Be a Flexible Generalist - the Key Sustainable Success

As China's economy continues to grow, Chinese enterprises are seeking to expand globally and are having higher expectations of their executives, urging them to pursue continuous learning. To maintain competitive in the job market, what are the key skills for executives to master? What should be considered in selecting the right executive program?

Maggy Fang, Director of Executive Compensation Consulting for Towers Watson in China believes that the most critical challenge facing executives is how to effectively manage change in order to maintain the winning edge of the organisation in the volatile economic environment. As such, it is imperative that executives master the skills of change management. "A few years earlier, change management was not that important, but facing today's changing and challenging business environment, executives must grasp these concepts and keep updating their management skills, technical skills and industry knowledge skills

Four Key Skills to Learn
Maggy thinks that the following four skills are essential for executives to ensure that their organisations are able to create sustainable business value:

i. Vision
ii. Corporate culture building skills
iii. Change management skills
iv. Global strategic thinking and local leadership

"Nowadays, with the rapidly changing economy and fierce competition in the marketplace, executives need to develop good business vision to project the future of business, build up a clear corporate culture, and respond to change flexibly. In addition, with globalisation taking hold, it is more important than ever for executives to develop global strategic thinking and local leadership, so that they can effectively manage local and global business," she explains.

Jeffrey Tang, Director, Talent & Rewards and Executive Compensation for Towers Watson in Hong Kong agrees with the significance of strategic thinking, and points out that besides financial skills, executives should also know about business operation - how the business runs. "Globalisation is an irresistible trend. As organisations are going international with business expanding globally, executives must possess both international and regional perspectives to efficiently work across borders.

Meanwhile, executives also need to be highly adaptable to the volatile market, different cultures and legislations across the regions," he says. In such a constantly changing world, executives not only have to adapt to change, but also to revisit the current business models. “In the old days a business model may be retained for more than a decade, but now, as the world keeps changing rapidly, it is crucial that executives have the willingness to revisit their business models and adapt them in response to market change. Even though they think the models are okay, they should still optimise them to make them more applicable," says Jeffrey.

New Management Concepts - Learning and Execution
It is also critical for executives to keep up with the times by learning new management concepts. In Jeffrey's opinion, the key is to convert these concepts into real-life applications. "We call this 'operational studies'. When there is a good concept or idea, we need to learn to execute it in real-life situations, and let everyone understand what it is. For instance, the younger generation communicates in a very different way, so the leader should think about how he/ she could communicate effectively with the young staff, so that they understand, accept and recognise the new concept."

Jeffrey suggests that other than classroom learning, executives should also learn by onthe- job practice. The best way to learn is still a combination of the two. Maggy agrees and thinks that through various working assignments and job rotations, executives are exposed to practice that helps enhance personal skills and experience. Given the market trends, business schools are launching more new executive programs to cater to executives' learning needs. Maggy says that studying MBA programs could be helpful to executives and provides them with a platform for exchange. But a comprehensive learning plan should be in place; otherwise taking executive programs may not necessarily lead to competency enhancement.

"China executives have diversified leadership skills. Some may have very high-level skills and competencies, whilst some may focus on business models without solid knowledge of basic management concepts. In this case, studying MBA programs will be more essential," she continues.

When it comes to MBA education, many associate it with the financial sector. In this issue, we are glad to have invited experienced investment manager Ed Chin to share his views on business schools and executive education. Having engaged in the financial sector for more than two decades, Ed is currently Principal Consultant at a hedge fund firm and Board Member at a family office. Since 2006, he has been writing a highly popular column in a local paper.

B-schools to Connect to the Real World
After the credit crunch in 2008, many thought that there is a need for traditional business schools to reform and innovate in order to rebuild the tarnished MBA brand. From Ed's perspective, disconnection exists between b-schools and the real world, which urges b-schools to reform. "The world is constantly changing. Therefore, whether for MBA or EMBA programs, besides core subjects, syllabi for other subjects should be adjusted based on market trends. As these programs are highly practical, b-schools should follow the market tightly and ensure that they are connecting with the real world," he says.

The worldwide economic crisis has brought profound and devastating impact to the international business arena. Ed says, "These days many think that 2012 would be a 'nuclear winter'. Will it be that bad? God knows. From the business schools’ perspective, it's about change. A b-school has to connect what it teaches with the outside world. No doubt we need theory, but we can't do with only theory without practice. In recent years, local universities started to invest in innovation, for example a university established a trading lab to simulate real trading in i-banks for practical training."

Flexible Generalist
The majority of executives pursue selfenhancement today. Ed thinks that executives do not need to know all the technical skills in depth, but they need to have an understanding of the big picture. "Today's executives should be generalists who are flexible enough to manage change. They can be specialists in certain areas, but at the same time generalists with broad horizons."

Ed illustrates with an example, "my specialty is hedge fund, but as the investment world is so broad, I also look at other investments. In fact, in my sector, besides hedge funds, we also work on alternative investment. It means that we not only engaged in stock or securities trading, but also impact investing – searching for potential social enterprises in emerging markets for investments that create social impact."

Ed obtained his MBA at The University of Toronto. "It was a long time ago in 1996-1998. I returned to school after around ten years of work. I would suggest executives to think about their personal need for program selection. It would be better to choose programs with an international student mix. Learning with students of diverse nationalities and industries creates more valuable learning experiences. It is also a good opportunity to broaden your horizons."

Eric Wong, President and CEO of Richburg Motors, has been in the pursuit of lifelong learning for the past decade. He has studied programs at a number of renowned schools including The Chinese University of Hong Kong (EMBA), Harvard Business School, INSEAD and Party School of the Central Committee of CPC. He is now a columnist for a number of local papers where he shares his management philosophy with readers.

Outside Thinking
As Eric says, the best way to meet global trends is learning, "I take one short course from Harvard Business School every year to update my current knowledge and achieve my learning objective. In the meantime, I take this as a chance for annual review and preparation for my new strategies. I believe that executives should develop outside thinking and learn to think outside the box. Learning helps us review our positions in an objective way, and sometimes we may discover
new visions from that."

Speaking of the trends of executive education, Eric reveals, "The first is 'technology' - how should we leverage technology to deliver more accurate, timely information that caters for our needs? The second is 'profession' - how can we acquire visionary knowledge through learning?"

As told by Ed earlier, when selecting a program, those with a diverse student mix would be a better choice. Eric agrees and reminds executives to look at students mix first rather than school rankings. “Rankings can be seen as reference, but more importantly we should look at the teachers’ background and specialty, the graduates’ comments on the program and teachers. Moreover, today many programs emphasise China elements, for example with some of the students coming from large corporations in the mainland. I would say this element is critical, given the flying growth of China.

Learning with China executives will be a good chance to get a closer look at China's conditions." Eric shares with us the four key points for continuous learning as below:

1. Don't think that the certificate will surely lead to better career development, as you are not the only one who has the certificate. We should value the learning process, not the outcome.
2. Has learning changed your critical thinking and helped you make objective judgment?
3. Have you achieved intellectual improvement? To do this, have you had any intellectual interaction with your classmates and teachers?
4. Have you learnt anything from each of your classmates, regardless of his/her status or position?

"If you are able to follow the above four points, then it's good to pursue learning. Remember that the key is to have learning gains instead of merely seeing the certificate as your asset for job changing. As for program selection, I suggest that executives make decision according to their own core values and strengths and weaknesses. As mentioned earlier, the best way is to refer to alumni and graduates'’ comments to know more about the teachers' background and quality, whilst the mix of students should not be overlooked," he concludes.