Tag: Forbes

The 11th law

Forbes ran a piece on the 10 laws for our century i.e. Metcalfe, Moore etc…

Encompassed above should be the Golden Rule, the 11th law.

Committed to communicate and collaborate. Contribution.

Do unto others.

Racing to the top, but also helping others to get there.

I experimented with the Asian model of running a sales team back at MCI.

My boss gave me freedom to try it. We shared and split regional sales.

Results: team cohesiveness despite the big difference among us.

Not to mention we all reaped huge rewards.

Today, speed trumps sharing, which often slows down progress.

In the six months I have been in Vietnam, I learned this lesson: consensus leadership.

Don’t upset the system. What you give up (Western notion of personal achievement) you gain back in cooperation and collaboration.

When you crossed the Pacific, you entered a bubble, a fish bowl, where everyone sees and rates you with new lenses and new games, three moves ahead.

Perhaps Drucker knew it well after all. Forget “achievement”. Just “contribution”.

Chip in.

Larger pot. Pour in more water. My best meal here was “chao suon” after 40 years.

Just rice pudding, with one or two small ribs. But when you got to those rare bony ribs, you savor them. Eat them slowly.

Large pot, few meat.

Lost weight. But feeling happy. Sharing the pot with many, on a rainy night. Sitting on baby stools, watching scooters zip by.

Welcome to the fish bowl.

Where the 11th law rules.

Got to have that down, or else, it’s all high-tech, without high-touch.

La vache qui rit

Forbes recently printed a McKinsey report about the coming consumer society in Vietnam. In other words, we will soon see La Vache qui rit in supermarkets along side real cows which are still allowed to roam free in the country side.

Vietnam 2040 will very much resemble US 1950, when the going was good: chicken in the pot and Chevy in the driveway.

Auto dealerships have sprung up at the outskirts, such as Dong Nai: Toyota, Honda and Ford.

Billboards build brands: Liberty Insurance, Prudential and VNPT.

Supermarts, hypermarts and convenient stores are found everywhere, selling of course, high margin, high carb items. KFC, Carl’s Jr and Lotteria employees are tasked to ask if you wanted fries and soda (combo no 1).  An underground mall has recently been opened in Hanoi to much fanfare.

In the country side, people however are happy with satellite TVs, internet hook up and mobile phones. Every house is an enterprise, either bed and breakfast, or coffee shops.

There is a price to pay by giving up traditional society for a consumer one. Vietnam will encounter those social problems Westerners already knew too well:

attachment to things will only lead to addiction, called shopaholism.  Shopaholic sometimes turns shoplifter as well.

It’s an unending cycle: the more things you owe, the less satisfaction you get out of them, hence, the more you think you need to reach old-level high. More results in less and not more happiness.

But advertisers will push this Pavlovian model to the brink.

Kids with glasses spend more screen time than face time with their parents or friends.

And they will eat La Vache Qui Rit, an inherited brand since before 1975,

and never know or see a real cow. It will be the age of vending machine: putting in a coin, and the coke comes out. No question asked. Period. Have you ever seen a real cow laughing? Or the sound of one hand clapping? Get real!

Maslow and Vietnam

Tocqueville saw in America a country full of contradictions.

He could say the same with Vietnam: people are moving up the Maslow scale, but some want to leap-frog security step i.e. basic needs to self-esteem need.

Nouveau riches switch companions like Hollywood celebs. Forbes or Swiss bank lists almost 200 Millionaires (USD).

Everything is bought in cash. The money machines are counting them non-stop (Zimbabwe-like inflation) .

Dizzying pace.

Traffic weave in and out, as if choreographed by an invisible and illogical conductor;  yet there have been fewer accidents than you might think.

Westerners are seen running a red light like everyone else.  We call that adjustment. When in Rome, do like a Roman.

People here are more aware of health issues than in years past.

My cholesterol result is available in a few hours.  If it’s good, then two eggs please.

I can now move to the next step in the Maslow scale: security.

Love and self-esteem can wait. They have been there since the beginning of time. A man’s glory reflects in the beauty of his woman, and vice versa.

I will leave those to the drama department. For self-actualization, we already got Bill Gates and Bill Clinton.  I have my level to attain to: staying here and surviving here. Traffic during peak hour draws out the best in us, gladiator-like. No wonder young men wear black. It’s their body signal to the world: “don’t mess with me”.

