Total Quality Management, Chinese Style

Part 5 of a weekly series entitled, The Bamboo Ceiling: Managing Chinese Employees Beyond Stereotype

by William R. Dodson

 

26 April 2002

A Chinese auditor at a Big 5 accountancy pointed out that Americans are always quick to blame others in business for difficulties they meet, whereas Chinese people always blame themselves first. She said that in business meetings she hears Americans say things like, “oh, the market went against me,” or “the client was impossible to work with,” or “the team was no good.” Beyond the criticisms of others there seems little attempt, she added, for Americans to reflect on the role they played in an action that had unexpected results. Typically, the initial Chinese response to negative results is silence, quickly followed by self-examination and then self-improvement.

 

Much of the Chinese orientation to look to the self as responsible for results that do not accord with what was originally expected has to do with historical precedent. For hundreds of years in China the only way a family could really assure financial and social security was for the younger generations to pass the difficult examinations for the government. The exams were meritocratic: even the poorest peasant with enough study could pass the rigorous tests and become a government official. The exams covered everything from art through poetry through science through the Confucian classics. Children started studying for the examinations from a very early age, and were pushed hard by every elder in their family to do their best.

 

Families with traditional Chinese values admonish their children to look to other children who outperform them in various activities: math or science or chess or piano playing. Parents say things like, “Oh look at Xiao Wei: he’s so good at math; why can’t you be that good? You’re too lazy, that’s why.” Consistently, the message to children in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and throughout the West if their parents were born and raised in any of these places is, “You have to do better than your peers; no one else is going to help you. You must do it yourself.”

 

The most important component of Chinese competition between individuals is to show excellence through mastery. Chinese believe that to talk about what they can do or to blame others for results that did not meet expectations merely throws a spotlight on one’s shortcomings. Instead, Chinese feel it’s much more effective and convincing if they improve the shortcomings in themselves that did not support their delivery; spend all the energy they would otherwise use to blame others to instead identify and then rectify their weaknesses.

 

Western managers who work with Chinese staff will indeed benefit from the Chinese approach to self-improvement. Though this learning does not mean Chinese staff are necessarily self-directing, they will appreciate efforts to help them see where they can improve themselves so they can do a better job for the organization or for their team. However, like anyone, Chinese can find constant criticism irksome and humiliating if it is not presented constructively. Western managers must also watch out for the symptoms of obsessive self-improvement on the part of Chinese, some of which include: a lack of communication of the true state of affairs of an issue, employee burnout, and staff de-motivation.

 

Chinese social conditioning would have Chinese not speaking about a problem because of an innate sense that they are the source of the problem, and/or that they alone must solve the problem. Of course, when any individual takes on too much responsibility, there is always the chance he or she will suffer a nervous breakdown or physical exhaustion. Another result of taking on unnecessary responsibility is a dramatic fall in motivation once the individual realizes they cannot solve the problem alone. The wise Western manager takes these cultural imperatives into account when developing relationships with their Chinese staff that will benefit the organization, the manager, and certainly not least, the employee herself.

 

William R. Dodson is Managing Director of Silk Road Advisors, L.L.C., a management consultancy that develops and positions products and people for success in international markets. He is the contributing editor on international business to the American Management Association’s (AMA) MWorld Journal of Management, and writes the weekly column “The Cultured Business”, found at www.silkrc.com. He is Managing Editor of The China Alert, a publication of The United States-China Chamber of Commerce. He can be reached at sradvisors@gmail.com or +1 (847)722-7817.

 

Read other articles in this series at: The Cultured Business.