If a broker says "China," do you hear "ka-ching"?
Dozens of tiny companies have gotten big stock-market boosts simply by adding the word "China" to their names. While the total dollars at stake are small, the trend is reminiscent of the Internet bubble's heyday, when a company could launch its stock price to the moon merely by tacking ".com" onto its official name.
Intelligent Investor: The Name Trap
3:48
Columnist Jason Zweig talks with Kelsey Hubbard about the significant influence that a name can have on attracting investors.
.It is also a reminder that for all too many people, investing remains like a word-association game. Stockpicking is often driven by resemblance instead of reality; a catchy name or vivid image can fill investors' heads with dreams of a bright future that mightn't be supported by the facts.
I asked Wei Wang, a finance professor at Queen's School of Business in Kingston, Ontario, to study the returns of the 82 companies that have adopted new names containing the word "China" since late 2006. The list includes 18 last year and four so far in 2010.
Prof. Wang looked at returns from 20 trading days before the announcement through 20 days after. He found that the average stock that added "China" to its name outperformed the overall market by 31 percentage points over that period. The results held up over shorter and longer periods and after Prof. Wang removed the most extreme cases.
Golden Green Enterprises Ltd., a steel producer, became China Gerui Advanced Materials Group Ltd. on Dec. 14. Over the 40 days surrounding the switch, the shares went from $5.01 to $6.88 on the Nasdaq Global Market, a 37% gain even as U.S. and Chinese stocks were generally flat.
Heath Hinegardner
.Edward Meng, China Gerui's chief financial officer, says the name switch was meant to reflect the company's "core competency, product-offering orientation and its association with Chinese companies listed in the U.S. markets." He adds: "We did get feedback from investors that they liked the new name. But it's hard to tell if the name change impacted the share-price movement."
Many China-syndrome stocks are created in reverse mergers with "shell companies." In this maneuver, a firm with a thinly traded stock, and often without viable operations, absorbs a more-marketable business whose shares mightn't have traded at all. The company is then renamed.
Consider Apogee Robotics, a company with no revenues or assets. It merged into a firm called Advanced Swine Genetics last Sept. 30, immediately renaming itself China Swine Genetics Inc.
The company didn't announce the name change until Oct. 13, however. The next day, the stock went from $8.40 to $15.60, an 86% gain. Then it collapsed. Last week, a mere 100 shares changed hands at $4.50 on the OTC Bulletin Board.
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.Executives at China Swine, which is based in Honolulu, didn't respond to requests for comment.
The rechristened "China" companies have a total market value of only about $8 billion. Most are unlisted on a major exchange, typically trading on the OTC Bulletin Board, where brokerage costs can be high. On China Swine, the "spread" between buy and sell prices (part of the cost to trade) exceeded a piggish 40% last week.
This is far from the first time that investors have fallen under the spell of greed-by-association.
In the early 1960s, many small stocks grabbed the market's attention with names evoking the promise of the Space Age, like G-W Ameritronics (a seller of truck bodies) and Techni Electronics (a maker of massage equipment). Many of the "tronics" companies went on to lose more than 90% of their value.
In 1999, Internet-obsessed traders drove Computer Literacy Inc. up by 33% in a day on word that the stock's name would change to fatbrain.com. In 1998 and 1999, the average company that added ".com" to its name outperformed other technology stocks by an average of 53 percentage points. Scads of them later went to zero.
Between 2004 and 2007, as the price of crude oil soared, companies in the U.S. and Canada that added the words "Oil" or "Petroleum" to their names got an instantaneous 8% boost to stock performance. Then they faded.
The bottom line: In the long run, cute names don't make money; only good businesses do.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Shanghai World Expo: The New World's Fair
Interesting WSJ article on the World Expo, opening May 1 in Shanghai.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704869304575109563322843670.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704869304575109563322843670.html
Thursday, March 18, 2010
U.S. Entrepreneurship for Immigrants
The U.S. can usher in a new era of entrepreneurship with the newly-introduced bill modifying the EB-5 visa.
