1. What to do in your 20’s, 30’s and 40’s

Shaun offered a clear Learnings/Leaders framework, which I wish I’d heard 20 years ago!

– 🙇🏻‍♀️ In your 20’s, ACQUIRE knowledge. Don’t worry so much about proving your expertise. Rather, invest in learning.
– 🙋🏻‍♀️ In your 30’s, IMPLEMENT knowledge. Now you’ve got some good experience and insight. Exercise it to drive results.
– 👩🏻‍🏫 In your 40’s SHARE knowledge. At this point, you’re (hopefully) successful and wise. Teach what you’ve learned.

2. American vs. Chinese education

Shaun kicked off this topic with the statement, “I think there’s something wrong with higher education in America.” He feels the emphasis on AP’s and lack of innovation in American education is negatively impacting our students. Specifically, as a result of trying to get into the best colleges, educators may be focusing too much on rote memorization.

Meanwhile, the Chinese educational system used to be so weak that parents regularly invested in outside-school tutoring (called buxiban). But today, the system has been improving dramatically, focused less on rote memory and more on innovation.

Wow, I resonate with this observation deeply! Personally, I have always wanted to be as involved in education as possible. To that end, I started a tutoring company in college and have enthusiastically embraced every opportunity to teach these last few decades. And reflecting on my lived experience having worked in China since the early 2000’s, I don’t think it’s overly dramatic to say that the two countries have sort of swapped roles. Today, the U.S. may not focus enough on meritocracy and creativity, while China is actively embracing educational reform (to listen to this portion, check out the 31 minute mark).

3. China is the “Next China”

Shaun frequently hears the question, “What’s the next China?” His answer is, CHINA is the next China! He shared a few interesting stats. Folks have cited the slowdown of China’s growth to about 5% a year. Now if China continues to grow at 5% a year, that’s like adding a Thailand + Vietnam economy combined!

He talks about the all-important scale – while Vietnam is fast-growing, it’s still tiny. So the only country that can rival China’s economic growth potential is India, but the per-capita GDP is still only 1/6 that of China. That’s why Shaun believes that come end-2024, China will account for a third of all global economic growth this year. Makes sense – at least for the next few years, China is the “next China.”

To listen to our entire episode, click here 👉 https://bit.ly/460ec2w 👈

For all my podcasts, click here and for related articles, check out:

• The Chinese word for Creativity
• The Chinese word for Crisis
• 3 things I learned this AANHPI Heritage Month
  
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  hashtag#ChineseAmericanAuthors

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What is Ignoragance?

Bernd refers to this toxic recipe as an efficient way to exit the Chinese market quickly 😆 Ignoragance is when ignorance meets arrogance.

Our German auto expert described how Western companies watched with arrogant posture, as Chinese companies began to build cars. Those Western companies failed to keep a close eye on what was happening in the market. And now that same ignoragance is requiring expensive JVs to gain entry to, or stay in, the China market. In sum, those companies “ignored the local brands and were arrogant enough to think they could capture any trend and do it better than anyone else, especially the Chinese.” Wow.

💡APPLICATION: Where do we experience Ignoragance? Are there areas in our own lives where we may approach issues with a degree of ignorance + arrogance? How might we become less ignoragant?

1. Educate ourselves – intentionally take in different points of view. We can proactively avoid ignorance if we constantly try to stay informed on different perspectives. For more, I just wrote about taking in different voices here.
2. Focus on the great – if we consistently look to the most inspiring, mind-blowing innovations, we can avoid that brand of arrogance which comes from ‘having been the best’. Instead, we remain curious about what’s coming and what might be.

OK, so what is Conrelevance?

It’s the beautiful thing that happens when convenience meets relevance. It’s about setting what’s convenient and relevant for the customer as our North Star. Next, Bernd described how traditional auto makers lost the plot – they engineered what they knew and expected the customer to pay for it. Now, can you just imagine their stunned reaction when electrification undulated across the country?!

In summary, Bernd described a razor-sharp focus of the Chinese on a key question: “What can I sell?” They constantly ask, “Is there a customer need? How can I tailor it to what matters to our customer?” This is conrelevance, my friends.

The success of a leader doesn’t mean the success of an organization.

This is an important insight I captured, and had to throw in the mix! How often do we incorrectly ascribe success or failure to a leader? Given transitions between leaders, depending on lead times in industry, we may get the credit of successful results, which we didn’t lead. On the other hand, we can be blamed for poor results, for which the path had been laid long before our arrival.

