Management Consulting is Hard! But I love it.

The Mission

My team from Left, Me, Ron, Judith, Doug & Dean

Hi everyone from beautiful Nanjing, China.  Sorry I haven't posted any new entries for several days.  We are heavy into cranking through the interview notes, city documents, and various sessions we have had with the IBM teams closest to the Smarter Cities initiative which the City of Nanjing has undertaken.  What we are doing is management consulting, pure and simple.  The IBM Corporate Service Corps is much more of a grassroots, on the ground, hands on effort to build a solution to solve a specific problem.  Sometimes the work is humanitarian in nature. The executive service corps is much more of a relationship building effort at the executive level that also is designed to tackle major strategic problems. There is more management strategy involved, which frankly I love.  I really enjoy tacking Harvard Case studies.  The Nanjing mission qualifies.

In our case we have been chartered to look at 4 major areas where the City of Nanjing, in Jiangsu Province, has decided to build their future upon:

1. Software Development and Outsourcing - Want to Rival Bangalore in outsourcing capabilities and revenue.
2. Smarter City - Keen on building a smarter city that builds a high quality of life for citizens through better transportation, healthcare, water, and electrical grids.
3. Industry Transformation - Would like to upgrade the more than 1000 enterprises in the city through business transformation software such as ERP Systems.
4. Social Computing - Building a bridge between citizen and government to provide for "Happy Citizens."  

Nanjing - A Second City Who Wants to Compete at the Highest Level

If you look at China today you find some very interesting dynamics that look very familiar to anyone who has been in IBM for 30+ years (of which there are very few these days).  In the early days of IBM we had divisions that competed with each other.  In history, China's economy has been very closed.  In the early 1990's everything changed for China.  They started to compete globally.  But, until then, all of the cities in China competed for country resources and looked to stand out in ways to convince the highest party leaders of their competence and might.  Specialization existed in many provinces and cities.  Everyone today looks to provide the best jobs for their people as those who have jobs are the best fed.  People who have food are happy people and not prone to revolution or uprising in the land.  Jobs are the new currency both here and abroad.  China is focused on jobs and green jobs are the best.  What is the most green job?..... Software development.  It involves a higher level of intellect and training and generally commands higher wages than lower level service jobs.  It is something that the US wants to outsource as labor costs and overhead are very high in the US making software development expensive.  With a very powerful currency, the US can find much cheaper labor overseas and often does largely at the expense of the "middle class." 

Nanjing wants to best the other cities in China and Bangalore.  They have a very tall order, but I would have to say that they are well positioned to do this if they can focus on a couple of very key areas:  Software Engineering and Full Lifecycle of Development and testing are clear opportunities and areas often neglected by their competitors. They can do this as they take a very rigorous approach to quality and testing - it is their factory and manufacturing psyche.  

English competency is still an issue, but here is an interesting fact.  The Universities in Nanjing teach all of their computer science classes in english and they use english textbooks.  Their ability to speak the language is there, but because of saving face and not wanting to make mistakes, prevent them from really trying to speak face to face.  We do everything through interpreters.  If you have ever had to spend your entire day working through interpreters, you will find that taxing, but also in many ways easier.  You can often think about what you want to say while something is being interpreted.  The down side is that every meeting lasts twice longer than usual.  It is just something you get used to, but my assessment is that it doesn't necessarily breed trust as everything is done through interpretation and we all know that there are things missed and lost in interpretation. 

Service Opportunity - Talking Careers at Nanjing University

All five of my team, Ron, Doug, Dean, Judith and myself went back to school to speak with the business students at the University of Nanjing about careers in business and more specifically in IBM.  It was a good time meeting with young people and hearing about their aspirations.  Interesting.... most wanted to get a good government job.  I tried filling their minds with dreams of becoming the next Facebook, but after the FB stock has dropped so low, I am not sure that they are too keen on trying to be the next Mark Zuckerberg.  I did have to laugh that one young man in my group decided that he wanted to work for Boston Consulting as a management consultant.  He said "if that doesn't work out, I will go get a government job."  

Deep Thoughts

I could give you a day by day sense of our engagement, but I won't.  We can talk about it in person when we see each other back in the states.  A few deep thoughts before I retire:

• It is important to have a good driver.  Driving is crazy here and if you don't have a good driver you will end up with your face in the back of the front seat.
• We don't have Dragon Fruit in the US, but we need it.  It is very tasty.  
• There isn't much variety of food here. It is difficult to find an "American" restaurant that is not KFC or McDonalds.  KFC doesn't have original recipe either.  :-)  Just crispy and spicy wings.  McDonalds is pretty much the same, but they also sell chicken here.
• Massages are cheap!  $15 for a one hour massage.  Beware of foot reflexiology, though, it is a bruising experience.  I am still not totally recovered from that.
• Pedicures are cheap and I was forced to have one.  :-)
• Chinese are crazy about golf, but there are no golf professionals in China.  They have learned about golf by reading books.  It is still expensive to play here, though.  Not like Central Illinois!
• The central government IS in charge and once convinced can make anything happen as we saw in the Bejing Olympics. There are days I long for this in the US, but given who we have in congress and the presidency, I am thankful that we don't have highly centralized government.
• Like the US, everyone is basically now supported by the government and have government jobs.
• Like most places in the world outside of the middle east, people are very nice and respectful here.
• The cost of food is cheaper.  A big mac, fries and a coke are 15 RMB - about $2.25.  Services are cheap, too.