Chinese and Western employees often operate under conflicting strains of logic. The problem becomes how to reconcile the two

-----By Kathleen Lau

One of my best experiences in building businesses in China has been dealing with people. And I don't mean just the Chinese. In Shanghai, I've worked with people from Brazil to Mongolia and it lets me see that cultural differences are not just between the East and the West.

It has also been one of my best experiences to work with some great people and I count my current team in that group. They are intelligent, effective, and they watch my back. They are the reason I can take weeks off during holidays instead of working 14 hours a day year-round.

My top two stars complement each other perfectly. One is market-wise, lives the business and works with the energy of two. His wealth of experience has honed his ability to gauge each decision and how it connects to other parts of the business. I rubber-stamp most of his decisions, even when we disagree, because I trust his instincts and have confidence in his plans. He can quickly assess a situation and change course in mid-stride according to need.

The other star is as steady and methodical as the first is quick and reactive. She can take a complicated and chaotic mess of a project, break it down into manageable steps and find the right people to plug in as at the right point. She sees that my deadlines are met and relieves me of the headaches involved in keeping track of changing regulations.

Together they make one hell of a powerful unit. But they get along like oil and water. One comes from lifetime of country-hopping in the west and so is used to having his views challenged but not his logic. The other lives in Chinese logic that is reinforced by strong science-based academics.

Most times it doesn't matter because I act as translator and communicator to their two very different styles and perspectives. But when I'm absent their differences become serious and I'm caught like a child between parents that aren't talking. Both have my interest at heart and I can't contemplate a divorce. My only chance of survival is their reconciliation.

Here, I'm at a loss for how to integrate their worldviews because I tread that fine line between Eastern and Western logic where I can see how each have come to their conclusions. From their perspectives, I see that they are both ¡­ well, right.

Talking past each other

To illustrate my difficulty, let me tell a story I've heard. But, to be clear, this is not about my two stars but an extreme case to make a point.

This is the story: A friend travelling around China by train finds himself in a remote town in the interior. With his limited Chinese, he goes up to a counter in the train station and asks, "Do you have a ticket to X?" To which the clerk replied, "No." Thinking that the tickets were sold out (and because of China's rules about not selling tickets too far in advance), he goes back the next day and asks, "Do you have a ticket to X?" To which the clerk replied "no" again.

The same thing happens on the third day. By now he realises there must be something wrong, so he asks, "Why don't you have a ticket for X?" To which the clerk replied, "They sell those at the next window."

Every foreigner I have ever told this to sympathises with the ticket buyer. Of course we know that what the person wanted was the ticket, not to know if the clerk sold it. So why wasn't the clerk more helpful?

Now we may have met this ticket seller in many guises, and not only in China, but personally I seem to run into him in China more than anywhere else because here he's not considered wrong. If he were reported for bad customer service, he would not be reprimanded.

Two hundred years of western capitalism and challenges to the law have taught us the meaning of the "letter" versus the "spirit" of something. We argue for the spirit of the law, not simply following the letter of the law. So we know why the traveller was flabbergasted, and we sympathise.

But in the Chinese world, the ticket seller is right. Previous autocratic systems enforced the letter of rule, not the spirit. It's simple to see that in this system, following the letter of the law, or the procedure, makes perfect ¡­ well, logic. But how to explain to each, the view from the other side? More than that, how to convince both to handle the other from this understanding? What gets lost is a whole worldview which simple language cannot explain. How to communicate then, that one side needs to respect the letter more, while the other needs to see the spirit more?

My advice is start by being an example of looking from the other side. A recent letter from a reader highlighted for me the good results that can come when we do just that:

During the two years that I now live in China ¡­I have seen that even though the path is different, the end result we get here in China can [exceed] original expectations and might even [exceed] what we realistically could expect to achieve in China. ¡­ I have become a more emphatic, and possibly better, manager than before, and my original frustration is now more often turned into amusement when I see how a totally different approach can result in comparable and sometimes even better results.

Who knows what you, like our reader, may gain?

copyright 2007 by Kathleen Lau. No part of this may be reprinted - in any language or format: printed, electronic or otherwise - without expressed written permission from the author.