Learning from Leaders in Asia: The Lessons of Experience

By Steven J. DeKrey and Kathy Griffin

More than ever, the world needs strong, effective and ethical leadership. Asia is the world’s fastest growing region. Its success in the 21st century will depend largely on the quality of its leaders. Learning from Leaders in Asia captures the rich experiences of leaders operating in the region, identifies the key elements of leadership and offers practical advice on how to make a lasting impact. An important and timely book for all who want to seize the moment.
Anson Chan, Former Chief Secretary for Administration, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region

Learning from Leaders in Asia provides a solid understanding of the challenges faced by leaders in Asia today and tomorrow. It provides real life insights by leaders across various disciplines in overcoming challenges such as talent acquisition and retention, China strategies and globalization to name but a few. An invaluable read.
Chen Shaopeng, President, Lenovo Emerging Market Group, Senior Vice President, Lenovo Group

Learning from Leaders in Asia is a must-read for any business person in the world who wants to gain perspectives from Asia-based multinationals. It offers valuable insights as Asia’s importance rises.
William Fung, Group Managing Director, Li & Fung Ltd.

Learning from Leaders in Asia presents a unique opportunity for readers to learn from the insights of the business executives who are part of one of the leading EMBA programs in the world. Having interacted with these talented men and women I can say with full confi dence that they truly understand the issues of building and running a global business. That makes this book well worth reading and I highly recommend it.
Jim Thompson, Chairman, Crown Worldwide Holdings Ltd.

Learning from Leaders in Asia cuts through the data and popular opinions to offer an on-the-ground view of the region’s latest developments. Combining the acute perceptions and broad sweep of Leadership Experiences in Asia, this book examines the complex issues and offers fundamental insights into the business cultures of a host of countries. In lucid terms, it spells out the unprecedented opportunities and challenges facing companies wanting to devise a strategy that effectively adapts to the Asian reality.
Marjorie Yang, Chair, Esquel Group

This extraordinary book is the sequel to Leadership Experiences in Asia, Dr. DeKrey’s first effort to describe the functioning of leadership in the Asian contexts. There is no-one with better credentials for doing this than DeKrey, an American who has lived and worked in Hong Kong for more than two decades and who has experienced the very best examples of leadership both in the West as well as in Asia. There is no one whose leadership skills cannot be enhanced by the principles and illustrations laid out in this book.
David M. Messick, Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor Emeritus of Ethics and Decision in Management, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

This timely and highly relevant book tackles the critical issues that keep general managers awake at night as they strive to build a sustainable and profitable business in Asia and, in particular, China. The triple challenges of building talent, encouraging breakthrough innovation and ensuring strong governance may be global, but they face added urgency and complexity in Asia given the very high expectations for growth and unique cultural challenges. The blend of theory, strategy and highly practical experience in this book provides invaluable advice for leaders who are determined to build a legacy in Asia.
Ron McEachern, President, PepsiCo Asia

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Aug 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781119191278

Kathy Griffin

Kathy Griffin, a multi-Emmy Award-winning and Grammy-winning comedian and actress, is best known for her Bravo television reality show Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, her multiple stand-up comedy specials on HBO, Comedy Central, and Bravo, and her four-year stint on the NBC sitcom Suddenly Susan. She has hosted several award shows and appeared on numerous talk shows including Late Night with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and The View, and she holds a Guinness World Record for having had more televised specials than any comedian, male or female. She performs to sold-out audiences at venues worldwide. Her memoir, Official Book Club Selection, was a #1 New York Times bestseller.

Book preview

Introduction

About Our Asian Leaders

In 2007 the Kellogg-HKUST Executive MBA program brought out the book Leadership Experiences in Asia, which I co-edited with Professor David Messick and writer Charles Anderson. It was well received and is still selling out there as a composite of leadership case studies and examples of unique ethical dilemmas. The feedback has been good.

