Monday, January 19, 2009

Suzhou Micro & Obituary Title

There was an exercise in my leadership class that wanted me to come up with my own personal mission statement. I couldn't manage to come up with something that I felt comfortable with, so I came up with my obituary.

"She made a shitload of money while being a good daughter, mother, manager and friend"

No photos today, I woke up at 530am to prepare for a company visit in Suzhou. This company was a engineering/manufacturing company comprised of six joint ventures doing equipment like pressure gauges, valves to other parts.

They treated us graciously, we talked to the CEO who reminded me of my own father very much. Walking around these machines reminded me of my Dad's own factory when I was younger, and made me feel rather nostalgic. Here was a man who had no airs, walked around the factory in the same blazing yellow windbreaker as the same as his staff, who talked in simple and power metaphors. Here was a good one that he used to illustrate about cultural differences:-

"A Chinese Soldier and A Japanese Soldier are fighting on the battlefields with their bayonets. They come into close contact with each other and started on a sword fight.

The Japanese soldier will remove the bullets from his gun.
The Chinese soldier, if he loses the sword fight, will just pull the trigger to shoot the Japanese soldier"
In both scenarios, they just did what was normal in their cultures.

The CEO later gave me an autographed copy of his book on his style of leadership and life. My classmate who went with me cannot get over how the factory worker's pay(1500 rmb) in a month was less than his post MBA pay in a day.

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