This new bill would create a new visa (the EB-6) for immigrant entrepreneurs who, if they hit various targets within two years, will qualify for permanent U.S. residency and will be allowed to stay in the U.S.
Currently, many talented and highly educated individuals from outside the U.S. find it extremely difficult to stay here, especially if they are on an F-1 student visa, tourist visa, or limited OPT or H1-B visa.
Why should only current U.S. citizens have all the fun?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ7PrqhRM5U
This new bill would create a new visa (the EB-6) for immigrant entrepreneurs who, if they hit various targets within two years, will qualify for permanent U.S. residency and will be allowed to stay in the U.S.
Currently, many talented and highly educated individuals from outside the U.S. find it extremely difficult to stay here, especially if they are on an F-1 student visa, tourist visa, or limited OPT or H1-B visa.
Why should only current U.S. citizens have all the fun?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ7PrqhRM5U
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Why Newly-Minted MBAs are Heading East
Why MBAs are Going East
Unprecedented growth, good salaries, and the ability to make an impact faster make Asia the new promised land for B-school grads
Crawford hopes he can capitalize on his Columbia MBA in Shanghai Rodney Evans
By Michelle Conlin
James Tsai is the sort of MBA corporate recruiters covet. He went to a good prep school, earned a degree with honors from Middlebury College, and made vice-president in Bank of America's (BAC) international wealth management group at the age of 26. Today, Tsai is about to graduate, straight A's in hand, from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, a top-rated program in America. And he's hustling to land his first post-MBA job—in China.
Executive Class strivers like Tsai used to have just one post-grad career destination, the U.S. Not anymore. "I am doing everything I think I can to get over there," he says.
Every era has its version of the MBA dream. In the 1980s, it was about conquering Wall Street and choppering off to the Hamptons. The late 1990s saw a stampede to Silicon Valley. In the mid-aughts, the gilded, clubby preserve of private equity beckoned. Now, the emerging narrative is about steroidal Asia and its promise of growth. At premiere institutions such as the University of Chicago's Booth School, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and Northwestern's Kellogg, the percentage of MBAs taking jobs in Asia—including U.S. students like Tsai as well as international students—has more than doubled in the past five years, from roughly 5% of the graduating class to more than 10%. "There is a sense that the center of gravity is shifting," says Julie Morton, Booth's associate dean for career services.
The number of students taking international jobs usually swells in a recession, says Kellogg Assistant Dean Roxanne Hori. But Hori and others believe that the refrain of "Go East, Young Man" is not a short-term response to the U.S. economic downturn but a structural shift toward an internationalized, mobile talent market. And right now, Asia is where the career velocity and opportunity are. "This has never really happened before, except in little spurts, where you have a fairly large group of talented, recent MBAs asking for assignments in China, Vietnam, India," says Jeff Joerres, CEO of global staffing firm Manpower. Adds Richard Florida, professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management: "I don't think many of us thought Asia would become the destination for top Western talent—but it is."
ONE WORD OF ADVICE
For many MBAs, the prospect of making a bigger impact faster is simply too good to pass up, especially now that the pay packages offered by both domestic and multinational companies are competitive with those in the U.S. Shortly before James Crawford, 30, headed to Columbia B-School two years ago, his dad sat him down in the kitchen of the family's suburban Chicago home. Think of that scene in The Graduate, only instead of saying "plastics," Crawford's father's advice was "Asia." Today, Crawford is pursuing multiple opportunities there. "I can't imagine a career over the next 30 years that would not require or give benefit to international experience," he says. Asia fever has also hit Wharton student Andrew Maywah, 32, who had a cushy life working at Oracle (ORCL) in Silicon Valley before graduate school. Now he is juggling offers from three Chinese companies. "It's like the Wild, Wild West. There is just so much happening there," he says. "I want to be at the center of it."
