Overstaffed China

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Everywhere in China there have been too many employees.

There’s probably two dozen security guards outside this apartment complex I’m staying in.

Each restaurant has way too many wait-staff.

At the Shanghai museum there were three security guards for each room.

There are as many taxi cabs as in New York City plus tons of bicycles and some cars. My understanding is the government flooded the market with taxi drivers to curb some unemployment, but they really overdid it since I haven’t had to wait more than 25 seconds of a taxi.

The overstaffing problem affects business culture too: instead of focusing on productivity or quality of each employee, you just hire more people since labor is so cheap. The Chinese solution to problems is often, “throw more bodies at it.” The American approach is, “Let’s re-engineer our business processes to optimize our business.” 🙂

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Step 1: Respect It. Step 2: Demolish It (If Necessary)

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Isn’t everything in life a balancing act?

One balancing act that’s come alive in my travels is that of respecting an idea versus advocating for its demolition.

All ideas should be respected. If someone puts forth an idea, it should be respected on the grounds that a thinking human being produced it. Even if I totally disagree with someone’s point of view, I try to preface my response with, "I think I understand your idea and I appreciate you articulating it to me and can see how it could be compelling."

I would argue that most negotiations (in life or business) leave the rational world (and enter an entrenched game of ego and emotion) when one side feels like the other side doesn’t appreciate or respect the other side’s POV.

3M has famously integrated this notion of respecting all ideas into their corporate culture. During group brainstorming meetings, any idea put on the table has to be followed by a supportive remark. If I say, "We should open a store in Canada" the next person to speak must in some way positively support this idea, so that no new creative burst dies on the first try. I think these next-person-to-speak supporters are called "idea angels".

Not all ideas deserve to live — an idea angel just breathes on flickering embers, it doesn’t guarantee a fire. I’ve said before that some ideas are better than others and bad ideas deserve to be demolished.

I’m in Asia right now…Some foreign governments and foreign cultures subscribe to ideas I disagree with. The best thing a citizen diplomat from another country can do is respect the idea and express an appreciation for its resonance in the foreign culture. Sometimes, that’s all you can/should do. Other times, and hopefully most of the time, you can advocate for your conception of a better idea. But this is step two.

I want to emphasize that you can and should engage in active debate when traveling. I don’t believe in the idea that "if your mouth is open your ears are closed." For me, when I’m exploring different cultures, I want to understand and respect how it operates, and then present the way my culture operates, and really dig in to explore the differences. I’ve found that foreigners like hearing and debating different approaches to government, markets, cuisine, and so forth, assuming it’s done in a respectful and not condescending manner.

It’s amazing how far R-E-S-P-E-C-T will get you! (Yes, that’s your cue to start singing the song…)

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Switching Languages Mid Sentence

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I observed something really interesting involving language the other day in Shanghai. My friend was speaking with his friend in Hong Kong and he spoke sometimes in Cantonese, sometimes Mandarin, sometimes English.

“Hello” and “Goodbye” were in English.

Blah blah blah blah

“Is everything ok?”

Blah blah blah

“Ok, keep me posted”

“Bye”

I asked my friend why “Is everything ok?” was said in English and not Chinese. At first he said he didn’t know, he just switches based on whatever phrase comes to mind when he’s talking to a multi-lingual person. Then, after a bit of thought, he said, “We don’t have a good phrase for ‘Is everything ok?’ in Chinese. In English, you can say it casually and not offend or sound intimidating. It’s a nice phrase. So I used it.”

What a luxury! I did that with Spanish, too, when I was using it more. When taking notes in class, if there was a Spanish equivalent that was shorter I’d use it instead of English (e.g. “entre” instead of “between” or “sin” instead of “without”).

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Family Style Eating – Pros and Cons

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In Chinese restaurants all food is served family-style (dishes in the middle that each person takes from).

In general, I am not a fan of family style set-ups because it turns the meal into a collective exercise of eating instead of individual responsibility of a plate. I prefer to know that one plate is mine and I can eat it. In a family style set-up, you’re constantly gauging how much you are eating versus others. You also have to serve little bits of food onto your own plate before eating. Finally, every time there is one last dumpling or one last piece of bread, it sits for there 10 minutes, no one wanting to take the last piece.

At dinner tonight I did reap a benefit of family style, as will be the case when you are dining with small eaters (if you’re hungry) or big eaters (if you’re not hungry). If you don’t worry about perception, you can dominate a family style set up by consuming much more food than you would have if you had just a single plate. A family style setup avoids one of my great agonies when eating with other people at a restaurant. I finish my plate. They nibble at their plate. Still half a plate of food. Waiter comes by. “Are you done?” “Yes”. Waiter takes plate. I think to myself: Would it have been rude to have asked if I could have finished plate of food? Would it have hurt the person to at least offer it to me? ‘Why yes, Joe, I’d love to finish off your burrito. Not only that, I’d love to wash it down with that full glass of water you haven’t touched.’

Given the high cost of failure of the meal, I’d rather not leave it to chance, no matter how compelling the small-eater-family-style set-up can be. Stick with individual plates. If you’re dining with me and choose the restaurant, please don’t pick a family style place, and please don’t choose a do-it-yourself speciality place, either (unless it’s Swiss fondue!).

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Life Entrepreneurs In the Music Studio or On the Baseball Field

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I talk about life entrepreneurship a lot on this blog. This is the idea that anyone can be an entrepreneur and think like an entrepreneur, even if you’re not starting new businesses or involved in high technology.

It’s enormously gratifying to meet readers of this blog who have nothing to do with business or technology, but embrace the spirit of entrepreneurship in their own line of work. It tells me me that the ideas I discuss here have diverse resonance. For instance, I got an email this week about a book recommendation from a 30-something baseball coach who’s a regular reader of this blog.

Today, I met a blog reader here in Shanghai, Eisen, who’s putting me up for the week in a spare apartment of his (yes, the generosity continues in ways that blow my mind). He’s been reading my blog for several months and reached out to me when he heard I was coming to the Far East.

Eisen is a Singaporean 40-something who’s dominating the Shanghai post-audio music production scene. He produces jingles. He plays live each week on a TV show (think the band that plays along with Jay Leno and David Letterman). His team of ten also records and edits local artists in their studios. He’s had amazing professional success in this niche. Very cool.

And I can’t remember the last time I blogged about music.

Baseball coaches, music producers, software entrepreneurs, college students, teachers, retired restaurant owners, journalists… What all of us life entrepreneurs have in common is a shared journey toward engaging this mystifying and too-brief life in ways that offer meaning and happiness.

The seriousness of this quest for knowledge and mission to change comes hand in hand with a sheepish acknowledgment of our own fallibility, a sense that the moment we take ourselves or our knowledge too seriously is the moment we’re ignored. Life entrepreneurs aren’t philosophers in an ivory tower; they’re out there doing, and laughing at their own failures. I laughed a lot with Eisen at dinner.

All this has nothing to do with me or my blog and everything to do with the power of average people with unusual passion. It’s super inspiring to know these people are spread across the world, across all industries (not just Silicon Valley) and backgrounds, reading and meeting and changing things. People like Eisen in Shanghai.

These people are true life entrepreneurs — incorporating the best of the entrepreneurial worldview into their work, kicking butt, and laughing heartily along the way. I’m honored some of them read my blog.

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