Although most of the copies have been selling in Asia, I did pass on a few complimentary copies to my family in Bemidji, Minnesotain the US. My father, Donald H. DeKrey, PhD, to whom the book was dedicated, has read it and has been circulating his copy to his friends. It seems we have found a new market; maybe some will actually purchase copies.

The main comment from my father and friends is that the book offered many interesting insights. The book increased their awareness of cultural differences and gave them insights into global business.

Global business is a concept far removed from Bemidji, my hometown. The closest the 15,000 residents there come to global business is a visit to the local Wal-Mart Super Center. And visit this store they do. Its impact on my hometown is impressive yet alarming.

In addition to expanding the buying power of the local residents, it has also greatly affected the businesses run by many of my friends. The price competition, impressive inventory, and buying processes adopted by Wal-Mart, a global giant in both retail and procurement, are more than many of my friends’ businesses can compete with.

In response, they are adopting strategies of service and quality products. But the price competition is almost insurmountable. So, in the end, we can say that global business, especially Asian activity through which Wal-Mart sources many of its products, does have an impact—even in Bemidji.

In this second book, Learning from Leaders in Asia, we take the role of adviser to global leaders in Asia on specific agenda items. The first step was to define the agenda and for this, we drew on the insights of a group rich in experience in Asian business: our tenth Kellogg-HKUST EMBA students. Let me explain why their views matter.

The Kellogg-HKUST EMBA program is among the top three EMBA programs in the world, according to the Financial Times, and we have held that ranking since 2005. The program is a joint venture between the Kellogg School at Northwestern University and the Business School at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Faculty members from each institution share their expertise, resulting in a natural blend of Eastern and Western concepts. At the end, graduates earn a joint MBA degree co-signed by each institution.

The executive students, our authors for this project, are drawn from across Asia, and have on average 14 years of work experience. They are in leadership positions, with many senior titles represented and an average annual compensation of $250,000. These are serious students of management and significant leaders across Asia. There is no dominant national culture represented, because there are more than 14 nationalities in this class. It is a truly global sample of leaders. (You can see a full list of their names and titles at the end of this chapter.)

To help set the agenda for this book, I devised a survey asking them what issues they thought Asian leaders should focus on. Eight areas were considered worthy of concern, which form the contents of this book:

talent recruitment and retention;

globalization;

China strategies;

stability, both economic and social;

innovations;

corporate governance;

marketing strategies;

social responsibility.

Each topic was assigned randomly to small groups of our EMBA students, who were asked to write a book chapter for an Asian readership interested in global business focused in the region. We also invited distinguished speakers, established leaders in their fields, to share their insights and provide another perspective. Their input can be found throughout the book, along with a short biography of each speaker in appendix 1, but let me give you a brief introduction:

Anson Chan, former Chief Secretary for Administration, Hong Kong Government;

William Fung, Group Managing Director, Li & Fung Ltd.;

Ron McEachern, former President, PepsiCo International for Asia;

Stephen Roach, Chairman, Morgan Stanley Asia Pacific;

Chen Shaopeng, President, Lenovo Emerging Market Group; Senior Vice President, Lenovo Group;

James Thompson, Chairman, Crown Worldwide Holdings Ltd.;

Marjorie Yang, Chairman, Esquel Group.

I also share insights in my capacity as Senior Associate Dean, Adjunct Professor of Management, and Founding Director of the Kellogg-HKUST EMBA Program.

The chapters produced by the EMBA students became their final project, and include their own research, their personal experiences working in Asia and the insights from the distinguished speakers. The result is Learning from Leaders in Asia, which I trust you will find enlightening about the challenges facing leaders in Asia today.

Widening the view: alumni survey

An interesting context for this book is a survey we conducted of all alumni and current students of the Kellogg-HKUST EMBA Program. Of the eight issues identified by Class 10, we wanted to find out how they were ranked among a wider group of business executives in Asia. Our alumni are well placed across Asia and have the unique qualifications of all being prepared professionally with masters degrees in business administration through the Kellogg-HKUST EMBA Program and having years of leadership experience in Asia.