So do many Chinese who emigrated to the U.S. when they were young. They find themselves breaking the news to their families that they're chasing the same dream that lured their parents to the U.S., only in reverse. (What better time to leverage the family capital back in the old country?) The Chinese call these returnees hai gui, or sea turtles, referring to how these animals always return to their birthplace to lay their own eggs. Then there are the international students, who until recently would likely have stayed in the U.S. to learn the soft skills of Western management, and now are heading straight back home.
Piyush Singhvi, 27, was born in India, grew up in the Middle East, and, before Wharton, worked at the Dubai-based private equity firm Abraaj Capital, the largest non-state-owned firm in the region. When Singhvi enrolled in Wharton in 2008 he was certain, he says, that he would stay in the U.S. after graduation like most of his peers. But then came the financial crisis. "It was amazing to see how many people came in with the idea that they would stay in the West, and how that's drastically changed to just the opposite," he says. "There are a lot more opportunities in the East."
On Facebook, Twitter, and Skype, MBAs swap stories about the adrenaline rush of working in an emerging market and the joys of geographic arbitrage. After graduating from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, Quan Trinh, 27, who grew up in Virginia, took a job with Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) in Shanghai. There she partakes of an upper-crust-Manhattan-type lifestyle—food delivered to her door every night, a maid who picks up after her, a balcony apartment in a compound with a pool—at Albany (N.Y.) prices. Add to the mix that she travels around Asia with top J&J execs, working in the strategic planning division for the company's diabetes business, and, she says, "sometimes I have to pinch myself."
STANDING ROOM ONLY
Asian companies used to rarely, if ever, come to American B-school campuses for recruiting season. Now at Wharton, Chinese firms like heavyweight investment bank China Investment Corp. and IT firm Tencent are showing up, says Wharton global careers director Sam Jones. This year, CICC played to standing-room-only crowds. At Kellogg, India-based Infosys (INFY) and Tata Group are now on hand for recruiting. The University of Chicago's Booth School is seeing so much interest from Chinese companies that it recently opened a career services office in Hong Kong.
South Korea's Samsung Electronics has been on a hiring tear. Last year the company signed 50 non-Korean MBAs from the top 10 business schools in the U.S., double the number of 2008, says Samsung Vice-President Kim Keun Bae. Those 50 were in addition to the dozens of ethnic Koreans that Samsung scooped up from MBA programs in America. At Kellogg, the company hired 16 business school graduates alone—more than U.S.-based hiring stalwarts General Mills (GIS) and Procter & Gamble (PG) combined. The new hires work in Samsung's Global Strategy Group, which does all of its business in English, advising top Samsung executives on internal consulting projects. This year the company is on track to again double its hiring of U.S.-born MBAs. "The young and smart from top U.S. business schools have helped provide fresh perspectives to our company," says Kim. "Both foreign recruits and Korean employees learn from each other, and that helps globalize the company."
In many cases, companies like Samsung are acing out their American rivals in hiring the very best candidates. Kellogg graduate Jonathan Scearcy, 28, had 30 job offers last year, most from top U.S. companies. But he turned them all down to take a job at Samsung so he could "get international exposure early," he says. "If you ever want to be at a C-suite, you have to have a global skill set and you have to have significant international exposure," says Scearcy.
"GROOMING GLOBAL CITIZENS"
Multinationals like Citibank (C), Pfizer (PFE), Eli Lilly (LLY), and Nike China are also broadening their international programs and amping up hiring for their Asia divisions. Last fall a phalanx of high-level IBM (IBM)ers hit premiere B-schools to talk up IBM's new five-year boot camp for its general manager program. The program gives the new hires massive international exposure, especially in places like Asia. "We are looking to attract global citizens," says Peggy Tayloe, IBM's recruiting director. Big Blue recently flew the recruits to its Armonk (N.Y.) headquarters, where they sipped cocktails and nibbled canapés in the inner sanctum of the company's plush C-suite. One of the new hires hobnobbing at the party was Harvard MBA Yashih Wu, who was born in California and graduated from Princeton University. Before B-school, she worked on Wall Street and Madison Avenue. But for her those places aren't the career destinations they used to be. Today, she says, "It's impossible not to think globally about one's career."
