This is the promised follow-up to my post of January 27.

Between January 27 and today (over two weeks), 29 students responded as requested and required. Thank you. Four students made the choice to not check in and/or respond; they get a zero for this assignment (over two weeks and no response?).

I found it impossible to pick a “winner” from the four to six responses I felt were on track with what I was looking for. So as an alternative to my promise to pick a winner and award a Starbucks coffee drink, I will instead sing for you, one (and only one) American song, of my choice, at a Kareoke club in China. I am sure you will enjoy listening to me make a fool of myself.

Here is what the China CEOs suggest they look for in a successful manager and decision maker in China (see the summary at page 27 in the book):

PROFESSIONAL QUALITIES:

1. Technical and Corporate Expertise: Select people with a rock-solid professional background and an excellent knoweldge of the company. Send your best personnel to China.

[Professor Carr Note: This suggests that if you don't like stats, accounting, finance, marketing, econ, etc. sorry, but you will need those skills and can't dodge them forever to first be able to excel at the company HQ in Des Moines, Iowa and prove yourself. It also suggests that you need to prove yourself in perhaps a less important and less exciting foreign local before you get the plum China assignment (see below for more on this point). Their collective CEO response also, in my view, also calls into question a number of international business undergraduate programs across the US (not all) that attract students with the misleading marketing message of "come get an undergrad degree with us in international business and your next stop will be Florence or Tokyo" -- according to these CEOs, much more development needs to take place before one heads overseas.]

2. International Expertise: A posting in China becomes vastly more manageable after an assignment either in an Asian location or another developing market, or both.

PERSONAL GLOBAL QUALITIES:

3. Multicultural Mindset: When selecting an executive for an overseas posting, look for someone with an adventurous spirit, a sense of humor, and an open mind.

4. Committment to Learn: Learn from those around you. Listen to your employees, JV partners, clients, and customers.

PERSONAL CHINA-SPECIFIC QUALITIES:

5. Humility: Be humble and avoid using an authoritarian style. Influencing and coaching is the way to get the best out of your Chinese employees.

6. Strength: Be unyielding in defending core corporate values and culture.

[Professor Carr Note: I.e., No paying for favorable media coverage/publicity, EVER, even when your competition is doing it; no paying bribes, EVER, etc. If you think it's easy to follow this precept and are convinced, "I would never be dumb enough to do that", well, I would certainly hope so -- but you need to check out the following great China Law Blog posts here, here and here on these topics to get a feel for how easy it is to succomb to this dark game and side of business.]

7. Patience: Be patient; use a step-by-step approach in China, not a Big Bang approach.

8. Speed: Be flexible and quick. Stay well informed; the business enviroment in China is in a constant and rapid flux, probably much more so than in other markets.

9. Guanxi-building: Build your guanxi not only internaly (with subordinates, peers and superiors) but also externally with clients, suppliers and government officials). A strong guanxi network is a fundamental element of your success in China.

Professor Carr Note: Granted, several of the above items are so broadly stated as to not be terribly helpful at first glance (or they may be “common sense” to some); but, to be fair to the book and its authors, if you go to this chapter and read the entire chapter the authors do give some very, very good examples of each item that make them really come to life.]

Your thoughts? What’s not on the above list that you would think would or should be there?

Do you fit the above criteria? If not, which ones do you need to start working on, now, to improve, and what is your strategy to get you there for if/when that day comes where you might want to pursue an opportunity like this?

[Feb. 14 update: Dan Harris at the CLB just did a nice post that builds off of this post and adds some good meat to it. Click here to check it out!]