Everything I know about managing in China I learned from "Star Trek: The Next Generation"

By Kathleen Lau

If you were buying a carpet for your living room, and I asked whether you wanted a wool carpet or a nylon one, how would you decide? Most likely you would ask for the difference in the two types of carpet: in cost, maintenance and comfort. Once you had the information, you would weigh the pros and cons of each based on what is important to you and make the decision.

Now let's say you're running a company instead of redecorating your living room. Your decisions will affect the future of your business, the efficiency of your operation, and satisfaction of your clients - and staff. You have the final say on everything from hiring the ayi to the scope of your business licence. How then can you be sure that you have all the information you need to make the right decisions? By relying on your senior staff.

In an ideal world, your team would know what pertinent information to look for, do the preliminary analysis, and give you the tools to make the right decisions. Your job here is to hire knowledgeable people who can give you their best advice.

But what if you lived in a world where decisions were not related to having information - of any kind? What if you were told that decisions, no matter how important or how much they affected your life, are not meant to be understood, just followed?

Don't ask me, I just work here

The building I bought my apartment in is government-managed. Last week, scaffolding was erected around the balcony. Workers were peeking into my balcony doors when I woke up, and started to paint the outside of my balcony. He tapped on the glass and told me that they were going to paint the inside of my balcony walls later in the day.

It would be great to get a free paint job if I hadn't bought and renovated this apartment six months ago. My colour choice for the balcony was being overruled. There was no posted notice that any work would be done anywhere in the building. A call to the management committee didn't shed any light on the city's plans.

"They didn't tell us either," came the response. "Call this number and see what they say," was the best I got. Of course no one answered. Even as I write this, I'm sitting on the balcony alongside the workers painting over old paint and chipping cement. I have no idea whether they will step onto my property and start whipping their brush. But I have a deadline to meet (already late actually) so I'll call that number back another day.

I can only imagine that if I grew up being strong-armed and told to accept decisions from invisible seats of power, my concern, at every critical juncture, would be: Who makes the decision? Not: What should be the right decision? This, essentially, is how this culture came to train its people.

If your style is equally autocratic, you will have no problem managing your staff in China. You can make all the decisions without any need to explain or train them in assessing information. You can make decisions based on a whim and they will still happily follow your orders. Although you'll have to keep them simple and dispense them one at a time since more than one would only be confusing - which are they to follow first?

But if your management style is based on team-building and consensus, you're in trouble. You have inherited an entire generation that has never seen decisions based on having information and critical thinking. Instead, managers with years of experience continue to wait for a "final decision' from the boss, assuming that what the boss wants can never been deduced or understood. Most tragically, this legacy leaves behind a team of experienced staff who has not learned the process of decision making.

Thus mature and highly intelligent staff functions like young assistants who can only fulfil the most basic tasks asked of them. They have never been taught to put any importance on the need for market information or prioritizing. If they don't see the connection, the information they provide is hit or miss. And as the foreign manager, you are constantly asked to make on-the-spot decisions on issues you can't possibly be able judge without some information.

Do you want an aircon with 3 horsepower or 5? Do you want to use supplier A from Shandong or supplier B from Guangzhou? Do you want to pay for RMB1,000 per square metre redwood flooring, or one from B&Q for a third of the price? The list goes on and on. When you ask what the difference is between the two, you are told: the price. Not the answer you are looking for.

If someone doesn't see the need to have good information in making the right decisions, then your request for information is simply to give you an answer, not be a part in helping you make the decision.

The captain's chair

One of my favourite TV series of all time is "Star Trek: The Next Generation". Each time the galaxy is being threatened, Captain Picard calls the team to the ready room.

There, around the conference table each team member analyzes the threat and suggests possible counter-measures for their areas. All Picard has to do is say, "Make it so."

To get your staff from asking "What's your decision?' to "I believe this following procedure is the best way based on the fact that ..."is a long route to travel. I try to do some training every time I ask for a piece of information on how it connects to the final decision. Do I've had mixed results.

Some employees never seem to catch on, still stopping me in the middle of walking from the office to the front door with, "I need you to decide on this right now." Some have come a long way in providing meticulous information. But almost all have never learned to add their own assessment and recommendation - preferring to wait for the Final Decision.

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

Kathleen Lau is the owner of Kathleen's 5 Restaurant & Events in the Shanghai Art Museum and the author of Riding the Dragon: A Practical Guide to Living in Shanghai. She is also the founder of that's Shanghai and that's Guangzhou and has been in China since 1995. See more of her writing in www.kathleens5.com. Email any comments to Kathleen@Kathleens5. com.