Back to School - Fourth Part
JOURNEY TO THE WEST
Whether Chinese companies are about to go global or already have, what’s certain is that Chinese executives increasingly have to deal with Westerners, whether cutting deals with them or working with them as employees of a large multinational firm. For Chinese executives, then, understanding the western psychology has become a necessity for doing business. And in these EMBA programs, part of learning to understand the West means undergoing a western-style education.
Early on, that melding of Chinese minds with western teaching styles brought some bumps in the road. The first year that the Smith School offered its EMBA in Beijing, some of its students would do individual homework assignments together, while other students did not know what a citation was in writing.
After all, as Feld points out, the students had no idea what was and was not acceptable in a Western-style classroom. As far as they were concerned, “they were using outside resources, they were delegating, they were making good use of time and energy and all things that any good manager should do.”Thus, says Feld, “we actually had to modify some of our orientation activities and introduce an educational unit that was all about, ‘what does it mean to be a student in a western system?’ And it got complicated because we do an enormous amount of team stuff. So why’s it OK in this situation to work as a team and not in this situation? And that was a learning experience both for the students and for us.”
Kobb saw another interesting clash in attitudes the first time is students were asked to participate in a case study. The chosen subject was Domino’s pizza. “And they say, ‘What do I care about pizza? My company builds bridges or roads, or we produce seed oil, whatever; why am I interested in pizza?’ We need to take them to the step of, ‘forget the fact that it’s pizza; what we’re teaching you is how to approach problem.’”“The hierarchy between individuals has fallen,” he explains. “In the beginning you would go to a group and you would ask a question and everybody turns to the highest person in the group to answer. They do not do that anymore. There’s much more exchange now.” He adds, “I think our role is to open the up to new ideas, new concepts, so they at least understand how we do business outside of China. Increasingly we’re going to be partners and they need to understand that. ”
Some of the tactics used by the schools even move some participants to tears. Tsinghua’s new joint program with European business school INSEAD pairs up students who shadow each other, observing each other’s management style. The students are then invited to give each other feedback, moderated by coaches flown in from overseas who are themselves grizzled veterans of the business world. “So basically, it’s personal counseling,” says Di. “At the very beginning of the session every on was painting this rosy picture of themselves, but as they dug further, actually in every group there was somebody who cried.”
CEIBS sees its fair share of tears as well. In a recent class of 60 students conducted by Liang Neng, five cried during their peer evaluations. Because after all they have gone through together ?C trust games, shadow activities, computer simulations, group presentations, homework, leadership seminars, student elections, bunk beds, extracurricular lectures on art and music and film ?C all these standard elements of a western style education that will sound so familiar to anyone who has gone to summer camp, or college, or a company retreat, in the West; after all this, the students are examining themselves in a whole new way, and finding that they have learned something that goes far beyond the utilitarian goals they had in mind when they first enrolled.
CATIC vice president Liu is less than halfway into his year at HEC’s program in Beijing, but he has already drawn inspiration from what he has learned thus far. “We Chinese business leaders asked (WTO director Pascal) Lamy whether he had any suggestions about what we should be studying. He suggested that we study some psychology and a little religion, a little culture.
Traditionally, SOEs wouldn’t have seen this as very important or worth studying. His advice was very good. A lot of people were deeply impacted ?C we are putting much of what we have learned into practice,” said Liu.
He continued, “When we Chinese firms are setting up overseas operations or working with foreign partners, it’s hard to do good business (with them) because you don’t really understand their country’s culture. Nowadays, in business, there isn’t one scientific method that can enable you to conduct successful operations ?C you need to understand other races, other organizations, other people’s psychology. It’s not just about studying some business and management theories. What’s more important is to understand the West. ” Trust falls and all.
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