Meanwhile, young Americans are also wearing black, but for an entirely different reason: they are into vampires.  Twilight stuff. A stage of neither living nor dead. Here, it’s very clear to me that people want to get somewhere, preferably up, regardless how many bikes are in their way.

 

Free but not cheap

People have paid lips service to freedom, the defense of freedom, and the exercise of free speech.

But few put any thought on the price of freedom. Freedom somehow is perceived as being free

(i.e. you don’t have to pay anything, in economic terms). Actually, freedom costs a lot.

Many lives have been laid down in service of freedom, many limps cut off to defend it.

The opposite of freedom is not tyranny: it’s the illusion that one is free when actually not.

Have you ever been in a situation where you need to have a drink, or a puff of cigarette

(or worse). Those were occasions when you were not being free. Then, at the political level, you defend your personal position, and your philosophy/faith.

But at what price? And do you truly know yourself and your belief? Have you been tested or truly challenged?

Many psychological studies (Standford was one of them) proved that people were often “anchored” to some previous position (a low price for instance), just to later make impulse decision based on the anchor which had been previously planted prior to the actual experiment.

So, make sure at the core, you have  a value system (cleanliness, decency, trustworthiness etc…) and be flexible about them, to adapt to the situation (survival).

I have read Victor Frankl, and his famous line ” you can take away the body, but not the me which resides in this body”.

He made a distinction between personhood and our physical embodiment . If you had a chance to visit Dr Death’s exhibition (of the bodies)

you will realize as I did, that at the physiological level, we are no different from one another, especially after we are all dead. But while alive, we do exhibit

personalities and preferences (case in point, there are a set of  twin sisters who recently married a set of twin brothers in England). One of the brides said she had been waiting for this moment her whole life. And that they can tell each other apart (being twins and all, they have more exposure to IDing twins).

Or, take a look at America’s Got Talent. You see people are quite unique, although every one held dear to their dream of becoming a celebrity.

I skimmed the Forbes 100 celebrities. And I don’t remember seeing a Teacher in there.

I noticed that they were all movie stars, singers, and sport figures. No wonder it’s hard to tell ourselves, much less our kids that education

is noble and rewarding. We need role models. And society tells us one thing while the school tells us another.

Which way to go? We spend an average 4-6 hours a day in front of a screen of some kind . The internet feeds of the media,

and now the media feeds itself of the internet. Media appeals to our lowest common denominator to homogenize us.

Marketers used to have it easy (3 TV networks, and the 30-second spot).  Now each medium seeks to cater to a different demographic segments not unlike magazine print venue.

And the language of different generations, different point of views and different interests don’t seem to converge. No wonder the concept of freedom itself is in danger. I am not advocating “cultural literacy” type of definition of freedom.

I just want to reflect on how costly freedom has been and will always be : man facing oncoming tanks in Beijing, election opposition demonstrating  in Tehran, Buddhist monk pouring gasoline on himself in Saigon.

Those people are on my Forbes list of Freedom celebrities. I emulate and want to be them. After all, for whom the bell toll. Taking away one man’s freedom is taking away freedom itself. It might not happen to me, but someday, my kids and grand kids might not have a chance to see the movie I now enjoy (they might not chose to watch it, but at least, if they wanted to research it for a class project, they can) or the lyrics I hum along. Not to mention the comedian I watch. Man, have you seen CR’s Kill The messenger? I thought it was a spy comedy. Turned out it’s his stand-up tour. And Chris Rock ran his mouth. I was watching it at home, alone. But I was paranoid as if I were watching a porno.

I know someone can always find out that I watched the tape, because of my credit card charge. But who cares? If they had issues with some of the things CR said, they should go after the comedian himself, not his accidental audience. After all, I paid my dear price for freedom in the first place when I left Saigon years ago, not knowing where and if I would arrive safely. Freedom, yes, I know a thing or two about this abstract notion that others often mistook it as being free. Even if it’s free, it still is not cheap (I heard that admission tickets to Michael Jackson memorial is free, but event organizers still have to pay for the lights at Staple center on Tuesday).

Or the fireworks on New Year’s Eve.