How much longer can the Asian allure hold? With protectionist talk rising in America, and China trying to put the brakes on its rapidly growing economy, there's always a chance that Asia could stumble. There's also rising concern about what the migration East might mean for the U.S.'s competitive edge. "I can't get out of my head that two-thirds of Silicon Valley companies were started by non-U.S. citizens," says Manpower CEO Joerres. What if, after Stanford University, Google (GOOG) co-founder Sergey Brin had returned to his birth country of Russia? What if James Tsai is about to do the Next Big Thing—but in his dad's old country in Beijing? "The best and the brightest are leaving," says the Rotman School's Florida. "As a country, the U.S. has never confronted this before."
Unprecedented growth, good salaries, and the ability to make an impact faster make Asia the new promised land for B-school grads
Crawford hopes he can capitalize on his Columbia MBA in Shanghai Rodney Evans
By Michelle Conlin
James Tsai is the sort of MBA corporate recruiters covet. He went to a good prep school, earned a degree with honors from Middlebury College, and made vice-president in Bank of America's (BAC) international wealth management group at the age of 26. Today, Tsai is about to graduate, straight A's in hand, from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, a top-rated program in America. And he's hustling to land his first post-MBA job—in China.
Executive Class strivers like Tsai used to have just one post-grad career destination, the U.S. Not anymore. "I am doing everything I think I can to get over there," he says.
Every era has its version of the MBA dream. In the 1980s, it was about conquering Wall Street and choppering off to the Hamptons. The late 1990s saw a stampede to Silicon Valley. In the mid-aughts, the gilded, clubby preserve of private equity beckoned. Now, the emerging narrative is about steroidal Asia and its promise of growth. At premiere institutions such as the University of Chicago's Booth School, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and Northwestern's Kellogg, the percentage of MBAs taking jobs in Asia—including U.S. students like Tsai as well as international students—has more than doubled in the past five years, from roughly 5% of the graduating class to more than 10%. "There is a sense that the center of gravity is shifting," says Julie Morton, Booth's associate dean for career services.
The number of students taking international jobs usually swells in a recession, says Kellogg Assistant Dean Roxanne Hori. But Hori and others believe that the refrain of "Go East, Young Man" is not a short-term response to the U.S. economic downturn but a structural shift toward an internationalized, mobile talent market. And right now, Asia is where the career velocity and opportunity are. "This has never really happened before, except in little spurts, where you have a fairly large group of talented, recent MBAs asking for assignments in China, Vietnam, India," says Jeff Joerres, CEO of global staffing firm Manpower. Adds Richard Florida, professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management: "I don't think many of us thought Asia would become the destination for top Western talent—but it is."
ONE WORD OF ADVICE
For many MBAs, the prospect of making a bigger impact faster is simply too good to pass up, especially now that the pay packages offered by both domestic and multinational companies are competitive with those in the U.S. Shortly before James Crawford, 30, headed to Columbia B-School two years ago, his dad sat him down in the kitchen of the family's suburban Chicago home. Think of that scene in The Graduate, only instead of saying "plastics," Crawford's father's advice was "Asia." Today, Crawford is pursuing multiple opportunities there. "I can't imagine a career over the next 30 years that would not require or give benefit to international experience," he says. Asia fever has also hit Wharton student Andrew Maywah, 32, who had a cushy life working at Oracle (ORCL) in Silicon Valley before graduate school. Now he is juggling offers from three Chinese companies. "It's like the Wild, Wild West. There is just so much happening there," he says. "I want to be at the center of it."
So do many Chinese who emigrated to the U.S. when they were young. They find themselves breaking the news to their families that they're chasing the same dream that lured their parents to the U.S., only in reverse. (What better time to leverage the family capital back in the old country?) The Chinese call these returnees hai gui, or sea turtles, referring to how these animals always return to their birthplace to lay their own eggs. Then there are the international students, who until recently would likely have stayed in the U.S. to learn the soft skills of Western management, and now are heading straight back home.
