Wanted: China-Competent Mature Managers

1/21/2010 - China hand Terry Crossman is the founder of an executive search services in China.  Over the past thirteen years he's seen changes in the way companies search for and hire employees.  Many difficulties companies encounter stem from the cultural differences inherent in international corporations.




TCBN: The whole issue of leadership is very difficult one to define. So starting off when you work with international clients, do most of them understand what kind of talent is available? What skills, what makes a person effective in a job, and do any of them just take an international JD and do a search and replace for the location? 

CROSSMAN: It really depends on how long the client has been in China or how much experience they have in China in terms of their understanding of what kinds of talents are available. Those who are new to China, or have little China expertise, often need a lot of education in terms of what kind of skills, type of talents, are available in the market. You can’t always bring international standards and apply them to China. For instance, most recently, I had a client looking for a sales director here in China. They ruled out a lot of candidates who had two years with one job and two years with another job because they said they jumped too much. Here in China there’s so much competition for top talent that two years is actually a good amount of time to get a bit of a track record in an area. You have to be a little bit more flexible. Let’s put it this way, in terms of talents you’re looking for, there’s a lot of competition for top bilingual talent with international company experience. Salaries, in my opinion, have really gotten outrageously high for those sorts of people.

TCBN: What kind of people? How much experience? And what makes somebody top tier?

CROSSMAN: In one case, we were looking for someone in a highly technical field. It was another sales director search and our client was looking for someone with over 10 years experience to manage a team of about 15 people. The required someone with the necessary technical background – for credibility with clients and with the team. They were looking for someone in his/her mid 30s, and had an estimated annual salary of 800,000 rmb per year- prior to bonus - which is a good 120,000 USD.

They didn’t care if the candidate was a PRC national or Taiwan or Shandong or Hong Kong, or what have you. What I like about the client is they just want to find somebody who can really do the job, regardless of their origin.

TCBN: Now what happens to companies who are hiring for positions based in China but who are looking for regional or international responsibility? Do you see more positions requiring that sort of skill?

CROSSMAN: International responsibility? Not so much because the China market is so big and diverse in itself. That’s another thing - a lot of companies come fresh into China and they don’t realize they’re dealing with lots of different markets. Finding someone to handle all of China is like finding someone to handle all of Europe. It is that diverse in terms of different regions, cultures, and language and market characteristics. I have occasionally come across some people who do have broader Asia Pacific responsibilities, usually more in technical functions, or staff functions like finance and human resources, rather than business and did a search for an Asia/Pacific financial controller not long ago. The problem is that hiring PRC nationals for Asia region responsibilities can sometimes can be problematic, visa-wise or culture-wise. if they are responsible for sales in Singapore. There still not that many regional headquarters based in China. You just don’t have the financial and telecommunication infrastructure to support that. Or even the professional services infrastructure that makes Hong Kong and Singapore much more attractive locations to put a regional headquarters

TCBN: I want to change direction a little bit. As China’s domestic market matures - larger scale, more complexity - are employers looking to hire more for leadership skills, personal quality, somebody who’s a general who can go out on the battlefield and based on some sort of character? Or is industry expertise specific to an industry still a very dominant requirement?

CROSSMAN: I would say that in my business, we are usually working to very specific specifications from clients. And for that reason, I find it’s often very hard to push the envelope with the client in terms of somebody that doesn’t have the relative industry expertise. I’m not saying that somebody that doesn’t have the industry expertise can’t do a great job. It’s just that in general, human resources people are. It really depends on the leadership of the company and how open minded they are. I find that they really like to focus on specific industry backgrounds or industry expertise, history in that particular industry when they’re using a recruitment vehicle, such as our services.

They also obviously were looking for people who already have managerial experience and have managed teams. A person doesn’t get to that senior management level without good leadership or personal skills and qualities. So, and again it also depends on the position. Some positions are less dependent on industry expertise and other positions are.

TCBN: Management as a discipline, or leadership as a concept, are subjects of so many books and learning materials, particularly in the United States. There’s ongoing conversation about Chinese-style, or Chinese characteristics of organizations or management styles and functions. I don’t know if I can ask you what kind of books, or what kind of theories Chinese, even international managers that have been in China for a while are trying to understand Chinese organization. What are they reading? What kind of theories are they studying to help them be better managers?

CROSSMAN: Are you asking for list of books people might be reading? Honestly, I can’t think of many. I’m sure they’re out there but I can’t think of many English language books offhand that really deal with Chinese management culture or some there are around that are a bit too old. Just talking about that in general, it can be a problem. For instance, I have a client that is a small American scientific technical equipment company. Their China operations have been run by – a returnee – a haigui who has a PhD in that technical discipline, and they have expanded rapidly. They currently have about 150 people here including an R&D center, several sales and services offices, and even an assembly operation. I have a good friend who just joined them who’s also another returnee, but younger. She said to me, “my God the organizational culture here is so Chinese.” What do you mean? She has had a lot of experience in human resources with larger multinational companies; she says there’s absolutely none of the supporting systems there and that she one of the reasons she’s going in there is to try to transform the culture a little bit. She said company felt more like a guoying danwei , a large State Owned Enterprise even though it was 100% owned multinational company. It’s probably more reflection of the management style of the person who set up their China operations. 

TCBN: There are distinct organizational dynamics and distinct roles of archetypes of employer, employee, boss, boss’ right hand man, boss’ tenants.

CROSSMAN: The whole situation of people not wanting to make a decision without the boss actually making the decision, the fear of stepping out and innovating, sort of like the small family owned company type of syndrome. And in one of your other questions you asked about what can foreign passport holders contribute? A lot of it is in area of creativity and innovation. I still don’t see, in spite of focus by the government in trying to develop innovation here, Chinese culture, education, social norms, are not very conducive to employees being innovative. It’s not to say there isn’t innovation here, but organizational culture here is not conducive to creativity and innovation. And there’s also strong focus on process and following the rules. And there’s very little what I call “outside of the box” thinking going on.

That doesn’t really answer your question, now, does it?

TCBN: It sort of does. There are periods of my career where I’ve attempted to impose western-style transparency, accountability and disclosure into Chinese organizations. Sometimes it’s just not practical. It just doesn’t work for all kinds. Sometimes there’s a push back on philosophical terms, sort of “if it’s not broken we’re not going to fix it.” That there is a point at which Chinese people and Chinese organizations are going to follow Chinese culture and Chinese logic. And I wonder when management philosophies are going to go into some sort of conceptual circle where people who are trying to get ahead in China really embrace that idea.

CROSSMAN: In my experience, there’s certain sectors, like high tech sector, that tend to have flatter organizations and are more forward looking in welcoming new ideas. In terms of Chinese companies, things are evolving. There’s a lot of management education going on, people desire to improve themselves. But, you know the whole bowing to the Zhong, to the chairman mentality is still there. I’ve seen western companies that have imported their 360 degree performance reviews where employees review performance of their boss. And everybody fills out the form, but nobody dares to be truthful. They go through the motions but it’s not really having the impact or the effect. The whole idea of an underling correcting a superior in China is still far away, unfortunately.

TCBN: Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us. It’s great. 



**Podcast for this interview coming soon.**



Terry Crossman is founder and China recruitment specialist at Cross Search International.  Find out more about his business services, please visit www.cross-search.net.