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Have you noticed how much China is in the news? There is a good reason for that, well two good reasons.

1.  China has the largest population in the world.

As of November, 2010 its population was 1,339,724,852. That is 19.31% of the world’s population.

In contrast, the US population is 312,004,000 or 4.5% of the world population.  Numbers talk don’t they.

2. China’s economy will overtake the US in the near future – 2016

Now that is news worth paying attention to.

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of the US as measured by GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in 2016.  This means the total production of goods and services.

This does not mean that China will be the richest country in the world as measured by per capita income.

One must keep in mind that China is still in the process of industrializing while the US has been highly industrialized for more than a century.

How much to do you know about China? It might be time to start learning about this mega ship.

Related articles

• China’s long march to world’s economic top spot almost complete (rt.com)

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Think globally and act locally This is in play once again. The common element is in this evolving section is that people want a deal regardless where they live.

LivingSocial is a global phenomenon along with Groupon, its biggest competitor.

As I was driving home a few days ago, I learned from Marketplace, the American Public radio show, that LivingSocial has just opened up in South Korea, its 23^rd country! You would have to agree that that is AMAAAZING.

They did this by buying South Korean online daily deal provider TicketMonster. Daniel H. Sin is the 25-year-old founder in May 2010 and CEO of TicketMonster. It has 600 staffers and more importantly 970,000 visitors daily

With this deal #2 LivingSocial has made an international move to keep up with #1 Groupon. This new Korean position gives it a strong presence in the lucrative Asian market where it already poised in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines as a result of purchasing Ensogo in June and DealKeren.

LivingSocial is partially owned by Amazon, something I didn’t know. Amazon continues to amaze me with its evolution.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/livingsocial-apparently-adds-an-ad-unit-to-its-groupon-now-killer-2011-8#ixzz1U4YyVtOw

Image by mgrenner57 via Flickr

Maybe you have had the following thoughts recently like I have.

“The world is upside down.”

“What a crazy world we live in.”

“The world is mad.”

Two events have me shaking my head yet again:

-  The bombing, shootings and killings by a right wing purist in Norway to launch a revolution

-   The inability of the US Congress to pass a bill raising the debt ceiling needed in order to avoid a default

Have we become so selfish, self-righteous and preoccupied with ourselves that we no longer factor in the needs and beliefs of others?  Has it come to “my way of the highway?”

In Norway Anders Behring Breivik pleaded not guilty to acts of terrorism in the killing of 76 Norwegians at last count. He told the court that he committed the deadly massacre as part of a mission to save Europe from a “Muslim takeover.”

Breivik is not a Muslim fundamentalist out to destroy the free world.

He is a Norwegian citizen. He is an extremist and a rightist. I am sure many thought that all this destruction and killing was the work of a Muslim before the individual was caught. Breivik doesn’t fit the usual pattern of a destroyer.

In the US, Congress has apparently forgotten that it is here is govern the country. Many of the newly elected members, primarily from the Tea Party, do not appear to know that getting elected to office is one political game. The other political game is to govern once they are in office. This means working within the democratic – small letter “d” – system of government. That system does not work if there is no compromise.

Have adults become like children stomping their feet and screaming when they don’t get what they want without any regard for the opinion of others?

Why can’t we work it out? Is the word “tolerance” an out-of-date concept to many? Is “dysfunctional” the new opus operandi?

Related articles

• Norway terror suspect’s manifesto yields insights (sfgate.com)

Image by CroDigTap via Flickr

Spring has arrived in Washington, DC where I live. The weather cooperated by giving us a string of wonderfully warm and sunny days. We had a cold but not a snowy winter this year. The warmer than usual weather jump- started the blossoms. It caught the magnolias and the forsythia by surprise not to mention the daffodils. They usually bloom first and are the harbingers of spring. This year with the unusually warm spell of weather other flowering trees competed for our attention.

For me spring represents a new beginning, a fresh start. It is renewal at its loveliest in this part of the world at this time of the year. Washington, DC is a blaze of color for about 3 weeks. Everything seems to be blooming at the same time. It is all happens so quickly. It is a real feast for the eyes. One minute the trees are void of leaves and the next minute they are ablaze in color and greenery. Yes, it all seems to happen that quickly.

