“KILLING THE CHICKEN TO SCARE THE MONKEY” IS A VERY OLD Chinese proverb, which roughly translates as doing a small thing can have larger consequence down the line.
Chinese proverbs get even more confusing than that, but understanding them is important if you want to do business here. Just as it is important to understand other nuances of speech, which translate more directly.
“Yes, I understand” or “Yes, we will do” usually don’t mean what you might think they mean. They could just mean that, on some small level, there is a tiny bit of agreement. More often than not, phrases like this are used to appease, or to ensure there is no loss of face – the imperative in just about any conversation.
The difference between actual agreement and the words you’d think indicate agreement is slight, and you need to pick up the smallest clues and make a calculated guess. Even then, the clues are different between cities and regions, as I have learnt in moving from Shanghai to Beijing. In Shanghai, business can move quickly, at breakneck speed even, if the numbers make sense. In Beijing, everything is dependent on what a vast number of “contacts” in government think will work; and, even if they all agree, the process takes time. That might be an over generalisation, but it is a good rule to work by.
Sometimes all of this can make for funny situations, especially if you find yourself entangled with representatives of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, as recently happened to me. It was funny, but also offered an opportunity to engage in some armchair psychoanalysis. The group leader was from Beijing, the person responsible for marketing and sales from Guangzhou and the numbers guy from Shanghai (let’s call them B, G and S). Under discussion was the implementation of a new business development project, which would assist in diversification of their revenue streams. G was presenting and was exceptionally enthusiastic and driven; he was just about drooling at the prospect. S was positive but reserved, because he was looking at everything via the numbers. As for B … let’s just say that B showed no discernible emotion. Not because that is his nature, I fancy, but because he was too busy scrolling through a mental list of government “contacts” to whom everything would have to be presented before, in his mind at least, anything could happen.
The tricky thing is that nobody can offend anyone else, and nobody can lose face during the process. So a three-hour debate is peppered with “maybe” – there is never a direct “yes” or “no”. The real answers lie in the way the “maybes” are phrased and the context in which they are used.
Because B was the leader, “maybe” meant the new idea needed to be tested against a filtered list of senior contacts, which would mean further refinement before execution. G and S might not have agreed, but that is the way it was going to be.
If G were the leader, the idea would have been half way to implementation, even if S had reservations about finances. S would have to find a different model to make the numbers work, and B would be worried about objections from his contacts – but would not directly say so.
This is a mild example.
Sure, anywhere else in the world you’d expect the marketer to push ahead while the financial type took a cautious approach and the government liaison fretted about the impact. Here, however, all this drama can have a substantial impact on the end product. Don’t let Western prejudice set you thinking about experienced or inexperienced management. We aren’t talking about hamstrung procedure here, but rather about finding the middle ground in the most harmonious way, stepping on as few toes as possible along the way.
Once you understand that, and manage to tell a “yes-maybe” from a “no-maybe” you are on your way to figuring out how things work in China. But, believe me, it is a constant learning process, even for the locals.
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