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Monthly Archive for June, 2006

Consistency build Company Culture

Published on 28 June, 2006 in Day to Day and Entrepreneur. 0 Comments

Popular media often portray company culture as the one-size-fit-all creator of competitive edge, the force behind huge success of many companies.

Job seekers nowaday even look for job based on whether they like the company’s culture. Companies play along by tooting their culture.

Consultants charge a hand and a leg to help companies define, align and execute their corporate culture strategy.What exactly is company culture?

Despite going through business school, working in company, I never fully grasp the slippery concept. But now I’m slowly finding out. Not by some Harvard framework or methology but by consistent hard work in the trench.

When I least expect it, the light illuminates and then I get the “aha”. Linking what was done unconsciously to what was commonly termed culture. Here’s my take on company culture.

For a small startup, company culture is nothing but what you do consistently. When you do something consistently often, the idea gets rubbed off on every member of the company. Soon it becomes the culture. Simple.

I often stressed initiative to my staff. Now, how do you instill a sense of initiative? Especially in a societal culture like China that do not encourage initiative. (My own subjective view but I believe many would agree.)

Simply by repeating it over and over and over and … over again. After that, lead by example.

Over the years, I found myself to be a better and better leader. And I’m proud. If the boss take initiative himself and he barked down initiative at every opportunity. Soon everyone gets the idea.

How many company can claim to start their culture from the very beginning and not get some hotshot to define the culture when they are already few thousand employees strong.

I hope I can.

Am I successful?

Published on 20 June, 2006 in Entrepreneur and Startup. 1 Comment

I am reading blog too much. Got to stop, this is the last one.

It is always nice finding fellow entrepreneur talking about their journey. More so when the person is your countryman, one in which you can relate so much of what was written.

Upon reading Am I successful I smiled. All too familiar. Depleted bank account, CPF, housing loan, family. Not to mention the familar vocabuary that is distinctively Singapore.
Am I successful?

Yes mentally. No financially.

My business is shakely at best. Sure business is going on, contracts are paying the bills. What next? I’m still struggling with what the business should do, is doing and will be doing.

But I have past the point of no return, journey on I must.

You don’t want to tell customer to get lost

Published on 20 June, 2006 in Entrepreneur and Online. 1 Comment

Trust me.

I was reading Cobalt Paladin’s Corporate Junk. It is on blogspot which is blocked in China and I couldn’t reply. (Actually I didn’t want to sign in over the proxy.) So I’m posting a reply here.

The incident is typical, all in the day job as an entrepreneur. What I want to comment on is on the comments. I bet none of them are running their own business.

Why? Because if they are, they wouldn’t be telling their customer to get lost.

True, customer can be difficult, even impossible. But the truth is customer pays the bill.

If the you are waiting for that customer’s cheque to pay your upcoming office rental, you better be thinking creatively to get the customer to buy. At least he is committed to buy something.

What about not wasting time on bad customer? I believe in that too. But’s that for another post.

Revenue Lost from Piracy Overrated?

Published on 19 June, 2006 in Business Models and China. 1 Comment

Arn’t you tired of such headlines already?

China piracy costs film industry $2.7 bln in 2005

You could easily change “film” to “software” or anything that the Chinese copies - furniture, apparel, shoes, bags…

Without revealing how the figures are arrived at, one can only read such report as propaganda at best.

Sure, I brought bootleg videos along the road. Did the original company lost revenue? Not in my case. I never would buy the real thing anyway. What then is the number of people who would have buy the real thing but ended up buying the pirated version? Between 0 and $2.7b?

To state plainly, I am not for piracy. On the other hand, I’m not for lamenting priacy lost as well.

It has been presented and argued that the solution is on another dimension, a paradigm shift, a different business model.

The same thing with software.

But then, China is not ready yet. It will not for the next 5 years at least.

Choices: Continue lamenting or craveout a piece of the future pie?