Our students and alumni total 521. Of those, we asked only those working across at least two countries in Asia to respond: 214 alumni responded, representing 41 percent of the total population. For any type of survey research such a response rate is worth celebrating. Thanks to all our alumni out there.

Key to our questioning was the relative importance of leadership challenges they face in their work in Asia. They were asked to rank the eight challenges identified by Class 10 alumni in order of importance. Here are the results:

Leadership Challenges Ranked by Alumni

Talent: recruitment and retention, 31 percent of respondents placed this at the top;

China strategies, 18 percent;

Globalization, 14 percent;

Economic and political stability, 12 percent;

Innovations, 12 percent;

Corporate governance, 7 percent;

Marketing strategies, 6 percent;

Corporate social responsibility, 1 percent.

Across Asia, the need for talent is huge. One alumnus offered an anecdote that even when you find great talent, the growth rate of opportunities grows faster than the skills of the people. So keeping up, even with very good people, can be problematic.

This is a problem that continues today, even though these surveys were conducted before the financial meltdown in the latter half of 2008. Companies need strong and capable leadership. It’s not simply an issue of numbers, but of finding the right people. The training we provide in the Kellogg-HKUST EMBA helps to fill that gap by developing leadership talent in Asia.

Since talent issues are widespread, we invited our respondents to tell us where they find the best people for leadership positions in their companies. The results, in table 1.1, show that internal development is a key solution.

Table 1.1: Sourcing global leadership in Asia

While it is clearly a critical requirement to develop leadership talent inside companies, the pipeline is not full. That means external recruiting is necessary. Our respondents find returnees (native Asians who have moved away and returned), and candidates identified by local recruiting, are important in filling the gap. Expats from various places have also been brought in, but may not be the best source of leadership talent in Asia.

There was no shortage of talent in our KH10 class of executives, who all held senior management positions at the time of writing and came from a diverse range of industries, such as IT, banking, tourism, consumer products, property development, management consulting, pharmaceuticals, broadcasting, and telecommunications, as you can see from the list that follows. Over to them, and our distinguished speakers.

About our authors

The War for Talent

Johnson Chen, General Manager for a manufacturing firm

Gaby Koren, Vice President of Sales for an IT firm

Vincent Lam, General Manager for a manufacturing firm

Jose Rico Adega, Director of Business Promotion in China for a government body

Brian Sung, Director of Business Operations for a power generation investment company

James Tai, Senior Director of an electronics firm

Cindy Tay, Head of Go-to-Market in a telecommunications firm

Wendy Yuen, Senior Manager in investment services for a bank

Globalization and Asian Business

Clarence Chung, Executive Director and Group COO for a conglomerate

Stephane Guesnier, Central China Area Director for an international logistics firm

Gurinder Singh, Vice President for a construction and infrastructure firm

Dariusz Sus, Director of E-Business Operations in Poland for an outsourcing firm

Casey Wang, Vice President of Finance in a bank

Michael Yong-Haron, Executive Director of a private bank

China and the Go West Policy

Jerry Chang, Managing Director for a management consultancy and executive search

Joshua Chang, Principal and CEO of a logistics firm

Terence Kam, Regional Finance Director of an entertainment and fitness company

Elan Lam, Chief Operating Officer of a security firm

Alex Liu, Partner in a legal firm

Patrick Liu, Founding Partner of an Internet and telecom company

Timothy Miller, Chief of Staff and Managing Director of Travel and Consumer for a business services firm

Achieving Stability in a Volatile World

Chris Bailey, Partner in a legal consultancy

Pow Chin, Center Support Manager for an advertising firm

Wendy Gan, Executive Director of a property company

Chris Pagan, Vice President of institutional client group of a bank

Bernard Woo, Associate Director of a market research firm

Joseph Yeung, Founder/Director/CFO of an Internet firm

Peter Zhang, Greater China Business Leader for Talent and Organization Consulting Analytics for a consulting firm

