The Year of the Tiger

Posted by Kelvin on Feb 15th, 2010 | 2 comments home title

Learn about the author. Kelvin is the Founder of MontaRosa. He has spent the last 20 years in executive search, most recently managing the global private equity practice at another leading executive search firm. Read more from this author

The Chinese New Year is upon us and with it we enter The Year of the Tiger. We all hope that the global economy rebounds and that the next twelve months will bring more Tiger-like vitality (no jokes about golfers, please) rather than the plodding of The Year of the Ox just ending.

It will also inevitably bring prognostications about the continued rise of China and whether this is going to be “The Chinese Century” or “The Asian Century” as the nexus of economic activity seems to move east. It was in 2009 that the Michael Geoghegan, group chief executive of HSBC, announced that he will be relocating from London to Hong Kong this year, certainly a dramatic example of that shift.

I’m thinking less about that shift – these things rarely move as quickly or in as straight a line as predicted – than about the overall competitiveness of the world’s regions and the implications of that for firm leadership. I revisited an article in Foreign Affairs by Anne-Marie Slaughter, currently at the State Department but then Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, entitled “America’s Edge: Power in a Networked Century.” In it, she posited that the world is moving from being defined in terms of northern and southern hemispheres to delineation into eastern and western hemispheres with the U.S. belonging to an Atlantic bloc comprising the Americas, Europe, and Africa. She called it “quite a promising neighborhood.” No fear of the shift from Slaughter.

One could argue for some time whether this is the right way to cleave the world but let’s take it as true for the sake of how it could, and should, shape leaders’ thinking. If I’m a U.S. or European CEO and my “neighborhood” includes Central/ South America and Africa, I want to take a much broader look than just my firm and share price: I would want to understand the social issues that may offer opportunities or create impediments to the firm’s competitiveness. I may want to get involved in education as Intel has through its foundation that gives out $100 million a year to fund teacher education in hopes of ensuring that it has access to a steady flow of engineers and scientists that will be key to its future competitiveness. I may embrace social enterprise like Danone, which, through its Danone Communities initiative, is creating indigenously run yogurt plants in Bangladesh. They are creating a market while also addressing social needs for employment and nutrition.

I would get a much better handle on how to identify and develop talent in the less-often visited parts of my neighborhood. With the aging of the populations of the U.S. and Europe, firms will need to tap into the talent pools of younger talent in the southern continents. Those that are smarter and faster about it will win the battle for the best of the next generation.

I would want to better understand squatter cities – from the favelas of Rio to the growing urban areas in Darfur – and how they operate as markets as well as sources of talent and innovation. They are wildly different from more established cities in which most firms are comfortable: organization is less formal, infrastructure is improvised, and the processes for keeping order are opaque to many outsiders. There is what looks like chaos but what feels like energy. Firms that can figure out how to operate profitably and productively in these places before their rivals will have an advantage in these previously under-tapped markets.

Finally, I would value facility with languages, experience living in multiple countries, and general cultural fluency as much as attendance at elite business schools when recruiting and developing talent – and that includes the board as well as executive ranks. I would seek out those who are adept at and comfortable with collaboration, community, and self-organization – and then I’d make sure that those who worked for us, again including the board, were from and involved in as wide a swath of the “neighborhood” – teaching, learning, exploring, and contributing – making sure that my firm continually hones it tiger-like attributes of agility, speed, and strength.

What do you think?

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2 Responses home title

Eric McNulty says:

February 15, 2010 at 7:44 pm

Interesting piece. Two issues that jump out are: Immigration — neither the U.S., Europe, or China have been particularly good at assimilating large numbers of immigrants. Well, the U.S. has lots coming in but vocal elements seem to want to cough them out like a hair ball; Europe also marginalizes them though they keep coming; and China doesn’t seem to want many — and Africa — China is making many overtures in hopes of gaining access to natural resources while the U.S. and Europe are on more of a humanitarian bent. Will any of the three grasp the importance of Africa’s talent pool to their competitiveness?
Tom Portante says:

February 17, 2010 at 7:28 pm

What I’ll probably tweet (and otherwise share) about your article Kelvin, comes from two phrases and their resonance with a pair of growing, if counterintuitive, memes:

-these things rarely move as quickly or in as straight a line as predicted…

-what looks like chaos but feels like energy…

Conventional wisdom about the Chinese juggernaut may very well be wrong. Noted political economist and demographer, Nicholas Eberstadt, continues to offer us gentle reminders that unlike predictions made by economists or business gurus, demographers have the luxury of being able to see – precisely – what populations will look like in 20 or 30 years. That said, we can now accurately describe China in 2020, or even 2030. As a nation, in terms of human reproduction, China has fallen well below a population replacement level. What this means is that within the next decade, China will see the inexorable economic effects of an aging population. Tragically, unlike Japan that got comfortably rich before it got old, China will suffer the second and fail to reach the first. (a presentation by N. Eberstadt: http://9mp.com/7laXN )

And to find echoes of your comments about the energy of squatter cities, we need look no further than some of the recent writings of Stewart Brand, both in a Wired piece (http://9mp.com/ol6xK) as well as in his recently published book: Eco-pragmatist manifesto .