By ANITA Y. TANG (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-09-20 07:25

The competition for executives who can thrive in the global economy is not local or regional any more - it is international, and with great meaning for China.

The time-honored qualities that executives should have for leading businesses are changing. Geographic and time differences take a backseat, while the basic requirements remain the same: of course, the new, global executives must possess knowledge, expertise, and have language ability. But the keys to success are having the abilities to innovate and navigate between cultures.

The new breed of global executives transcends boundary, race, nationality, and language. How can executives succeed in this global economy? How can China succeed?

One answer, explored by China, is also being developed by Singapore and the United States. It acknowledges the need for academic training, but goes realistically beyond.

For a number of years, obtaining an MBA has been a requirement for gaining a senior corporate management job, a scenario followed enthusiastically in the developed economies. China has embraced that approach, and currently has 36 education institutions training MBAs. There soon will be 39. China so far has graduated 115,000 MBAs, about one-tenth of what the country is said to need.

But even as China gets up to speed in training executives academically, the question has arisen: is an MBA enough? The answer may be that it is a good start, but more is required. A recent survey by Egon Zehnder International of 133 top executives at firms in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany indicated that an MBA is not enough. The survey found that real-world experience matters more for top jobs.

However, even the experienced executive must keep seeking those insights and techniques provided by academic research, and so the top-tier universities in the US, like Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, have started offering refresher programs for MBAs to update their skills.

It would be ideal for the new, global executives to have both academic training and on-the-job experience, but it takes time to attain both. What can China do to secure its needed talents? One approach is immigration.

For years, China has offered incentives for "sea turtles" to return to the mainland to build their businesses; it also, on a trial basis, offers foreigners a "Green Card" to live and work in China.

Immigration policies have been quite successfully used in attracting talents by, for example, Singapore and the US.

Singapore grew its population from the 1990s three million to its current 4.5 million; about one-fifth of its population is foreigners on temporary visas. Singapore plans for its population to reach 6.5 million in the next few decades through its immigration policy to attract foreign talents.

The US introduced the H-1B visa in 1990 as a means to attract and retain foreign talents - candidates should at least have a US degree before he or she is eligible to be considered in this visa category. This year, the annual quota of 65,000 H-1B visas was filled on the first day when 133,000 applications awere received.

In the global quest for talents, bidding up the price to gain talented people is only a short-term solution - building an attractive environment and a solid foundation to nurture talent development is the long-term win. With world businesses turning toward China, there are great opportunities for Chinese global executives. A study by the McKinsey Global Institute predicts that 75,000 business leaders will be needed in China in the next 10 years while it estimates the current stock at just 3,000 to 5,000.

Chinese believe that one's knowledge will be better served traveling 10,000 miles than reading 10,000 books. How can one gain the opportunity to travel and experience another culture if financial cost is a constraint? After all, there are a limited number of scholarships being offered to overseas students to attend foreign universities.

Fortunately there are other options one can explore.

The US, for example, offers educational and cultural exchange programs for foreign nationals. Under these programs, foreign scholars, trainees and interns (as young as 18 years old) can go to the US for a period of up to two years for educational and cultural exchange at minimal or no cost to the candidates, and in some cases, pay or allowances are offered to them. The programs are proven - candidates from different parts of the world have benefited from the exchange.

Taking part in such programs presents true win-win to Chinese and Americans. The Chinese participant can experience day-to-day work and home life in the US, get first-hand knowledge of how people think and behave, how things are done, and how business is conducted there.

They can make friends and acquaintances in the US and form an American network. This work and life experience, which they later bring home to China, can be very useful in building careers.

As for the American hosts, the programs bring more diversity to the workplace and help them better understand Chinese culture, values, behavior, and incorporate that experience into their own bank of resources.

In the short term, a valuable Chinese member is added to the American team, and in the long term a valuable Chinese network is gained.

When more people are exposed to cross-border, cross-culture experiences, whether through academic training or through educational and cultural exchange programs, it widens their horizon. The involvement of different people in different disciplines in different industries in different job levels and in different geographical regions can forge true understanding of cross-border behavior, and this can cause transformational changes.

Employing this new breed of global executive, the top managers leading global entities can have a vertical team to work with, one that understands the concept of a bigger market than their own - the world market.

The line up will not happen tomorrow, nor will it be perfected the day after. "Rome was not built in one day". The Chinese believe that "gathering sand can build a tower" - it is a little at a time that mounts up.

Globalization calls for a new breed of global executives with cross-border experience. As in the case of China, foreign companies cannot go to China and superimpose their value and process there, nor can Chinese companies go overseas expecting to use the same guidebook as in China to gain success.

We are in an interactive global economy where one needs to draw on knowledge and experience, and also be open to new ideas to evolve successfully with the marketplace.

A Chinese proverb sums up the essence: "It doesn't matter how early or late one starts learning, the most important is reaching the goal first."

The author is the managing director of Roral Roots Global Inc.

(China Daily 09/20/2007 page11)