Innovate and Lead

David Buck, Chairman of the Board of an IT and BPO outsourcing firm

Michael Chan, Taiwan COO of a bank

Sylvia Chen, Senior Marketing Manager for a computer firm

Angela Dong, Finance Controller—China and Hong Kong for a trading firm

William Hsu, Vice President of Advertising Sales for a media outlet

Casandy Ng, Director of a retailing firm

Peter Tsang, Head of Betting Services for a jockey club

The Changing Landscape of Corporate Governance

Jeff Albright, CEO of a powered-equipment provider

Catherine Chan, General Manager of Investor Relations for an Internet firm

Sang Soon Hyun, Chief Executive of an investment bank

Derek Ku, Senior Manager of Customer Relations and Loyalty Program for a tourism enterprise

Linda Tang, Finance VP and Controller in Asia-Pacific for an IT company

James Tobin, Region Commercial Manager in Asia-Pacific for an energy company

Building Brands Across Asia

David Brickler, Executive Director of Technology and Security Risk Services in a commodities trading firm

Dilip Chathanath, Chief Operating Officer of an IT services firm

Patrick Chen, Senior Manager of a manufacturing firm

Tomer Feingold, Director of a finance company

Dong-Soo Lee, Marketing Director in a pharmaceuticals company

Jessica Zhang, Consulting Practice Leader in Greater China for a consultancy

Corporate Social Responsibility: Enlightened Self-Interest

Johann Albano, Manager, Asia Business Development in the consumer/food industry

Bobby Chen, Director/Assistant President in a property business

Sheila Cheng, Research and Business Manager—Asia in a medical device company

Steve Lai, Regional Director for a utility

Flora Li, General Manager of Industry Training and Resources in a media company

Jeff Sayed, Head of Operational Risk for a bank

Gabriel Shriki, Business Development Manager for a communications company

Chapter 1

The War for Talent

In the modern-day business environment, competition in the marketplace has intensified from the basis of product and price, to the core of a business organization—what many human resources (HR) professionals describe as The War For Talent.

A business organization is by definition a group of people assembled to accomplish common objectives or goals, such as maximizing the profits of investors, catering to new lifestyles and trends, or performing a particular service for customers or society for a fee. The key element no doubt is people. People set out the structure, business model, and governing modus operandi of an organization. People also bring various functions of the organization together and produce synergy. Particularly in the service sector, employees are an organization’s most important asset.

It is therefore logical to conclude that any top-performing company, whether a multinational or local small and midsize enterprise (SME), must have an effective approach and framework for attracting and selecting talent. The result of the War for Talent is that businesses must be competitive in attracting and selecting the necessary people, and must ferret out the rare individuals who can eventually take up leadership positions and drive the company forward.

What we present here is a step-by-step framework for talent management and leadership development. We will refer to a few study surveys to illustrate the latest broad trends, and use the example of the Lafarge Cement Company Chinese joint venture to show successful HR in practice. In all of this, we hope to provide some unique and helpful insights into the practice of talent management in Asia.

What is talent?

We all want talent, whether it is as individuals looking to make our mark on the world or as companies wanting to hire a body of capable workers. But just what is talent? A dictionary definition offers a few clues: 1: A special natural ability or aptitude, 2: a capacity for achievement or success, 3: A talented person, 4: A group of persons with special ability, 5: A power of mind or body considered as given to a person for use and improvement (www.dictionary.com). But in truth talent is something more complex than that. It is partly innate, partly learned, and it can be subject to other dynamic forces. For example, having talent without accompanying moral standards is the equivalent of a walking time bomb because that talent could be deployed, in the worst case, in a way that is harmful to society and the business community.

Attributes of talent

Intelligence is essential to talent and it helps to be aware of its different forms. For instance, IQ (intelligence quotient) measures cognitive capacities, while EQ (emotional quotient) measures our ability to recognize our own feelings and those of others, motivate ourselves and manage emotions well internally and in our relationships.1 The abilities ascribed to emotional intelligence are distinct from, but complementary to, academic intelligence, that is, IQ.

