Happy Chinese New Year: The Tiger

Gung Hay Fat Choy / Gong Xi Fa Cai

This weekend we enter the Chinese Year of the Tiger, year 4708 of the Chinese calendar and the third in the cycle of 12 years in the Chinese zodiac.

Today I want to wish all my friends, colleagues and clients throughout Asia and around the world a prosperous and healthy year ahead!


Goodbye to the Ox

Last year was the Year of the Ox, which was meant to bring prosperity through fortitude and hard work. It's usually a conservative year, one of traditions and values, of stability and growth where patience and diligence pay off.

Perhaps the first stirrings of economic recovery that we've seen at the tail end of the year have been a product of societies resetting their moral compass and looking to more conservative practices in the financial sector...?

Welcome to the Year of the Metal Tiger

Hot passion meets cold steel with the arrival of the year of the Metal Tiger. This combined sign signifies both the energy to begin activity and the determination to follow it through to the end.

Forget about last year’s slow plodding! Events set in motion now will pick up speed and continue until either the objective is attained...or the whole endeavour crashes and burns.

A character trait of high-spirited Metal Tigers is that they tend to jump to conclusions. To stay on the positive side of this energetic year, a useful corrective to this habit that we all exhibit on occasion is to ask lots of questions rather than making unfounded assumptions.

If you are in a leadership role this year, you may do well to remember the following:

In the past the best leader was the one with the best answers.
Today the best leader is the person who knows how to ask the best questions.

Tigers - powerful and proud...yet endangered

Even if you do not follow Chinese astrology, there is a crisis this year that is very real and that you can help to do something about.

The world's tiger population is under threat.

It is the WWF's goal to ensure wild tigers are no longer facing extinction by the next Year of the Tiger in 2022. You can help support their work to save tigers by making a donation.


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How to celebrate the Buddha's birthday

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
- President Nelson Mandela, in his inauguration speech (quoting Marianne Williamson)

Minor enlightenment - the view from the back deck

I've spent this weekend at my brother's place in Cambridge, Canada taking some time out of a hectic travel schedule. Today while we had a BBQ I sat on the back deck in the late spring sunshine and listened to the radio. I noticed that every song crooned about how happiness is found, lost, or lost then found again in the form of another person.

Songs with lyrics like I can see forever in your eyes and Everybody wants to know they're not alone and You're everything I need repeatedly made the point: we're all incomplete as we are and need someone else to "make us whole". In fact the only song that didn't offer solace and happiness in external sources pleaded Chuck me in the shallow water before I get too deep...

Now perhaps I'm insufficiently taking on board the warning offered by that last chorus, but I'd like to offer an interesting point of contrast.

Happy Birthday Buddha

This weekend in east Asia is the date when the Buddha's birthday is celebrated in 2009.

About 2400 years ago (give or take a few decades) Siddhattha Gotama was born and was destined to live the luxourious life accorded him as prince of his people.

Various accounts suggest that he had his fill of earthly pleasures and was certainly shielded from the harsh realities of the world by his protective father the king.

Perhaps he became tired of a life in which his every material was fulfilled, perhaps his pampered upbringing resulted in greater shock when he was finally confronted with the realities of illness, old age and death - whatever the combination of factors, the rest of his story is well known.

He escaped the palace, lived an ascetic life in his quest for Truth and, after long meditation under the Bodhi Tree, he achieved Enlightenment.

Am I suggesting this is the path for everyone to take and that Enlightenment should be your single and only goal? Not exactly. Let me share with you the insight I had while sitting on the deck today.

What if I told you that you were inadequate?

If I told you that you were incomplete, inadequate, and in need of propping up in order to function in life and be a whole person...well, you might justifiably have a variety of responses to offer me - and I bet none of them would be very pleasant!

Yet we are continually bombarded with these very messages - you are incomplete until you have the product or person that will help make you complete - not just in the lyrics of pop songs but throughout the media and marketing machines that surround us every waking hour.

What these messages represent is a superficial answer to a deep and fundamental truth about human beings, namely: we are all born whole and complete, then in the course of our early life development and interaction with the world we learn to devalue or disown those parts of ourselves that don't seem to "fit in" or fail to get us what we want.

Each of us is like a complete picture which then has a few puzzle pieces removed. It's important to remember, however, that those pieces don't go away forever; they're still within our reach. Sitting under his tree, the Buddha realized this fundamental Truth: we are all complete just as we are and have access to all the means we require to take care of ourselves.

Through the effective application of what Buddhists call the Middle Way, we can steer our lives along a path of moderation away from the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification. 

What that means is: rather than cloistering yourself up to gain spiritual awareness, you can still hold down a job and function in the world - though by paying some attention to certain fundamental questions, and by rejecting as false the empty lyrics and marketing messages preaching your inadequacy, you can find a path leading to greater personal satisfaction, happiness and achievement of what's important to you.