Insights:

I needed to remind myself that spring is not spring all over the world. The southern hemisphere is moving into autumn. Some parts of the world don’t even have spring. Close to the equator there are no seasons like countries in the temperate climate zone experience. Other countries are moving into the rainy season after the harsh heat of spring.

In China spring brings warmer temperatures and sandstorms. Overgrazing, deforestation, urban sprawl and a severe drought are causing the country’s deserts to expand.  In the last 50 years China has experienced a six-fold increase in the number of sandstorms according to the Chinese Academy of Science. At times this sand has even reached the Western part of the US.

I have been in one of these sandstorms. It is a miserable natural phenomenon to experience. Sand gets into EVERYTHING. There is no way to prevent this. Think about how fine sand is and you will quickly understand why that is so. I have ridden a bicycle in a blinding sandstorm in Beijing because I had no other choice. Even if you cover your face the stinging tiny pellets of sand penetrate everywhere on your person. Combining sand and wind makes for an hellish bike ride!

Global Workplace Insight

The customers and the organizations you are dealing with may not be on the spring high that you may be experiencing.

Keep that in mind when you connect with them. If your client is in Beijing, ask about the sandstorms. They may be impacting their employees. They may not be getting done what you needed because of the sandstorm. If your client is in Bangkok, ask about the monsoon rains. Find out if there is flooding.

In the globalized world we operate in, we need to be more aware. We have to stop looking at things from where we are standing. This can be challenging for Americans who are not used to factoring in this part of a business relationship. Much of the world is much more relationship oriented that we are here in the US.

Related articles

• China faces up to ‘terrible’ state of its ecosystems (scientificamerican.com)
• China faces up to ‘terrible’ state of its ecosystems (nature.com)

Image by Christopher Chan via Flickr

Much of the world has just celebrated the year of the Rabbit. This is known as Chinese New Year, the most important holiday for the Chinese. Everyone in China gets a one-week vacation. Workers go back to their home villages to celebrate with their families. The wealthy travel abroad. Chinese New Year lasts for 15 days ending with the Lantern Festival.

The Rabbit is the fourth animal in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac that consists of twelve animal signs. According to Chinese tradition, the Rabbit brings a year in which you can catch your breath and calm your nerves. I guess Egyptians haven’t heard about these calming qualities!

On the eve of Chinese New Year, dinner is a feast. Food will include pigs, ducks, chicken and sweet delicacies. Dumplings ( known in the US as Potstickers) are popular because they look like silver ingots. Legend has it that the more dumplings you eat during the New Year celebration, the more money you can make in the New Year. The family will end the night with firecrackers. Evil spirits are driven away by loud noise, so Chinese New Year is a very loud celebration.

The next day children will greet their parents by wishing them a healthy and happy new year and receive money in red paper envelopes (hóng b!o).

I have been in S.E. Asia during Chinese New Year. It is not fun because most shops and restaurants are closed down for at least 3 days since most entrepreneurs tend to be Chinese even in a country like Thailand. That was a big surprise to me the first time I experienced this.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

BEST NOT TO GO TO S.E. ASIA DURING CHINESE NEW NEW YEAR

DUE TO CLOSINGS AND CROWDS AT AIRPORTS AND RESORTS.

Chinese New Year is celebrated in countries and territories with significant Chinese populations, such China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and in Chinatowns throughout the world. Here in Washington, DC, there is alway a parade in Chinatown ending with the well-known Dragon Dance, one of my favorites.

You may not be a follower of Chinese New Year, but many people in the world were starting with China that has 19.5% (1,342,250,000 people) of the world’s population. For my readers in the US, your population is 4.53% (310,793,860) of the world’s population!
So,

Xin Nian Kuai Le 新 年 快 乐

January has been a packed month of gloomy stats. People are losing jobs and the numbers are big.

