I recently interviewed a candidate for a Program Manager position and asked him “what was the most important thing about being a Program Manager."  He responded with “Communication (a good start!).  Communicating to the project managers and team leaders reasonable expectations about career opportunities.”  Well this struck a resonant chord with me.  Young people coming out of college in China have very high expectations.  With 4-5 years of experience most of these young people expect to be in management not in development.  On the other hand our customers expect a significant percentage of their development teams to have 4-5 or more years of experience.  I long for the days when I worked for that System Integrator in the USA and being a career software engineer was common and a noble profession.  So as a result we focus a lot of energy on software engineers with more than 3 years of experience.  In general recruiting, training, compensation and benefits, retention, etc. consume a significantly larger effort than was my experience in the USA.

This past weekend I taught the first class of our project management course for non-PMPs.  Not surprisingly all 32 of such people turned up for this optional weekend course.  It probably helped that the General Manager (me) taught the class.  I pointed this out as an example of the symbolic frame in thinking about organizations, but I’m sure that achieving personal goals was the primary motivation. 

When it came to explaining the process groups and knowledge areas I shared my view that while they were all important we should not underestimate the importance of HR and Communications.  Prospective customers come to us assuming that our engineers are talented and well educated, but almost invariably the two evaluation criteria at the top of their list are HR and Communications.  I think Communications is more about language and culture but clearly they have the same concerns we do about HR.  So we have a number of important initiatives underway to address this issue.

The other big issue in my weekend class was organization structure.  We have implemented a very much project-oriented structure.  Maybe it’s the “Quanzi” I referred to earlier in my blog but I’m constantly faced with questions about who reports to whom.  Or maybe it’s a matter of understanding but not wanting to believe.

I recommend China CEO: Voices of Experience from 20 International Business Leaders, Juan Antonio Fernandez, Laurie Underwood.  Published by John Wiley & Sons, 2006.  In particular I relate to some advice about important traits for a manager in China.  Everyone has heard that guanxi is important but it is more about building relationships with those around you (internal, external – the stakeholders).  Another trait mentioned by the authors as being critical and I agree is being humble in your management approach (influencing and coaching as opposed to authoritarian). Also resonating with me is patience.  Realizing that “Rome was not built in a day” is important to remember here.