A Little Red Book

Aren't you supposed to place a nice novel beside your bed? Something nice to read before you drift off into your own dream world? I think a nice fantasy could encourage better sleep and more interesting dreams.

Business Leadership in China, this is my current bedside book. It's written by a successful businessman, Frank T. Gallo, who moved to China late in his career. Very late in his career: he was considering retirement when given the chance to live and work in China. So he continued his career and faced an array of new challenges in the new culture.

He had previously worked and lived in Japan, so he had prior experience learning about foreign cultures. But he had only first moved to China in 2004 and this book was published in 2008. I don't know how long it took him to get this book written and published, when you consider that, he may have only worked in China for a very short time before starting work on the book. There's no way you can consider him an expert on China, or even the specified regions in China, after living there for such a short time. But he does compensate for this by first having over 30 years of business and management experience to bring to the table and then include a lot of outside sources. It's obvious that he consulted many Chinese-business professionals while writing this book.

Gallo is a business expert and is knowledgeable about Chinese business. He's also interviewed a lot of other experts and is quoting them throughout the book. It's full of examples and is really a fun read if you're into cross cultural business or even just psychology. I've learned some interesting things.

Leadership is really about psychology, after all. Why do leadership strategies that work well in the US fail in China? He describes exactly this and suggests workarounds. What does it come down to, basically human transduction - how and why different cultures interpret things differently.

I recommend the book for those interested in understanding Chinese culture and psychology, especially if you have an interest in taking on a leadership role on the continent. But it's nothing profound. I've also never lived in China - no need to get into politics, but from a business perspective Taiwan is a different country and has a very different business culture. This is true regardless of your political standing.