Unless you’ve got a very compelling story and you’re willing to live with it for a LOOONG time, passing the buck or pointing fingers can be very tough to pull off – particularly in this situation. To point the finger successfully, you have to find someone who is bigger and evil-er than you are. And let’s face it — until that Japanese WWII medical experiment unit starts up a chain of curry joints, McDonald’s is gonna have trouble finding a fall guy.

Be born again. ‘Mistakes were made; we’re deeply, deeply sorry; We are creating a new position to interface with relevant municipal and national officials. We are starting a program to improve employee-manager communicational interfaces’ Make such a humiliating spectacle of yourself that people will quickly grow tired of you and find someone more arrogant to poke with their blog-stick. It’s the equivalent of one of those Tai-Chi moves where you back off when confronted and your opponent falls on his face and everyone laughs. Works best when you have already bought off the loudest victims. Two dangers here: If you do it too soon, and you’ll look like a pansy that is easy to intimidate. If you wait too long, you’ll look like a jerk that is getting his comeuppance – and people don’t get bored with that too quickly. When do you start apologizing? Well, right now Google search on McD is only showing one reference to this particular scandal on the first page. When that hits 3, I’d start finding God. Mea Culpas work best when coupled with this next beauty:

Divert. ‘…and now we’re going to build a hospital and set up a scholarship for Young Chinese Achievers. Free eyeglasses for all poor seniors in Guangxi Province! New schools for coal mine kids!’ Divert attention from your soulless exploitation of the masses with media-friendly largesse. In the old days, you could just send some reporters on a fact-finding trip to Macao or give a high ranking decision-maker a new Mercedes with a suitcase of cash in the trunk – but now those pesky bloggers are popping up like mushrooms. Got to take the high road.

The worst thing you can do in a media-induced cris-a-thon is to be passive and clueless. The bloggers and the bureaucrats will never let up if they think they can control the agenda. Devise a strategy that seems less painful than all the alternatives, and then make sure your entire team is up to speed.

Foreign companies in China are easy targets for unwanted media attention – but you can make that work for you. Blog readers like scandals and seeing arrogant barbarians deflated – but their attention span is limited. The more boring and transparent you make your particular problem, the faster they’ll start looking for excitement elsewhere.