Piyush Singhvi, 27, was born in India, grew up in the Middle East, and, before Wharton, worked at the Dubai-based private equity firm Abraaj Capital, the largest non-state-owned firm in the region. When Singhvi enrolled in Wharton in 2008 he was certain, he says, that he would stay in the U.S. after graduation like most of his peers. But then came the financial crisis. "It was amazing to see how many people came in with the idea that they would stay in the West, and how that's drastically changed to just the opposite," he says. "There are a lot more opportunities in the East."
On Facebook, Twitter, and Skype, MBAs swap stories about the adrenaline rush of working in an emerging market and the joys of geographic arbitrage. After graduating from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, Quan Trinh, 27, who grew up in Virginia, took a job with Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) in Shanghai. There she partakes of an upper-crust-Manhattan-type lifestyle—food delivered to her door every night, a maid who picks up after her, a balcony apartment in a compound with a pool—at Albany (N.Y.) prices. Add to the mix that she travels around Asia with top J&J execs, working in the strategic planning division for the company's diabetes business, and, she says, "sometimes I have to pinch myself."
STANDING ROOM ONLY
Asian companies used to rarely, if ever, come to American B-school campuses for recruiting season. Now at Wharton, Chinese firms like heavyweight investment bank China Investment Corp. and IT firm Tencent are showing up, says Wharton global careers director Sam Jones. This year, CICC played to standing-room-only crowds. At Kellogg, India-based Infosys (INFY) and Tata Group are now on hand for recruiting. The University of Chicago's Booth School is seeing so much interest from Chinese companies that it recently opened a career services office in Hong Kong.
South Korea's Samsung Electronics has been on a hiring tear. Last year the company signed 50 non-Korean MBAs from the top 10 business schools in the U.S., double the number of 2008, says Samsung Vice-President Kim Keun Bae. Those 50 were in addition to the dozens of ethnic Koreans that Samsung scooped up from MBA programs in America. At Kellogg, the company hired 16 business school graduates alone—more than U.S.-based hiring stalwarts General Mills (GIS) and Procter & Gamble (PG) combined. The new hires work in Samsung's Global Strategy Group, which does all of its business in English, advising top Samsung executives on internal consulting projects. This year the company is on track to again double its hiring of U.S.-born MBAs. "The young and smart from top U.S. business schools have helped provide fresh perspectives to our company," says Kim. "Both foreign recruits and Korean employees learn from each other, and that helps globalize the company."
In many cases, companies like Samsung are acing out their American rivals in hiring the very best candidates. Kellogg graduate Jonathan Scearcy, 28, had 30 job offers last year, most from top U.S. companies. But he turned them all down to take a job at Samsung so he could "get international exposure early," he says. "If you ever want to be at a C-suite, you have to have a global skill set and you have to have significant international exposure," says Scearcy.
"GROOMING GLOBAL CITIZENS"
Multinationals like Citibank (C), Pfizer (PFE), Eli Lilly (LLY), and Nike China are also broadening their international programs and amping up hiring for their Asia divisions. Last fall a phalanx of high-level IBM (IBM)ers hit premiere B-schools to talk up IBM's new five-year boot camp for its general manager program. The program gives the new hires massive international exposure, especially in places like Asia. "We are looking to attract global citizens," says Peggy Tayloe, IBM's recruiting director. Big Blue recently flew the recruits to its Armonk (N.Y.) headquarters, where they sipped cocktails and nibbled canapés in the inner sanctum of the company's plush C-suite. One of the new hires hobnobbing at the party was Harvard MBA Yashih Wu, who was born in California and graduated from Princeton University. Before B-school, she worked on Wall Street and Madison Avenue. But for her those places aren't the career destinations they used to be. Today, she says, "It's impossible not to think globally about one's career."