1. Starbucks, your friendly coffee shop, will be closing 300 stores and cutting 7,000 workers from their payroll
2. Sprint Nextel plans to eliminate 8,000 positions by March 31
3. Caterpillar said it would cut 20,000 jobs, or about 18% of its work force to reflect the lower demand for its equipment
4. Home Depot plans to close its Expo home-design business and cut 7,000 jobs, or 2% of its work force.
5. Eastman Kodak plans to cut between 3,500 and 4,500 jobs, or 14% to 18% of its work force this year.
6. Japanese electronics giant NEC Corp. says it plans to slash at least 20,000 jobs worldwide.
7. Companies are losing money just like we are losing money in our portfolios

* American Express reported a decline net income of 79% from a year ago.
* General Electric‘s fourth quarter net income fell 44% to $3.72 billion.
* Ford Motor Co. posted a 4th quarter net loss of $5.88 billion due to a global decline in vehicle sales.
* Japan’s Nomura posted a $3.8 billion loss.
* Macy’s will cut 7,000 jobs, or 4% of its work force.

And finally……

The US GDP dropped 3.8% because Americans are spending less.

AND…..

The US unemployment rate is at 7.2 percent, a sixteen year high.

On the flip side of all this negativity is the fact that Exxon still reported an annual profit of $45.2 billion, breaking its own record for full-year earnings by a U.S. company of $40.6 billion in 2007. (WSJ) and Amazon.com, your favorite online bookstore, posted a 9% profit rise.

There is your monthly update. The impact on the workplace cannot be overstated. People are stressed and fearful that they could be the next ones to lose their jobs. They are cutting back on their spending. They are attempting to save which for many is a new experience.

What are YOU doing to upgrade your skills and marketability in these uncertain times? Do you have a strategy to manage and navigate in these “interesting” and “challenging” times if your job situation changes?

You need to know what your strengths are and work on improving your weaknesses. The first quarter is a good time to lay out a game plan for your future success.

Yes, there is a lot of negativity, BUT there are also a lot of opportunities if you are smart about it and operate with a positive mindset.

Related articles

• The Rise and Fall of the Labor Force (theatlantic.com)

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I just finished reading Paul B. Carroll’s review of “The Snowball ” by Alice Schroeder in the Wall Street Journal (10/15/08). The headline reads Why Panic Passes Him By ”. The “him” is Warren Buffet, the well-known investor.

The reviewer points out that while Mr Buffet’s methods can’t be duplicated (“genius is genius after all”), there are some useful core Buffet imperatives.

1. Take a close look at an investment’s intrinsic value brutally calculating the risks involved as well as calculating a margin of safety
2. Learn from failures
3. Turn a situation upside down. Look at it backwards. What is in it for the other person?
4. What happens if all your plans go wrong? Where don’t you want to go and how do you get there?
5. Make a list of how to fail instead of ONLY looking for success

How are you feeling these days with the economic situation? How is all this affecting the people in your workplace? I am sure they are nervous like everyone else is on the planet because this financial crisis has us in uncharted waters.

I live in DC. The annual meeting of the IMF/World Bank has just concluded. Finance ministers from all over the world were here trying to resolve the global financial crisis. Doing this is not easy because the world has never been connected in human history like it is today.

Business nowadays is conducted across national boundaries. Our financial systems are globalized just like our workplace. There is no turning back.

Back to Warren Buffet’s CORE IMPERATIVES . They resonated with me. They could be applied to the workplace as well as to financial investments. I find them very relevant to today unsettled financial environment that impacts all companies and their employees.

1. Regard your newly hired talent as an investment. Are you leveraging the intrinsic value of that talent?

2. In leading your organization and managing your valuable “human” resources, have you learned from your failures – failures like losing your prized new talent to a competitor, not valuing the richness that your global workplace gives you in terms of new ways of looking at situations, not having teams that work well together because of cultural and personality clashes.

3. Do you turn a situation upside down to see where your leading and managing went wrong? Why did the great talent leave you workplace? Why is there a communication breakdown in your teams?

4. Are you playing “worse case” scenarios with those valuable “human” resources so that you can avoid breakdowns in communication, unnecessary communication conflicts, loss of top talent.

5. I am sure no one makes a list of “how to fail”! I think this is the most brilliant Buffet core imperative to apply to “human” resource management and successful communication in the workplace.

The Wall Street Journal headline was “Why Panic Passed Him By ”.

