ship builders or leak fixers?

My company has grand plans. Thing is, as many many other MNC companies in Shanghai or China find themselves, achieving those grand plans just ain't easy.

It's like Beijing Olymics 2008. The government talks proudly of how it is ahead with major related projects. A friend of mine worries though that actually the change which is taking place, or needs to take place still, is huge and really quite scary.

We'll get to the goal as we said we would. But heck it really ain't gonna be easy along the way.

'Not easy' in the West is usually a metaphor for teams working late into the night, furiously working on the final details of a deal or a report. In my context, this part of 'not easy' ain't so difficult. The part I find difficult is the molasses - like walking in treacle!

In the West, working for a big multinational company means as well as the proud name and large customer base, it means efficiency that comes along with the scale. It means that as well as the daily politics of a large ambitious company, there is a level of enablement which helps you get your job done. I mean, efficient IT and telephone infrastructure. Meeting room space. Policies which remove obstacles. HR strategies in place that align and motivate staff.

In our quest for growth and success, we ever strive for more clients, more projects, so that we can hire more staff, train our existing staff, and grow. This is no mean task though. Winning isn't at all easy. A recent client recommender in a major multinational gave us unclear and inconsistent messages during the sales process. The result was that our offering did not align to the client's constantly changing preferences and requirements. In the West we are spoiled by clients who are more mature in their thinking, perhaps less nervous of clinching their next promotion, and more familiar with dealing with consultants. Forget winning, just competing is a hard enough job.

And because it's such a hard job, senior management can be distracted by sales and delivery client issues, and so neglect internal operations.

Stimulus for wanting to leave I'd say. On the flip side though, we have our new CEO, and his cadre of lieutenants. I'm in this Saturday to study some Chinese, and was impressed to find CEO Chen Bo and his lieutenants holding a conference meeting. I expect he's aligning them with how to execute his battleplan.

It's a promising sign. Kick-arse. No messing about.

I was never one to bail out early from a sinking ship. I do a great selfless loyal hero. This is by no means a sinking ship though - it's an overweight rubber dingy with aspirations to become a major battleship. The question is do I do a great patient shipbuilder? And how much of our effort is shipbuilding, as opposed to leak-fixing?