Talent, we would argue, is similarly differentiated by hard and soft qualities. The former (hard) is usually related to learned sciences, such as mathematics, engineering, and physics, while the latter (soft) deals with the softer expressive skills that are harder to learn and relate more to personality, such as painting, music, emotional control, or sociability. The good news is leadership, management, and technical skills can be developed and learned through experience and education, though social skills are more related to personality and a person’s mindset.

In business, the standard approach in developing talent has been to acquire more technical abilities, but current trends show a drift toward endowing our leaders with softer skills, such as being able to adapt to a diversified environment.

Ethical values and talent

Talent is also distinguished by ethical values. Talented managers may be great at management and analytical skills, but this doesn’t necessarily relate to their moral values. For instance, Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay and CEO Jeffrey Skilling are both sophisticated and brilliant businesspeople, yet their unethical business practices overshadowed their talents. Is it desirable to have talent without business ethics, like these Enron executives or those at WorldCom (Nanda 2003)?2 The growing emphasis on business ethics for today’s leaders means that personal integrity has become a major consideration in selecting corporate leaders.

Ethics is the steering wheel, while talent is the vehicle being driven. It really depends on how the leader implements his or her talents and in what direction. With the introduction of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act in 2002 to govern corporate accounting and auditing compliance, the integrity of corporate leaders becomes a significant factor when selecting talent. Findingtherightpeoplewhoalsohavethecorrectpersonal values to fit the company’s culture and mission has become very important.

Attracting talent in Asia

Attracting talent is difficult all over the world, but the situation is even more complicated when the battlefield turns to Asia. This broad geographical region is rich with many distinct histories, cultures, languages, value systems, and people. Furthermore, countries at different stages of economic development are juxtaposed, and external failure issues such as spillover, exploitation, and wage differentials are all a common part of daily operational conflicts that organizations need to resolve. Bribery and reliance on personal relationships to move business forward are prevalent in Asia, particularly in newly developing countries.

Political economy also comes into play, such as the various rules and factors that restrain the mobility of talent across borders. What we can observe today in rapidly growing Asia as a whole is a unique interaction of all these socioeconomic factors, sometimes co-existing perfectly, sometimes clashing with each other. In summary, Asia is nothing like the Western analytical framework that traditional theories have been based on.

Although it is rather risky to make generalized claims about attracting talent in Asia as a whole, there are some commonalities that can be derived from the complex situations that abound. These can help to provide business enterprises in the region with insights into and practical ideas for finding talent.

An interesting place to start is with prospective talents themselves. What qualities in a company attract MBA graduates? This is an interesting question because MBA training provides graduates with sophisticated analytical approaches and tools that can be useful to corporations worldwide.

A survey of MBA graduates from leading international schools was conducted by public relations consulting firm Hill & Knowlton in 2007. It found that company reputation was the most important factor for choosing which company to join. Furthermore, the respondents identified the five top drivers defining company reputation—things like the quality of management, the quality of products and services, employee talent, financial performance and investment value, and innovation (see table 1.1). In particular, Asian MBA students ranked corporate social responsibility (CSR) highly, significantly more so than their counterparts in North America and Europe.3

Table 1.1: Hill & Knowlton survey of MBA graduates (2007)

Further insights into what defines company reputation can be drawn from another survey on The Best Employer in Asia, carried out by international leading personnel consulting firm Hewitt & Associates and the Wall Street Journal Asia.4 It surveyed employees of 750 companies across the region and came up with the rankings in table 1.2. The top-ranked companies had in common a humane and friendly working environment and an effective personnel management policy. These employers were credited with promoting self-motivation and they had the full trust and high regard of their employees. They also enjoyed an edge over their competitors, with a comparatively lower turnover rate of an average 10 percent per year.

When comparing the two studies, it is