Business Channel 2007-02-12&14

This refinement 1 to our relationship with IBM's ? in this guise 2 of a win-win relationship.

William Amelio is a corporate 3 pioneer, the man whose job's been to manage the merger 4 of an American icon 5 with a mainland Chinese company.

Amelio, formerly 6 the head of Asia for PC giant DELL, joined Lenovo, China's biggest PC maker 7 not long after the Chinese company had bought IBM's global PC operations.

It was the first major acquisition by China of the US operation and instantly created the world's third biggest PC vendor 8 behind DELL and HP. I talked with Amelio in Hong Kong about the challenge of meshing 9 two so completely different companies. The second-degree Karate 10 black belt explained it all comes down to trust, respect and compromise.

And we said you gotta trust her, your compatriot across the world. And you gotta be willing to compromise and if you're able to do that on a regular basis and respect who each person is and respect their intentions. You will be able to get a lot done in this company. So that was kind of our first year to be able to do that.

You make it sound quite easy. Obviously, there have been many fraught 11 times in this process. One thing I read was just conducting a meeting. The American side of the operation tends to get their point across quite aggressively. Chinese has not culturally done like that. So, how do you get that cultural connection.

Probably I should point it out they are less apt to give their opinions unless they are asked. So it's important, as an example, one of the team-building we do is to make sure we go around the room. We're practicing all of us to make sure before we end the meeting or in the middle of the meeting we go around the room, we get people's opinions, so it forces discussion on the table. (Um) The other thing that we are doing is we're setting a culture where straight talk becomes an important part of who we are. Meaning that don't leave the room without getting your opinion on the table. And we are grading people accordingly. One of the things that is important to get the right culture in the businesses is also how do you run, how you run meetings.

This is the first big acquisition by a mainland Chinese company of, of a, of a major US operation, a US icon. It's starting. It's fair to say that the integrations of this is being watched very closely right around the world . Are you feeling the pressure?

No, what I'll tell you is this. I think we are behaving more like a global company. Think about it for a minute. Our board is made up of five US nationals. We have three from Hong Kong and four from PRC. So it's truly a global board. The chairman is Chinese, the CEO is American. And if you look at any individual country it's being run by the locals that are in the country. So that it's amazing among a collection of talented people but truly global in nature. We have global customers. We have global employees and we have a global board.

How important do you think it's been for you and for any executive who's going to be in your position of operating an international firm in China or with the Chinese to have an Asian experience. You have five years in Singapore.

You know, if you had asked me that before I lived abroad, I would have told you I don't think that's important, but after living abroad, I definitely walked away with new skills that I wouldn't have before by living over in Asia. I work hard at listening a lot better. I tend to be somewhat impatient at times, and it's much better to be patient. And sometimes directness, while, I think as I told you a value we have is straight talk. Sometimes you have to kind of let things seep 12 in for a while. You can't immediately be confrontational 13. It's more important to, say, here is a behavior that you may not like or here is a performance metric you may not like, state it and then kind of back off and let that absorb for a while and it's surprising how the right answer then comes later. Whereas, if you try to force the issue immediately sometimes you'll get the opposite result.


Vocabulary


come down to phr-v. If a problem, decision, or question comes down to a particular thing, that thing is the most important factor involved.
I think that it comes down to the fact that people do feel very dependent on their automobile 14.

fraught adj. If you say that a situation or action is fraught, you mean that it is worrying or difficult.
It has been a somewhat fraught day.