Suggestions for Group Reporting

Here is something I handed out to a few of you who were not going with the group on the noon bus, and which you on the noon bus did get. Hope it helps! And hope you are not too jet-lagged.

A Simple Four Part Outline for your Group's Presentations
Beijing, March 21 UMKC EMBA

Here is a suggestion for the four-plus-two groups, to help you organize your presentations to the class, and a note about your journals.

Presentations

The point of group-work is to leverage your individual learnings and take a broader view, to share what you have learned with one another in your group, and to make some synthetic statement that links your individual projects to wider questions about doing business in China.

It may be helpful for you to think in terms of the four dimensions of human experience as you look at this four-part outline. You may understand that to mean the past, the present and the future. China's daily life is lived in only one of those dimensions: the present. But ideas and stories about the past continue to live in the physical and social structure of Chinese business life. And ideas about the future are all around, often conflicting, sometimes contested, but always there nonetheless.

Here is a simple outline that I hope the groups will follow.

I. Introduction
Within your groups you may split up the reporting duties in any way you like, but I expect that you will not make of your presentations a simple repeating of your individual work. I would suggest instead the use of a single slide that lists the names of your group-members along with a single-sentence statement of that person's individual project. That's the introduction.

II. Opportunities
Here, you can discuss what you see as the major business opportunities. Where are they? What are they? How do you know that they are there? You may use some images if you have some, but please don't use video as we'll not have time to insure that all can hear and see it in our limited time.

III. Challenges
What are the barriers to achieving success in the opportunities that you found? Where are those barriers—at what level in the world of business are they: cultural, governmental, geographic, or what? If you find it helpful, you may combine this section with section IV, laying out strategies along with each challenge, or you may list them separate as:

IV. Strategies
What strategies can you imagine that will help a business overcome the challenges you mentioned? How might they be done? What is needed, what resources should be expended (time? people? money) to make them work? What cultural or ideological or mind-set strategies, if any, will help you move forward toward the opportunities.

V. What You Might Need to Know More About
Because our knowledge of reality is always, and always incomplete, what bits of information, skills, or knowledge do you wish you had to answer any questions that your strategy can not, so far, address? What more do you wish you knew? What are the conundrums or puzzles that remain, even after you apply some of your strategies.

The timing of presentations will be mention in the blog (and this document will be posted there, too). Good luck! And don't hesitate to send me an email if you have questions. Its up to you to get with your groups, determine a presenter or presenters, and organize your presentation.

Journals

I have not heard a question about this but I have not been explicit, either. I expect that everyone is keeping a journal of some kind. Some of you have written "scratch-notes." That counts as a journal. Some of you have kept a blog. That counts as a journal.. Others may want to write up their thoughts in a word-document. I will need to know that you have done these things, one way or another. If you keep a journal, it does not, by the way, need to be a complete day-by-day diary. That is asking too much. But it should contain the highlights, the important moments, the times when you learned some thing new or found something unexpected, or where something you had heard was confirmed by your own experience. That's the journaling!

Shanghai Beauty

Shanghai people are used to seeing foreigners but they only once in a while get a glimpse of real American 美丽的年轻姑娘. I'm sure that both these young women, our own Tusha and her daughter, Jasmine, were turning heads. But the young man in the subway was particularly interested in Jasmine. Jasmine, eagle-eye shopper, (in addition to killer-smile girl, as you can see) spotted just the right boutique in a subway shopping spot.

I don't know who had more fun, Jasmine or the shop-girls. The shop girls said they want hair just like Jasmine. Envy of a delightful kind in Shanghai, where fashion is the main thing (right after the food). Will Beijing have shops like that? Will the subway be quite as much fun? Will the young man in the subway start planning his college career in America, looking for a smile to match the one on the Line 2 地铁, the subway, just beyong the People's Square?

Rural Shanghai

Gordon can tell you more about our visit in his blog. But I could not resist a photo or two from our afternoon visit to the truck-farming area West of Shanghai.

After lunch, we walked a few blocks to a "wet market" on the Fudan University campus. A wet market, as you should know by now, is a vegetable and fresh-meat market (and other things too, often). Even the fancy housing developments always have a wet-market nearby. There, small-scale vegetable-stand owners cultivate long-term relationships with their urban clients. High-falootin' market research studies have demonstrated that Ikea and Walmart can't come near to the customer loyalty and client retention achieved by these mom and pop vegetable and meat vendors. They are personable, they know their product, they know their customer, and they know how to help strange American people who ask weird questions. They answer honestly, on terms that make sense to wet-market merchants.
We asked how we might get to the truck-farming area West of Shanghai, and we were told to take bus number 55, then the ferry boat, then another bus. We took the bus. Two RMB each for Gordon and for Carment and for me. Then, across the Wangpo river (that was 50fen, by purchasing a little yellow chit that we threw into a metal pan at the ferry-boat entrance). We crossed the river, dodging the barge traffic. (Or the young captain-in-training did, under the watchful eye of a more senior boatman). Rather than bump along in a bus for another half hour, we decided to negotiate a rate with a cab driver. He took us further west.