How much longer can the Asian allure hold? With protectionist talk rising in America, and China trying to put the brakes on its rapidly growing economy, there's always a chance that Asia could stumble. There's also rising concern about what the migration East might mean for the U.S.'s competitive edge. "I can't get out of my head that two-thirds of Silicon Valley companies were started by non-U.S. citizens," says Manpower CEO Joerres. What if, after Stanford University, Google (GOOG) co-founder Sergey Brin had returned to his birth country of Russia? What if James Tsai is about to do the Next Big Thing—but in his dad's old country in Beijing? "The best and the brightest are leaving," says the Rotman School's Florida. "As a country, the U.S. has never confronted this before."
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Coal Boss' family wedding in ShanXi, China
ShanXi was traditionally a very poor area in China until the recent discovery of vast coal deposits. Have a look at a coal boss' family wedding.
Lead cars included Rolls Royces and Lamborghinis, Mercedes, BMWs and Porsche Cayennes. The groom's house was brand new, covered in celebratory balloons.
The brides house was just as glamorous (sans balloons). Wedding dowry included checks, gold bars and gold rice bowls, plus a white lamborghini. The bride sported a 3,000 RMB manicure.
Lead cars included Rolls Royces and Lamborghinis, Mercedes, BMWs and Porsche Cayennes. The groom's house was brand new, covered in celebratory balloons.
The brides house was just as glamorous (sans balloons). Wedding dowry included checks, gold bars and gold rice bowls, plus a white lamborghini. The bride sported a 3,000 RMB manicure.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
NY Times: Going Global Stateside
Looking to expand your company's business prospects in Asia?
Contact CLSC for info on their Corporate Chinese programs at President@ChineseLanguageSchool.org
Going Global, Stateside
By TANYA MOHN
Published: March 8, 2010
Training to communicate across cultures has long been part of the preparation for executives moving overseas to work. But now, the training is increasingly for employees who may never leave the country, yet will work closely with companies and people around the world.
“Whether a multinational or a start-up business out of a garage, everybody is global these days,” said Dean Foster, president of Dean Foster Associates, an intercultural consultancy in New York. “In today’s economy, there is no room for failure. Companies have to understand the culture they are working in from Day 1.”
Mr. Foster recounted how an American businessman recently gave four antique clocks wrapped in white paper to a prospective client in China. What the man did not realize, he said, was that the words in Mandarin for clock and the number four are similar to the word for death, and white is a funeral color in many Asian countries. “The symbolism was so powerful,” Mr. Foster said, that the man lost the deal.
Cross-cultural training has steadily grown since its start about 35 years ago when large numbers of Americans returned from the Peace Corps with increased awareness of cultural differences and a new understanding of the importance of intercultural communication.
The military and foreign service have a tradition of preparing personnel and their families, but corporations “are really the newcomers,” said Anne P. Copeland, executive director of the Interchange Institute, a research and consulting organization in Brookline, Mass.
Jill Kristal, a psychologist in Larchmont, N.Y., said inadequate preparation “puts undue stress on the family.” She saw so much need when she was an expatriate in London in the 1990s that she began incorporating cross-cultural training into her practice. She also started a company, Transitional Learning Curves, which creates products — interactive books, calendars and card games — to help families communicate during their time abroad. “Very often stuff goes unspoken. That’s when problems begin,” Dr. Kristal said.
The adjustment when Americans move to other Western countries may be the most challenging because people do not anticipate differences and there is often less preparation, said Geoffrey W. Latta, executive vice president of ORC Worldwide, a human resources consulting firm.
Sometimes smaller companies, new to the global workplace, are unaware that training exists or how it can help. And when companies do offer the training, employees, particularly business travelers who may have worked or lived internationally before, often do not feel they need it, Mr. Latta said.
On a recent afternoon, a group of American employees of Hollister Inc., a medical device company, prepared for a business trip to Japan. In a five-hour session that included a traditional Japanese meal, a trainer from Dean Foster Associates briefed them on cultural dining etiquette, business customs, socializing and developing a “global mind-set” when working with colleagues abroad and after returning home.