Focus on recuitment and people

Published on 16 June, 2006 in China, Entrepreneur and Startup. 0 Comments

Browsing through ChinaTechNews’s story on Sam Flemming, this particular comment caught my attention.

For anybody else looking to open a technology-related business in China, what sort of advice would you have for them?
Focus on recruitment and people. There is significant competition for a limited pool of experienced, educated professionals.

Well, Sam hit it squarely on the head. Despite the huge population, the number of talent is extremely limited. Couple that with rapid growth, influx of foreign capital and the people’s insatiable appetite to move up the social strata. What do you get?

A situation where companies are paying more and more and workers move around at next better opportunity.

What can a startup with neither money nor resource do?

Let me tell you. NOTHING.

It’s a constant struggle. The only choice seems to be running fast enough with whatever people you can get hold and then take them to the next level with you.

For more than a year I had been struggling with that. (Read this, this, this and this.)

Selling myself better

Published on 14 June, 2006 in Day to Day, Entrepreneur and Startup. 0 Comments

Another dinner, another thing to talk about.

Last night, a Malaysian friend invited me for dinner. He said he had another friend with him whom he like to introduce. We had steamboat (again!).

At the door he told me that this person might be a potential investor.

I was unprepared.

About a week before, I just spoke to him about an idea. Didn’t did I expect that he would bring an investor so soon. I wasn’t myself during the dinner and it was uneasy. It might have been better if he had not revealed to me at the door.

Long story short, after the dinner, he gave me a little debrief. He told me that 3 times he tried to create opportunity for me to present my idea but I did not even realise.

Man, I was caught totally unprepared and I really need to sell myself better.

A month’s worth of dinner

Published on 7 June, 2006 in China and Day to Day. 2 Comments

Last evening I met my former boss for dinner. His responsibility had increased tremendously since we last worked together. He is now taking care of technology for international sites outside of US. Naturally, China is one of the focal point.

We chatted the usual. From business to online ideas, friends and former colleagues, life here and back home.

At the end of dinner, he picked up the bill. And this was what blown me away.

We ate through a month’s pay worth of dinner! ï¿¥1200 That’s how much we had eaten. A month’s pay for me and some of those working for me. Imagine that.

I felt a little depressed. If only I’m still working… I shook it off.

By the way, if you are conversant with Chinese and English, he is looking for an MIS director to be based in Beijing. The company is a major online company. Drop me a note and I can make the intro.

The point of no return

Published on 2 June, 2006 in About and Entrepreneur. 0 Comments

Since catching up on this blog I just gave Millionaire in Training a visit. It had been a while and good to see that he is still maintaining the blog.

The post Point of No Return really strike a chord with me and I presume with many entrepreneurs.

I have similar fear and doubts. Sometime when I pick up a copy of job classified, I start scanning for jobs that I could fill. The irony of thing is, the longer you are away from a job the less desirable you become. That to me is another point of no return.

This point in time, I’m still getting a fraction of what I get at my last job. But reality bites and it does bite hard. Despite satisfaction, paying the bill still is top of my concerns.

When you start having employee, that’s another point of no return. As an employer, you now have people to take care of and to worry about. All those things you used to do as an employee starts coming back to you as an employer.

Visit to supplier in Fengxian

Published on 2 June, 2006 in China and Day to Day. 0 Comments

We (me and my business partner) went to visit a supplier in the outskirt of Fengxian district (奉贤区).

This supplier had been with us for a while and we have had a good working relationship. He just moved to a new factory and we wanted to give him a visit.

In typical Chinese fashion, he led us on a tour and then we adjourned to a restaurant for lunch.

I’m very please with the relationship built and hopeful of more good things in this partnership.

This is the first time I visit this part of Shanghai. Of course there are many places that I had not been. My mind is boggled also by what I see along the way.

Coming from a small country that is Singapore, I can only start to imagine the scale of China’s development. Shanghai is but a dot yet already bigger than Singapore.