BlogHome
Junko Yoshida, of EETimes reviewed this book and said something that aptly describes what I was trying to do with this book: “At a time when China observers in the U.S. struggle to unlock the mysteries of the Chinese market through academic books, this is probably the first practical volume by an engineering and marketing manager that targets his peers working for U.S.-China companies.”
After what seemed like ages, at last the Chinese version of the book is live as iBook on Apple iBookstore. It took me a while to get the EPUB3 version right, but it’s here now. Now you can read this book on any iOS device such as iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and what not. Please find the iPad links in the sidebar on the left, and on the Chinese book page.
Then all of a sudden, you are no longer wallowing in the generalities of some vague China-US differences. Now your management challenge becomes more tangible; it begins to be specific.
The arrows in the above picture – pointing in the opposite directions – are showing that it is very likely that your teams in China and in the U.S. are operating with a misaligned understanding of how the company expects them to operate.
In my experience, tracing these misalignments to specific qualities – such as the mindset, the execution skills, the process, the expectations and the habits in the company – is a lot easier, and effective, way to adjust these misalignments. But we often make the mistake of coming at them with a big old “China-US cultural differences” paradigm, which just makes the issue so much more difficult to even define.
If you are in the U.S., and working in a technology company, you already know that you can’t ignore the China factor.
Think about it this way. You know that your big customers are moving into China already. No brainer here.
But you also know that staying close to the customer is the best way to understand their product requirements and get their business.
So, the logical question your management will ask is, “Should we move our development teams to China too, to stay close to the customer?”
So, what does this mean to you?
How would you, as a professional, continue to keep your job?
To answer that question, you should be asking the next logical question, “In what ways you are going to be relevant to your manager, to your company? How are you, as a professional, going to keep your skillset relevant?”
Guess what, this is the same question I am asking for myself. This book came out of that exercise.
Just got the Chinese version of the book all ready for download on Google Play. I’ve updated this site so you should see the links on the sidebar and on the Chinese book page.
When I began making outline for the book, I came up with something like seventy-six, yes 76, differences that could be categorized as disconnect patterns. I whittled them down to twenty that I discuss in the book. Here is a list.