Turning the Middle Way into the everyday

Practically speaking, in my work I frequently help people in all kinds of fields to dissolve the crises and tensions that arise from this constantly-reinforced message that they are not OK as they are. I do this, I hasten to add, not by fostering dependency on me as yet another external "quick-fix" but by enabling them to locate those helpful energies and resources that already exist within them. In this way they can continue their own personal journey long after our work together has tapered off or ended entirely.

So think about how you will choose to celebrate the birthday of this extraordinary individual, the Buddha, not just this weekend but in the days and weeks to come as you continue your own life's journey. And remember: you already have within you everything it takes to be just as extraordinary, if you'll just let yourself be so.

With apologies to the pop music industry, I'd suggest that learning to dance to your own tune may change the course of your whole life for the better. It will help you to engage with others not in a needy and dependent "please complete me!" way but as a productive and independent person who's capable of entering and sustaining an equitable relationship for the long term. Worth thinking over, under a tree or by the BBQ on the back deck...
TM

Formula for success: good news and a global century

Over the past two weeks in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore I've spoken to locals about topics ranging from Asia's place in the world, expat life, starting and sustaining businesses and, inevitably, the global financial crisis. The result is an Asia-based comment I want to share, but first let me address this last item.

Where's the good news?

A recurring theme I heard is the people are fatigued by the gloom-and-doom media coverage of the GFC (yes, it's even got its own acronym now) with ceaseless bad news and warnings of worse yet to come.

It's a prime example of the media's primary business model and, coincidentally, an answer to the age-old question of why we don't see more good-news stories: the media broadcasts bad news to drive people into an alarmed limbic state - because fearful people crave more information to develop their survival strategies and thereby become regular consumers of more and more (bad) news. It's an endless cycle.

So I want to counter this and encourage you to do so as well.

For my part, I've taken to posting feel-good news snippets and stories via the twitter micro-blogging platform (you'll see some examples in the top left-hand side of my main blog page). If you're interested, tweet yourself to some free "feel-goods".

What can you do? Turn off the news and go talk to people (like I've been doing). My hunch is that you'll enjoy a much more nuanced, detailed and interactive picture of what's really happening "out there" and you'll have made a genuine human contact as well. We're social, tribal creatures - I suggest we can all benefit from getting informed of what's happening with real people and tone down our consumption of the media's abstract and incessant stream of global bad news.


In other Asian news...

With this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix race the F1 returns to Asia. How appropriate, really. During my travels I observed that the GFC-besotted world right now is a lot like an F1 race.

The ceaseless quest to go ever-faster has produced a multi-car pileup on the track. When this happens the yellow flag is shown, all cars must slow down and no passing is allowed - in other words, it's a holding pattern. Eventually, the carnage and debris are removed and the race resumes as the green flag is shown.

As I see it, when the global green flag flies again and the race resumes, the cars at the front of the pack will all be Asian. Following behind are the rest of the global contenders (some Europeans, Canada looking peppy with its conservative fiscal practices, and a host of others).

And what of America? Well, well with its shaken confidence, and its balance of trade and spending deficeits, it's a bit like a car running on low-grade fuel with borrowed tires. With President Obama now heading up the pit crew, it'll be interesting to see if the performance can be tweaked before the green flag is out again.

The Asian Century

A running debate has existed since the mid-80's about the ascendancy of Asia and whether the 21st will be the Asian Century. Whether viewed in economic or demographic terms, a shift is undoubtedly taking place.

The 19th century has been called the British Century, followed by the 20th, American Century...but it's not as though a changing of the guard happened in the year 1900. Rather, a complicated dance has taken place between these two empires and continues to do so (witness, for example, the pre-GFC ascendency of London to replace New York as the world financial capital). So it will be with Asia as this century unfolds.

That said, you could say that Asia's current advantage in the "global financial Formula One" stems from having done this sort of thing before: in 1997 there was the Asian financial crisis and in 2003 the SARS outbreak. Experience counts a lot in fostering resilience (the London bombings of 2005 were only the latest in a series of assaults on the British capital, and did not have the same deep psychological impact as did 9/11 on the US) and coping strategies.


What about a "Global Century"?

Taking a wider holistic view, there are many signs that humans are getting things pretty spectacularly (and unsustainably) wrong - not just financially but environmentally, interpersonally, and in our development as individuals.

Success in this global F1, I would argue, will require more than just pole position and ever-faster innovations to increase the speed of business-as-usual. Increasingly compelling global events show that we need to apply our energies to something different. I would argue that instead of an F1-style contest in which countries endlessly chase each other on a circular track that is actually a road to nowhere, a useful shift in focus would be to move beyond shifting regional hegemonies represented by the British/American/Asian Centuries and foster an integrated view - the Global Century.

In this way we would be much better placed to have integral and holistic global solutions to the ceaseless stream of global bad news that the media deliver for our consumption - which would put us all in a more cheerful frame of mind. A formula for success indeed.
TM

Happy Chinese New Year: The Ox

Gung Hay Fat Choy / Gong Xi Fa Cai

Today we enter the Chinese Year of the Ox and I wish all my friends, colleagues and clients a prosperous and healthy year ahead.