Mary Lucas, who oversees global human resources for the health benefits company Aetna, said teams at service centers in Ireland and Dubai had similar training that helped identify major differences, like a sense of urgency, that were impeding cooperation between the two centers. Supervisors in Ireland would ask staff members in Dubai to pay claims, but unless directions were explicitly prioritized, claims were not necessarily paid right away, Ms. Lucas said. Training “immediately raised awareness, which helped the teams be much more successful,” she said.
Mr. Foster recently introduced a series of online tools for employees who might not have time for formal cross-cultural training. “Culture Guides-to-Go” offer strategies for running successful meetings, conducting negotiations or brushing up on dining protocol in more than 120 countries.
Andrew P. Walker, vice president of global mobility for Thomson Reuters, said online training was easier, quicker and cheaper than in-person training. Thomson Reuters uses CultureWizard, a Web-based tool created by the company RW 3 , for its employees in 93 countries for what he said was “a fraction of the cost” of formal training.
Mr. Walker said he also used it himself. “Without the course, I think I would have made a lot of mistakes,” said Mr. Walker, who moved back to the United States in July after five years in London. He said his low-key, light-hearted manner was fine on business trips, but when he was working there full time, “I wouldn’t be able to get away with it forever.” He said the program helped speed the transition.
Michael S. Schell, chief executive of RW 3, recounted how a mining and exploration company in Britain contacted his firm because the mining company was unsuccessful in winning business from an American company. “During the training, we pointed out that the proposal turned off the Americans,” Mr. Schell said, because it began with 10 pages detailing all the risks of the venture and how much failure would cost.
Americans tend to view failure as a learning experience that inspires creativity, Mr. Schell said, so the American company considered the proposal negative and unenthusiastic. The British tend to be risk-averse culturally, he said, and perceived the Americans as unrealistic. When the British company redid the proposal with a positive spin, they got the deal the next day, he said.
“Differences got overlooked because we speak English,” Mr. Schell said. “They look like us, wear the same jeans and use the same cellphones.
“The assumption is that we’re all the same, but we’re not all the same.”
Contact CLSC for info on their Corporate Chinese programs at President@ChineseLanguageSchool.org
Going Global, Stateside
By TANYA MOHN
Published: March 8, 2010
Training to communicate across cultures has long been part of the preparation for executives moving overseas to work. But now, the training is increasingly for employees who may never leave the country, yet will work closely with companies and people around the world.
“Whether a multinational or a start-up business out of a garage, everybody is global these days,” said Dean Foster, president of Dean Foster Associates, an intercultural consultancy in New York. “In today’s economy, there is no room for failure. Companies have to understand the culture they are working in from Day 1.”
Mr. Foster recounted how an American businessman recently gave four antique clocks wrapped in white paper to a prospective client in China. What the man did not realize, he said, was that the words in Mandarin for clock and the number four are similar to the word for death, and white is a funeral color in many Asian countries. “The symbolism was so powerful,” Mr. Foster said, that the man lost the deal.
Cross-cultural training has steadily grown since its start about 35 years ago when large numbers of Americans returned from the Peace Corps with increased awareness of cultural differences and a new understanding of the importance of intercultural communication.
The military and foreign service have a tradition of preparing personnel and their families, but corporations “are really the newcomers,” said Anne P. Copeland, executive director of the Interchange Institute, a research and consulting organization in Brookline, Mass.
Jill Kristal, a psychologist in Larchmont, N.Y., said inadequate preparation “puts undue stress on the family.” She saw so much need when she was an expatriate in London in the 1990s that she began incorporating cross-cultural training into her practice. She also started a company, Transitional Learning Curves, which creates products — interactive books, calendars and card games — to help families communicate during their time abroad. “Very often stuff goes unspoken. That’s when problems begin,” Dr. Kristal said.
The adjustment when Americans move to other Western countries may be the most challenging because people do not anticipate differences and there is often less preparation, said Geoffrey W. Latta, executive vice president of ORC Worldwide, a human resources consulting firm.
Sometimes smaller companies, new to the global workplace, are unaware that training exists or how it can help. And when companies do offer the training, employees, particularly business travelers who may have worked or lived internationally before, often do not feel they need it, Mr. Latta said.