Let your headline read

“TODAY’S PANIC PASSES ME BY” …..HOW?…. by applying Warren Buffet Core Imperatives to your global workplace.

What are your thoughts on applying these Core Imperatives to the workplace?

Related articles

• Warren Buffet’s principles for a sound business (alexblom.com)

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Well the big show is over in Beijing. Being a “China” person I was fascinated by it all.

My first encounter with China was from a vantage point in the New Territories of Hong Kong. In those days you could only look at China in the distance over a duck farm. I was told, “there is China” …all I could see were foothills. I remember feeling so frustrated. I told myself at that moment that I would get to China one day.

I made that pledge many years ago and am happy to report I have been to China 12 times both living and working there, as well as traveling all over the country by train. I experienced the sleeping giant while it was still asleep for the first time in 1979. That was a very special moment in time.

BUT those times have changed and the sleeping giant is no longer sleeping in case you hadn’t notice. All hosting nations to the Olympics are like coming out parties. This coming out party was unlike any the world has ever seen, or for that matter will ever see again. China was out to prove to the world that it was back BIG TIME. It was a major investment in its future.

One needs to view the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies as well as the frantic drive for gold metals from the Chinese perspective, not our perspective. They were out to prove something to the world.

1. Its size – 1.3 million people which is 1/5^th of the world’s population
2. Its organizational skills – ability to pull off such a major world event
3. Its technological skills
4. Its vast history which is very important to the Chinese giving them a great sense of pride

I think no one would disagree that the Chinese proved all four at these Olympics.

NOW FOR THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN……. All this was achieved at great cost – $40 billion – in a country where there are issues like poverty, environmental pollution, unequal income distribution and an underdeveloped infrastructure to be addressed. Of course, a totalitarian government can decide to do what it wants. It can redirect its ample financial and human resources to the Olympics. No doubt there has been a tremendous social cost to staging such an event that has impacted the lives of many Chinese in a negative way.

It takes time to turn a big battle ship. We are not talking about redirecting a sailboat. The changes in China have been tremendous since 1978. The Chinese people are so much better off than they were when I started going to China in 1979.

When I was living and working there in the early 1980’s, I went around wearing the same nondescript clothes as all the Chinese. To do otherwise would have been folly and drawn the attention of the political police!! Nowadays it is wonderful to see the range of choice in clothes and the high style that one sees everywhere. Never forget that the luxuries started in China – silk and porcelain for starters.

The Olympics reminds us and confirms the continuous productive relationship between East and West and the ongoing exchange of technology and goods. The exchange started with China – the compass, gunpowder, printing, and luxury goods like silk, jade and porcelain. Then, when the West industrialized, the exchange was reversed provided technology like the car, space age advancements, and computers to China. Now it may be the turn of China to continue this exchange in the other direction. This is yet to be seen ……stay tuned. We do live in exciting times!

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The bottom line for global workplace success is well stated by Marcel Proust (1871-1922), French novelist and essayist.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscape,

but in having new eyes.”

This is a good philosophical umbrella to keep in mind when you are dealing with all the factors needed to make sure yours is a high-performing global workplace.

P.S. I have this quote on the back of my business card.

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In downtown Washington, DC, USA the atmosphere is unusual. Many buildings are gutted or in the process of being gutted. Turns out it is cheaper to do this than to renovate.

These buildings are on the average 50 years old.They are no longer useful, appealing, and functional into today’s global and technology driven world. The net result is a more attractive building that has all the bells and whistles needed to be efficient and competitive.

What about your workplace? Are you operating in outdated ways? Are you avoiding the inevitable by just tweaking this and that….and yet still feeling that all it is producing is inadequate results. If this is the case, you need to face up to your situation. You are being slowed down! High potentials don’t want to work in an outdated environment. Your company image does not look “with it”.

Today’s global workplace is not the “same old same old”. It is dynamic and up-to-date competing and performing with the best of its competitors worldwide.Think about it ….Maybe your workplace doesn’t need to be gutted like those Wash, DC buildings. But, chances are it needs, at a minimum, an upgrade just like your computer software.

What does this require you do? I welcome your ideas. More from me on the subject in upcoming posts