China Recruiting Blog

Leadership and the Pulling Forces

While other stakeholders are also pressing on a leader, these are the big three.

I recently talked with a successful CEO here in China who mentioned that he had to spend 50% of his time and energy to making sure the home office will support what he is doing.  He also must chase the market , so how much does he have left for his work force? Actually, most of you reading know spending 50% of our time on the boss is common for any China leader.

I know another leader who has horrible worker productivity and is looking for a tough guy to get work out of the workers.  I am guessing that by the time turnover gets to 100% as I have seen at some places that some change will occur.

I know a hard working production manager who faces tirades from his plant manager all the time.   I know an owner who people please with the customers till the company is near bankrupt, but fires anyone who dares to say that he has made the workers unhappy in the process.   So yes, he gets leaders to beat heads as his inability to care for workers means that he must crush the workers.    We likely all have many more stories.  Much of it looks like the leader above

The way we need to make this work to succeed in not tearing apart the China leader (or any leader) or ruining productivity is as below.

Most owners do not turn this way as they started a business because they hated to follow/serve anyone.  They trust the finance people too much in operations is also another factor.  Actually, there are many ways to fail and few to succeed over the long run.  The result is a CEO or leader at any level who is splitting herself in too many directions and usually failing to serve one or more of these key constituencies.  The successful CEO mentioned earlier is working 50% of his time to get the boss and home office in the right position in support of him.  He is gaining success as he is getting some linear alignment through his efforts.  His home office is also open enough to hear and align, so the customer is served, but the process is uncomfortable for the home office as they are on the bottom and they did not want to be there. However, it is the path of success.

Of course, I also know China CEO’s who are manipulating home offices as they see the home office cannot understand. However, the key problem is failure to align by bosses at all levels.  This is not to say that bosses should work to please workers but rather to sit on the same side of the table with workers who also want to achieve.

Thoughts?