💡APPLICATION: What success or failure are we attributing to the leader or their predecessor? Given how frequently leaders change roles, this can serve as a very clarifying question. And incidentally, it’s why I particularly respect those who have led successful businesses for a long time.

Click here to listen to the full podcast and here for our first of the series with Trevor Lai.

For related articles, check out:

• Life is an emerging market – how key insights from developing markets apply to our daily lives
• Make good micro-choices – small decisions become habits which become our way of life.

The post Ignorigance and Conrelevance 🤔 appeared first on Social Legacy.

Are you a redefiner? Here’s their definition: “Call them changemakers. Call them rule breakers. We call them Redefiners. And in this provocative podcast, we explore how daring leaders from across industries and around the globe are redefining their organizations—and themselves—to create extraordinary impact in today’s rapidly changing world.”

Of all the questions Clark and Nanaz asked me, here are four I’d like to share.

What’s one key difference between East and West?

1. The way we define failure: There’s a fine line between failure and learning. In the West, we set clear milestones to ensure a high likelihood of success. In the East, we prioritize speed to market, getting something launched quickly so we can learn and iterate.
2. How we embrace the “and”: In the West, we often think in terms of “either/or”. Even the construct of AB testing assumes an either/or approach. However, in the East, a company may concurrently launch two products and monitor purchase intent. Neither product has been made, and consumers may be temporarily disappointed. But the company learns quickly and immediately produces the more desired product, launching with a high degree of certainty in purchase in tent.

See, there’s huge learning and growth opportunity when you redefine failure and success.

What keeps you going in the difficult moments?

There may not be one answer on what keeps us going. But here are three things it’s NOT. If what motivates you is:

• Someone’s gratitude, you may never even get started, or end up feeling bitter and under appreciated!
• Recognition and accolades, because these are short-lived.
• A sense of happiness in what you’re doing, as you’ll find yourself fluctuating with the ups and downs.

Because when you’re in the state of giving, you don’t stop when you become uncomfortable, frustrated, or angry. You stop when that need is met. You see, when you redefine your goal as “meeting someone’s need”, joy and abundance flow into your life when you achieve that mission!

How do you build capacity?

The short answer: Operational Discipline.

1. Think about your flex capacity. How do you run at a rate where you can flex up as needed? What is that rate for you? And how much can you flex up, and for how long, before you burn out? The more you understand your limits… think of yourself as a machine… the better you’ll manage and maximize your capacity.
2. Start with micro-moments and expand from there. A) Daily – cut all 60-minute meetings to 50 minutes. B) Weekly – choose one night to be your late night and load up your after-work events. You’re going to miss your kids’ bedtime anyway, so make the most of it! Then on the other evenings, return home at a reasonable hour and enjoy that quality time. C) Monthly – choose at least one day to go offline. You may still be working, e.g. cleaning out your emails. Or perhaps you completely disconnect. Whatever feels productive and rejuvenating to you, invest that one day a month.

All those micro-moments add up and you realize you can have a big job and you can pour into your family. When you redefine your capacity, you open yourself up to pursue your passions and live in full energy and joy!

What’s the most significant leadership lesson you’ve learned in the last few years?

It’s ok, and you should expect to be wrong. We can be so focused on creating a veneer of looking right, knowledgeable, or trustworthy. But who’s right all the time?

In fact, sometimes when you make a mistake and you acknowledge it, you can earn deeper trust. Because people understand you’re real. Yet, as an Asian-American woman raised by immigrant parents, I don’t remember anyone ever telling me it was all right to be wrong! But you should be wrong sometimes – if not, you may not be stretching yourself enough or admitting you missed it.

For more of my podcasts, go to my podcast page.

For related articles,

• More on micro-choices: https://social-legacy.com/make-good-micro-choices-emily-chang-blog-leadership-impact-jane-goodall/
• On capacity and energy management: https://social-legacy.com/where-do-you-get-all-that-energy-emily-chang-blog-leadership-self-leadership-energy-management-calendar-management-micro-to-macro/

#failturetosuccess #growth #socialimpact #purposedriven #sociallegacy #chinainsights #podcat #redefinerspodcast #capacitybuilding #capacitymanagement #capacitydevelopment #persistence #china #chinabusiness

To listen to the full podcast, check out the below ⬇️

The post REDEFINE yourself constantly! appeared first on Social Legacy.

