Thang Nguyen 555

Cultures on Collision Course

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With some short-term relief work in Asia/Africa and long stint in Telecom, Thang also earned a B.A. at Pennsylvania State University. M.A. in Communication at Wheaton Graduate School, M.A. in Cross-Cultural Communication at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Boston. In addition, he earned a CELTA – classes taken in Hanoi for cultural re-immersion.

Tag: Business

  • instant noodles, orange and sandwich

    38 years ago I ate those three items not in one day, not in one vessel, and not in one country. Instant noodles out in International Waters under firing rockets, oranges aboard a USS vessel and finally, a sandwich in Subic Bay, Philippines. After that hellish trip, plane foods, hotel foods, cafeteria foods all taste better.…

  • Mojo memory

    Like muscle memory, our mojo could come back if we know how to flex it. Self-reinvention. Press reset. Peak again. Brace for it. Noose’s head. Winning. It’s hard work and threatening to ride the wave once again. Many would rather take the path of least resistance. Play it safe. But the world is crying out for…

  • CWO – Chief Worshipping Officer

    On my first week as CEO at UVT – I met an issue none of the Business School in the US had equipped their students for: to bow or not to bow at the Fortune–God altar in the school lobby. It’s hard enough to know where the bathroom is – much less stumbling upon the…

  • Clear-head

    When your mind is cluttered with unfinished business, you are not clear-headed. In our attention-starved world, spam and stimuli exacerbate this problem. No wonder it’s hard to reach mutual understanding and agreement. Best way is to nail down small and incremental wins to build up critical milestones. We tend to agree with those we already liked.…

  • Underneath is Love

    Companies outsource Y2K tech work, then while at it, their software development. From manufacturing to marketing, R&D to customer care , jobs went overseas to cut costs. Then we tout culture-building, crowd-sourcing etc… The truth is, we did not care about our customers or corporate culture. Yet, it’s culture that reinforces brand. Weak corporate culture links to…

  • Vietnam’s outsourcing factory

    I have heard about TMA Solutions new building in Quang Trung Software Park, but I have never got a chance to stop by, until yesterday. 1,200-strong, TMA begins to look like an army of engineers (my friend and guide showed me a beehive behind the building, after we had toured their lobby where Vietnam‘s historical artifacts…

  • Street sweeping in Saigon

    I saw a funeral pouring out onto the sidewalk one day, and on the same  block, a wedding the day after. Meanwhile, the street sweeper just went about his business of sweeping, regardless. Even if they could use some industrial-grade sweepers, people prefer man to machine. This solves labor problems. Scavengers make their daily routes by offering…

  • OPP (other people’s problems)

    We live in a world full of acronyms e.g. PPO, OPM (Other People’s Money), SOP, CDO, COD etc.. In big companies, Customer Service reps just get through their day, throwing around acronyms to feel they are on the inside, without thinking about “touchpoints” (problems as opportunities to upsell). My cable acted up two days ago.  The…

  • Inching back to life

    When we face a critical juncture on the road, we need to be decisive. A liberal arts training doesn’t hurt either. Even when two people arrived at the same conclusion, liberal art thinkers insist that between A and B, a straight line might not be the best alternative. Just the shortest. As nature would agree, it favors…

  • If you could read me

    You would find that I am surprised by the number of employees Google and Apple employed only 75,000 combined (compared that with HP, GM or US Government‘s). You would find that I still remember “the jumpers” on 9/11, and that we lost good men and women on United Flight 93, as well as Peter Jennings of ABC…