Last year was the Year of the Rat, the first in the cycle of 12 years in the Chinese calendar. I've read that Rat years are fast-paced, a time of new opportunities and fresh starts, of renewal through reinvention and also of upheaval.

Certainly in keeping with the theme of renewal and upheaval in a Rat year, 2008 saw its fair share of crises. In fact the events of last year call to my mind the purported Chinese curse, May you live in interesting times, as well as the old saw that the same Chinese character (or ideogram) is used for both the words crisis and opportunity.

In keeping with the Chinese theme of this post, however, I'd like to examine a few of the phrases and concepts that have gotten a bit mangled in their East-to-West translation.

Crisis = Opportunity?

In my previous post I quite explicitly made the point that you have the power of choice over whether to view a situation as a crisis or an opportunity - something that I still hold to be true. However it seems that the concept does not have its roots in the use of the same Chinese character for both crisis and opportunity (see here and here for details).

Similarly there is no reference that can be found for a Chinese curse, let alone saying, May you live in interesting times. According to Wikipedia the expression may have its roots in an interpretation of a Chinese phrase that may be translated as follows:

the times produce their heroes
(pinyin: shí shì zào yīng xióng)

I rather like this, for several reasons: first off, it's not a curse(!); it neatly encapsulates the element of personal agency and choice mentioned above; I think it taps into the underlying truism that each age needs to produce heroes that are appropriate to the moment - with the presumption that each of us has heroism within us that's waiting to be manifested and shine through.

Rat-cunning & Ox-solid

The Rat year 2008 was certainly marked by upheaval and the start of a process of (forceable and possibly overdue) renewal - not least in the financial sector. The signs of continued global climate change were starkly evident. Not all was negative, though, as in 2008 America ushered in a new era marked by the promise of change and of hope by collectively saying Yes We Can.

The Ox year 2009, meanwhile, promises prosperity through fortitude and hard work.

It's meant to be a conservative year, one of traditions and values, of stability and growth where patience and diligence pay off.

It's a year of harvest - when we reap what we have sown and consolidate the progress that the Rat's speediness and destruction/renewal has produced, in which any recent setbacks or obstacles can be overcome.

Even if you put no store by Chinese astrology, I'd suggest that these guiding principles will hold you in good stead this year as people the world over learn how to be the heroes that their times require. We, as well as our communities and the planet, deserve nothing less.

In keeping with the theme, my next post will assess President Obama's inauguration speech to see what kind of Ox year he has in mind for America and, by extension, the world community.
TM

Surviving vs Thriving - insights from the Lion City

Singapore has long been a strategic nexus of commerce and trade. Here you have "instant Asia" - Indians, Chinese, Malay, Japanese - along with masses of Western and other expats and the multinational firms that employ them. Today Singapore offers many useful insights into what is happening in the region of Southeast Asia and also globally.

Out of this mix of cultures and worldviews, a particularly Singaporean view has emerged. Here the business culture is fostered on a deeply pragmatic view of the world...and yet it is not all short-term practicality. The government is strongly focused on Singapore's future wellbeing, with carefully laid-out strategies geared to the long-term objective of ensuring the city-state's place on the world map of commerce and business.

Certainly on the surface of it, with construction sites and container ports running literally 24/7/365, it seems the Lion City is poised to roar ahead through the current economic turmoil and beyond.

In my previous post I mentioned the difference in the US presidential election between McCain's politics of fear and Obama's politics of hope. During my visit over the past few days here in Singapore I've been listening to the insights of local executives and the thoughts expressed at the first Singapore Human Capital Summit. It seems as though there are two prevailing mentalities, similar in nature to the themes of fear and hope.

Let's call them surviving vs. thriving.

Surviving
This mentality is focused almost exclusively on the short-term: let's hit next month's numbers and then take it from there. It's a reactive strategy, designed to do the bare minimium required to ensure economic (and, hopefully, individual job) survival. It's therefore also bereft of long-term strategic focus, considered thought, and high-level awareness of consequences - the intended and the unintended.

Thriving
The other mentality is practical, yet future-focused. As one executive argued,

Right now I'm not putting money in marketing because who knows what the market will be doing in 6 months time. But I think it's important to invest in my people. If things don't get so bad, it means I've got a team that's ready to perform and I'll eat the lunch of my more reactive, fearful competitors who haven't similarly invested. But even if I have to shed some staff, they'll still have the skills when it comes time to hire them back later on. At worst, there's a relationship to be strengthened by developing their skills - and that relationship can also be the competitive advantage I need over other companies in a tight labour market!

Both styles, short-term and long-term, may be valid depending on context and a host of other variables. Looking at the above two philosophies, I know which company I'd like to work for. (And wasn't it an exclusive focus on the short-term that got the world into the current economic crisis in the first place...?)

Maybe here at the crossroads of Asia, the combination that Singapore has woven of "pragmatic long-termism" has some valuable insights. Straight from the lion's mouth.
TM