In Chinese, Security is 安全。

The first half…

Check this out: 安 means “Tranquility”. The character is literally a roof over a woman.

As a fun reference, a roof over the character for man, is the word for “word”: 字. Draw from that what you will.

And the second half…

Meanwhile, 全 means completely or holistically. So Security, 安全, is the sense of complete, holistic tranquility.

Maybe our family knew this intuitively. Maybe that’s why we’ve held on to our old, comfy furniture instead of trading up for something more glamourous. Or perhaps it’s why we always have candles burning in the house, and tea fragrantly steeping in beautiful pots.  

These things bring us a deep sense of comfort and home. And I think they give those who join us, a bit of the same.

A few related articles:

• Cultivating a sense of belonging (this was the article Arianna Huffington reposted!)
• How to cultivate calm
• The importance of psychological safety

The post What is Security? appeared first on Social Legacy.

See, I’ve defined my #sociallegacy as providing “Comfort for the Spirit” to those who enter my space, be it my home or office.

Let’s dive into the Chinese language for “comfort”.

The phrase for Comfort is made up of 温, which means warm and tender, and 馨 which represents fragrance. So, comfort in Chinese is defined as “a warm and tender fragrance.” I love this wonderful, sensorial description of comfort! Whether the feel of soft, lavender sheets or the smell of mom’s chicken soup, comfort is indeed a warm and tender fragrance.

And the word for “spirit”?

Meanwhile, spirit, or 精神, translates to “a revelation of one’s essence”.

So comfort for the spirit means I’m embracing people’s innermost essence with a warm and tender fragrance. This adds such delightful texture to my #sociallegacy!

What word are you curious about? My Chinese isn’t great, but I love pulling apart words to understand their construction.

Here’s a quick video on the topic that my team made for socials:

For more posts about Chinese words, check these out or search my hashtag, #workplacechinese.

• ‘Wisdom’ #workplaceChinese
• ‘Down to Earth’ #Workplacechinese
• ‘Rest’ #Workplacechinese

A couple of related articles:

• The importance of psychological safety
• How to cultivate calm

The post It’s Chinese Language Day! appeared first on Social Legacy.

THIS IS THE YEAR FOR BRAVERY, LEADERSHIP AND GROWTH.

And people born in a year of the Tiger are thought to be competitive, courageous, confident, unpredictable, and willful. Here’s an interesting tidbit – if you’re a Tiger, this is thought to be a year of adversity and turmoil for you. Yep, while one might think that it’s lucky to land on your year… the Chinese believe Tigers need to be cautious in 2022.

I don’t know enough to explain this thoroughly, but the Tigers I know are doing everything from visiting temples to wearing protective talismans. Oh, by the way, they’re not alone; the second-most at risk animal is the Monkey. This is believed because the monkey sits at the opposite end of the zodiac’s wheel.

Even if this is a riskier year for you (and you believe all this), we’re still ready to throw down for the next 15 days! Last night was New Year’s Eve, so the skies lit up with fireworks, while our family played games around the fire and enjoyed 年糕 and 饺子 – traditional new year’s rice cakes and dumplings. But looking ahead, Feb 15 is really the highlight of the holiday: as it’s the last day of our CNY celebration: the Lantern Festival.

LANTERN FESTIVAL

The Lantern Festival or 元宵节 (yuan xiao jie) marks the first full moon of the new lunar year and the end of CNY.

On the evening of Feb 15, streets will be decorated with colorful lanterns, and people will eat sweet rice balls called tangyuan (to demonstrate appreciation of the moon). Dragon and lion dances will color the streets, and thankfully, this should be our last night of fireworks. One particularly beautiful experience is the lighting and release of lanterns as a community.

What a colorful, beautiful holiday!

Photo creds: red lanterns from Yorkshire Post, lantern release from globusjourneys.com

The post Happy Year of the Tiger! appeared first on Social Legacy.

In English, the idea of “down to earth” refers to being sensible… reasonable.. grounded. In fact, it’s all quite focused on the solid stuff beneath our feet.

Meanwhile, the Chinese translation of the same concept is, “connected to the breath of earth”.  The first character, 接 (jiē), means “to connect”. The second character is “earth”, and the third is “breath or air”. 