We passed the BioChip place that we had been to that morning, and about a mile away, the countryside began to open up. Flat, green, and fallow, with lots of little plots. There are plenty of canals (you see them from the air) and they are as much for water removal as for a place from which to pull water up in the dry summer months.

Here, flowers and ornamentals—nursery stock—seem to be replacing tomatoes and vegetables. But its all farming of a kind. The ponds have fish; there is burned fallow and mulch in piles, and a few folks working on a little ditch here, watering some late-season winter vegetables there, or kindly opening a gate for visiting gringos and answering a few questions.

Our patient cab driver took us to a little village, now about to be overwhelmed by Shanghai suburban sprawl, where we found a fertilizer shop, one of 100 such franchise shops, where we poked around the ammonium nitrate and sundry chemicals. The manager was cordial, but said that bio-char sounds rather expensive. Gordon has some thoughts about that.

Then, we ended up at "My House Restaurant," the sort of private-home turned eatery that has really fresh really local food. The jellyfish was crispy and sweet-sour, the duck tongue was fresh enough to quack, and the beer was cold enough.

It was a bit of what Dominique Desjeux calls the "product itinerary," a way for an ethnographer to grasp where things come from and how they change their meaning(s) as they move about in exchange systems. Here, we had fertilizer, water, plastic to cover the farm-plots, seed, herbicide (maybe), the vegetables, then the final product in the My House restaurant being cooked, then the results on a plate (with a nice sauce, by the way), then satisfied noises from tired, tour-weary gringos. Each step along the way, the things that were required to create what we ate took on new meaning, different value, passed through many hands. Global hands.

Fertilizer from Belgium, sold by a franchise store to private farm-ground tenants, who send the vegetables into town for the likes of us gringo visitors to enjoy. Its good, solid clay ground that needs some soil-building, but farmers are a conservative lot. What will they pay for? Can they make their own bio-char? Stay tuned, and ask Gordon.

Meanwhile, we remember the innumerable labors that brought us the food at My House restaurant, and wonder what sorts of exchanges, values, and relationships were generated by our sitting down to rest our tired bones and feed our hungry stomachs in Shanghai, one lucky afternoon in March.

No US Presence at the Shanghai Expo? What Gives?

I've mentioned this issue, here is a run-down on what is going on. Not a pretty picture when our Chinese hosts are offering to help support our presence at the Shanghai exposition. I'm not an employee of the State Department, so there is no harm in my asking folks to contact their representatives to find out why the United States has failed to deliver an effective pavilion for the Shanghai Expo. Of course, there is politics involved, but other countries are able to get this done. We should, too.

Welcome to China

Bon voyage!

As you are about to discover, the contemporary, the hypermodern, and the past all coexist in contemporary China. That is one of the things I hope you'll discover during your visit. What you think is contemporary may in fact be ancient; what you think is ancient may be a contemporary re-interpretation. Up above is a hutong in Beijing. A hutong is an alley way in a traditional neighborhood. The best restaurants are to be found here (and, these days, a lot of tourists. . . at least in some of the hutong). Hutong are just one way in which the old and the new coexist in Beijing.

Some of what the last presentation in class hinted at reflects this. The power point from the last session is posted to the right (session 4, 5.5 MB file). Please pay attention to the penultimate slide, the one that summarizes the automotive and mobile phone industries. You'll see the importance of government as a channel through which new tech products have been introduced into the wider Chinese market. What role will government play in future innovations? Think about it.

If you have any last-minute questions, I'm here to answer them. I've arrived in Hong Kong, its cloudy and cool and humid and the chicken soup is just the thing for jet-lag.

I'll join you all for the welcome dinner on Sunday. Drink lots of water, get some rest on the flight, and you'll be bright and bushy-tailed for Shanghai.

International Women's Day: Folk Sociology

The Chinese constitution, as amended, covers women's rights in some detail. (Our own constitution does not do so).

In China, women hold important positions in business and government. Same as here. In some professions like medicine, more than here. This is arguably less true in Japan and Korea. Arguably. Its easy to lean into stereotypes when you deal with big categories like gender, nationality, or even language and dialect. When a culture has a folklore about people that it encounters, that's folk-sociology

Different regions of China have different folk-sociology about women. We gringos do this too: you know the drill: "These Wyoming women are tough, mountain women!" "I wish they all could be California girls. . ." etc. What about 中国？

Girls from Anhui? Sexy!

Up in the north of China? Those women are hard-drinking and tough!


Shanghai? Those bossy Shanghai women, always focused on fashion and beauty, make their husbands do the cooking and cleaning while they shop!

(This is a great topic for discussion with cab drivers, by the way; you can keep track of the folk-sociology of gender, region, and nationality; and its okay to dispute and argue! Cab drivers seem to enjoy a good discussion. Just be sure to wear your seat belt as some drivers may turn and look at you and not the road.)

Famous singers like Na Yin are known for where they are from. Na Yin (那英) is from Liaoning Province in the Northwest of China. (The link is to her very famous song, one of many, called "Sharp.")

