DOING BUSINESS IN ASIA: NOT THE SMARTEST, NOT THE STRONGEST BUT THE ONE WHO ADAPTS...
17/02/2013
The above concept explains one thing I saw while working in Asia.
Lately I had a chance to attend many business dealings, some involving contracts worth millions of dollars and others about technical negotiations. Most of these staged Europeans on one side and Asians on the other. I had a chance to see the whole show and perceive both sides from a distance.
However a light bulb went on in my head the moment I saw business dealings involving Asians dealing with Asians.
Sometimes in European-Asian negotiations I saw shrewd people obtaining immediate results but they later ended up losing a lot of opportunities as well as having hard times completing the jobs they sold. I saw few dealings where the strongest party obtained an immediate result but even here there were lost opportunities after.
Oftentimes Europeans and Western people tend to work out of their “efficiency paradigm” and think that they can solve everything in Asia through their management capability. That, alas, isn’t so. Often they end up making big mistakes.
If you think in an efficient way, you find and localize the problem and then solve it. I noticed that if you follow that rule In Asia, you will end up spending a lot of time going back and forth through the path, spending a lot of energy for one single task. If you adapt to the "local attitude", for sure sometimes things will get a bit messy, but you’ll end up having a lot of opportunities as well . Basically you have to accept the Asian way to go about it and become able to manage within reasonable boundaries.
Sometimes Chinese people call it "dancing with the dragon". Can you imagine yourself dancing with a dragon? Trying to avoid his nice breath and his big feet? if you adapt to his acting, you will survive and after some practice you might also enjoy!
Therefore, these are my three most important tips on negotiating with Asian:
1) Look and feel the whole picture .
2) Follow the flow!
3) Be prepared with everything in hands.
I am still learning how to become skilled at adapting.
Ciao from Singapore!
Leonardo Gon