Maybe this is just semantics and I’m getting caught up in the poetry. But I kind of love this idea that being practical and level-headed isn’t just about staying close to the ground. It’s about channeling the pulse of a living organism. It’s about being sensitive to, and plugging into a larger whole.

After all, who wouldn’t be better off, connecting to the breath of earth?

#workplacechinese Photo credit

The post Connected to the breath of earth appeared first on Social Legacy.

But the highlight of the night might have been Yu Sheng (鱼生) or the “Prosperity Toss.” A dish made with lots of finely chopped vegetables sat atop slices of raw salmon and noodles, every ingredient represents a new year’s wish: the salmon brings plentitude (鱼 means fish, but also sounds like the Chinese word for abundance, 余), carrots represent good luck, white radish symbolizes success in business, etc. Each comes from a play on the Chinese characters… a language lesson in and of itself.

Once the ingredients are beautifully assembled on a platter, we toss (or lo hei) the dish while shouting auspicious wishes for the new year. The higher you toss the salad, the better the year ahead.

What a fun evening!

Now, even if some of us can’t be together, how might we serve as family to one another? What traditions from home might we share with one another?

#workplacechinese #chinesenewyear

The post A wonderful Chinese New Year tradition! appeared first on Social Legacy.

Looking at each individual word can reveal insight into what it means to rest:

• 休 or xiū translate to “stop for a period of time”, and
• 息 (xi) means “to take a breath”. 

Everyone rests in their own way. Some pick up the PS console while others slouch in a favorite spot to scroll through social media. But what if the Chinese are on to something? What if resting requires us to stop for a period of time? I mean, stop… everything?

When’s the last time you really stopped for a period of time and took a breath? As someone who has been going nonstop for a few months, I realized I needed to 休息. Resting isn’t working from home. It isn’t catching up on household chores. Rather, it’s about investing in self and prioritizing wellness.

So this week, give yourself permission. Stop everything and take a breath.

The post The Chinese word for “rest”. appeared first on Social Legacy.

Note: this has nothing to do with COVID. In fact, every time we’ve come to work in China, we’ve undergone the same routine. But this time, I thought it might be interesting to share the experience with those who’ve never worked here before.

First, we arrived at the somewhat intimidating compound.

We signed in and had our temperatures checked.

With written temperature confirmations in hand, we were directed to wait in a lobby. It was completely empty and eerily quiet. We sat with bated breath as we wondered what might happen next.

Soon, a lady in a small corner room emerged to take our photos – one for each page of the medical records we would populate over the next couple of hours.

We paid for our photos (50RMB or ~$6 for us both), then went to the next building to pay for photocopies of various passport pages (2RMB or $0.25ea). Then, we headed to a third building where official-looking nurses reviewed our paperwork. Once they found everything in order, we were directed to the registrar, so we could pay for the day’s tests.

We were finally ready for the medical check.

Next, we were directed to locker rooms, where we stripped and donned (extremely large) robes. Quietly, we queued amongst strangers to step onto an automated scale that declared our height and weight with all the vigor and volume of a circus ringmaster.

Stepping out of the locker room after said humbling experience, we were directed to the exam area. The bright, yellow brick road made the journey a relatively straightforward one.

Each room awaited us with a different health check, sort of like a reverse trick-or-treat situation. Only there were no treats.

A number of quiet, efficient professionals did everything from check our eyesight to strap electrodes all over our body for an EKG.

For a brief second, I was struck with a dizzying foreboding during my X-ray, when metal shields quietly and menacingly slid up to cover all the room’s windows. But just moments later, my X-ray paper was stamped and I hurried off to the next station.

Near the end of our tour, I particularly appreciated it when our ultrasound station prepared us for the next room, which was the phlebotomist (two vials). Perhaps they supposed we needed light reading material while we wiped the goo off our bodies.

Summing it all up.

Overall, while the medical check provided quite a different experience than anything we’ve undergone in the U.S., we found everyone extremely professional and polite. The medical exam and the 14-day mandated COVID-related quarantine serve as two examples of how closely China regulates incoming residents to maintain public health and safety standards.

We now await the final paperwork, which we will submit for visa and permit approval.

PS I gained 2.5lbs in quarantine. The excruciatingly loud robot scale said so. But those of you in Northeast Asia already know that. I’m sure you heard him.

#workplacechinese

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