Na Ying taught me some drinking games one evening, with a bunch of her famous friends. She is sort of a Madonna-like famous singer figure: tough and independent. She married famous footballer, Gao Feng, but things didn't work out. When I tell people I met her and she taught me drinking games, folks always say, "Oh, yes, she's from the North of China! Those women are something tough!" Fun.






So, in a couple days, China will celebrate 3/8; SanBa day. Its International Woman's Day. What? You never heard of that? Everyone celebrates it, right? Its a United Nations Recognized special day, isn't it?

And, of course, there is very interesting folk-sociology about men in China, according to where they are from. Who is tall? Who is henpecked? Where are the shuai ge (good looking) men? Where are the philosophers from; the artists? And, if you want, there are plenty of goofy stereotypes about 老外 (lao wai, foreigners), too. Check this article from The New Yorker for African immigrant's daily live in Guangzhou, if you have a moment. Its a good read. And a reminder that Americans are not the only folks who fall victim to stereotyping and, sometimes, much worse.

Groups for Teamwork

Here are your (updated) groupings, at last.

My thinking had been that groups were needed in China, and not before. But I learn that your work in groups is part of your overall program in the EMBA. You need your groupings sooner, not later.

There will be four times during the visit in SH and BJ during which I will need to meet with groups, in many cases over a working lunch at or near our hotel. That schedule will be on the blog and I'll have it for you this weekend. The Health Group will meet as a large group (not split into groups I and II).

The point of the groups (from my POV) is to share related learning with one another and build a more general vision of the theme or themes of the respective groups for presentation to the while class at the end of this unit.

The other (and formerly out of my blinkered view) value of these groups: to provide a setting for sharing pre-trip, as a reality check, and a general support for this excursion. Dr. Gallos, who has your collective back on these matters, deserves thanks for pointing this out to me. Without further ado:

CULTURE/ The value of meanings
Christy Cubbage
Tayro Christiano
Ron Coker
Steve Evans
Ravi Peru
Per Stromhaug
Scott West

FINANCE/ The meaning of value & values
Montira Clippard
Laurel Harbour
Julie Kempker
Jolene Jefferies
Melissa Walton
Eddie Dziuk
Jon Roos

HEALTH/ Group I: Health & healing
John Sallis
Chet Jackson
Patricia Beatty
Corlis Panis
Angela Connelly

Health/ Group II: Health & healing
Timothy James
Melanie Morris
Becky Sandring
Dan Soliday

INDUSTRY/TECH: Making & marketing things of value
Gordon Brest • Natasha Clark
Tom Burke • Michael O’Grady
John McClelland • Girish
Andrew Jones • Brad Peak
John Miller • Mark Amick

Ethnography in Business Research

Your research plan should, in all but a very few cases, stick with the idea of just a little fieldwork during your China visit. (A few of you have some very special needs, or a bit more time in China, and you may do a bit more business-related fieldwork and interviewing while in China, and that's fine). This limitation makes sense because our time in China is quite short. Anyway, as you know by now, China demands a long-term commitment. A short visit will not allow you time to do a great deal of in-country field research.

But when you launch into a little fieldwork, you can borrow an idea from Intel, where anthropologists like Ken Anderson (that's Ken in the photo) are using anthropological techniques for research that drives business strategy.

So while I recognize that much of your China visit is a chance to smell the culture and not a full-on field research experience, there may be a few handy hints in the field-research department that I can offer.

These days, more and more businesses recognize the value of an anthropological approach not only for discovering what consumers do with products and services, but for building strategy, too. You can visit my colleague Ken Anderson's short article in the on-line version of the Harvard Business review, here, for a taste of what I mean. The rather more open-ended approach that anthropologists usually take to fieldwork may be just the ticket for an exploratory visit to China. I hope you'll find a few methodological (and theoretical) hints interesting and useful.

Health Sector China: A Video & Your Workgroups

Thanks to Angela Connelly for flagging this useful video about the current new health care plan in China. Angela noticed that the wife of the author of one of our books, Roberta Lipson, is one of the health care experts on the panel discussion.

I think you'll find the video useful, whether or not you are interested in health care, so give it a look. It contains mention of the new policy efforts by government, and even a bit on accreditation--a topic of interest to several of your colleagues. Give it a look!

Your Work Groups
Many of you have related interests so I'm working with Tusha and with Dr. Gallos to group you into affinity teams. These teams will meet together in China, with me, to discuss strategies for presenting a broad-based report to the group. This way, the report-outs will not be a collection of individual reports so much as they will be high-level reviews of what you all have learned, more generally, within the frame your group's theme. Watch for a trial grouping soon, along with a preliminary schedule for some informal meetings while in China.

You will recall Dr. Gallos' important instruction that applies to everyone: the China visit is primarily a way to get a taste of the culture, to experience first-hand some of the problems and delights in doing a bit of work in the Middle Kingdom. In all but a very few cases, we expect that most of your research work will be done here at home, in the library and on the Internet.