On a recent afternoon, a group of American employees of Hollister Inc., a medical device company, prepared for a business trip to Japan. In a five-hour session that included a traditional Japanese meal, a trainer from Dean Foster Associates briefed them on cultural dining etiquette, business customs, socializing and developing a “global mind-set” when working with colleagues abroad and after returning home.
Mary Lucas, who oversees global human resources for the health benefits company Aetna, said teams at service centers in Ireland and Dubai had similar training that helped identify major differences, like a sense of urgency, that were impeding cooperation between the two centers. Supervisors in Ireland would ask staff members in Dubai to pay claims, but unless directions were explicitly prioritized, claims were not necessarily paid right away, Ms. Lucas said. Training “immediately raised awareness, which helped the teams be much more successful,” she said.
Mr. Foster recently introduced a series of online tools for employees who might not have time for formal cross-cultural training. “Culture Guides-to-Go” offer strategies for running successful meetings, conducting negotiations or brushing up on dining protocol in more than 120 countries.
Andrew P. Walker, vice president of global mobility for Thomson Reuters, said online training was easier, quicker and cheaper than in-person training. Thomson Reuters uses CultureWizard, a Web-based tool created by the company RW 3 , for its employees in 93 countries for what he said was “a fraction of the cost” of formal training.
Mr. Walker said he also used it himself. “Without the course, I think I would have made a lot of mistakes,” said Mr. Walker, who moved back to the United States in July after five years in London. He said his low-key, light-hearted manner was fine on business trips, but when he was working there full time, “I wouldn’t be able to get away with it forever.” He said the program helped speed the transition.
Michael S. Schell, chief executive of RW 3, recounted how a mining and exploration company in Britain contacted his firm because the mining company was unsuccessful in winning business from an American company. “During the training, we pointed out that the proposal turned off the Americans,” Mr. Schell said, because it began with 10 pages detailing all the risks of the venture and how much failure would cost.
Americans tend to view failure as a learning experience that inspires creativity, Mr. Schell said, so the American company considered the proposal negative and unenthusiastic. The British tend to be risk-averse culturally, he said, and perceived the Americans as unrealistic. When the British company redid the proposal with a positive spin, they got the deal the next day, he said.
“Differences got overlooked because we speak English,” Mr. Schell said. “They look like us, wear the same jeans and use the same cellphones.
“The assumption is that we’re all the same, but we’re not all the same.”
Chinese Language School of CT's Open House April 25, 2010
Sunday, April 25 is CLSC’s annual Open House.
For info: www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org. To register to visit: principal@chineselanguageschool.org
During Open House, prospective parents and students may visit our programs, meet teachers and staff, and participate in demo classes.
We wanted to take this opportunity, too, to congratulate principal Daisy Chen Laone, vice principal Xian Xian Feng, and program director Jopi Shen on their One Year Anniversaries in their respective roles.
What they each do every day is remarkable; we wouldn’t have a school without their dedication, passion, and hard work.
We are also very pleased to have received kudos and support from several key professionals in the educational field, most notably Dr. Janice Dowd, of the ACTFL.
Lastly, we are pleased to have been chosen as one of the top places for CLSC Chinese instructors (or prospective instructors) to work, as witnessed by the hundreds of resumes and referrals we receive each year, from across the U.S. and internationally. Daisy follows up on each of these, but of these, only a select few receive notice to be interviewed and are eventually hired.
Some new things taking place this year, or planned for next year include:
• Expanded Better Chinese educational materials with online practice
• Small “student study groups” which meet a few minutes before each class (students help each other under the supervision of a teacher or TA)
• Custom CLSC texts and workbooks which have received professional praise for their scope and consistency (for CLSC student use only)
• Custom CLSC CDs and other materials available as needed
• CLSC in-house “library”
• Bigger Year End Celebration in June 2010
• Expanded plan for Culture
• Break time games and scavenger hunts
• 90% teacher retention for the 2010 / 2011 school year
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