Reflective Journal Entry 2

Reflective Journal 2: Reflect on the working culture and management style in Google and Lenovo. (You may choose to explore how far their working cultures and management styles reflect their respective societies, share your personal experiences and opinions on your preference of working culture and management style, etc)

As the world progresses, Google and Lenovo have both become global brands in their respective technological fields. What is the secret to their success? Upon closer examination, it is evident that they have vastly differing styles of management.

Google’s working culture focuses on the benefits of autonomy and self-discipline amongst employees, as can be seen from the numerous company policies allowing for a high degree of flexibility at work. This is beneficial for the company as it creates space and a conducive environment for creativity and innovation to flourish, as it should. I also believe that by allowing employees to spend 20% of time on personal projects, they will be more motivated to finish company-allocated work in the 80% of time spent on structured work. This raises employee satisfaction, and with satisfied employees will come work of higher calibre.

Next, Google encourages dissent amongst employees, to voice their opinions and provide invaluable feedback to the managers. This helps to ensure that the perspectives of all are duly considered and the company can move in a direction supported by most, if not all employees. Personally, I feel that this managerial style promotes employee loyalty, as the employees are viewed to have equal status with the managers in terms of value and potential.

It does reflect the American society to a large extent. In America, human rights are more liberal and everyone is given the opportunity to express their own opinion. The individualistic and open-minded attitude evident from the country’s policies is very much akin to the free and easy style of Google. The strategies of the Obama administration may even have been adopted from Google’s company policy, in areas such as imposing a high entry barrier and depending on intrinsic employee motivation. However, Google’s success stems from the fact that its employees are disciplined enough to be able to concentrate on their programming work even with a host of distractions in the form of sports facilities, food and cosy offices. By contrast, the American populace is not as understanding of the numerous government-funded help programmes such as Social Security.

Lenovo, on the other hand, is largely based on a top-down managerial system, where the upper echelons of the company convey their instructions to those lower in the company hierarchy. The greatest strength of this system is also its greatest weakness; the fate of the company is based on a select group of people – the board of directors, who decide on what to do. On one hand, a capable board of directors can pass down orders to be executed quickly and effectively. This saves much time and energy as compared to the system of peer reviews employed by Google, where workers debate over the pros and cons of the projects of each individual. On the other hand though, there are many layers of red tape to cut through, limiting the company’s flexibility in policy changes. The top echelons are also far removed from those lower in the company ladder, and thus may not have as clear a picture of the situation at factories or individual outlets as the bottom employees. The system also hinders development of creativity in the workplace as less emphasis is placed on the employee’s opinions, limiting the influx of different opinions.

This system does reflect Chinese society to an extent. The political system is such that the China Communist Party (CCP) is the ultimate authority regarding most issues, leaving common citizens little room for debate or expression of their opinions. Indeed, they are brought up from young to not question the teacher’s opinion. Personally, I feel that this inhibition of innovation is very detrimental for China, as it should be drawing on the combined creative talents of its people in order to maintain itself as the world’s second-largest economy, instead of stifling creativity and thusly placing limits on its future success.

Although I would undoubtedly face many difficulties, I think I would prefer to work at a Google styled company.

I think that I would be an active contributor in peer discussions, being able to voice my opinion and defend it logically. I am also comfortable with the concept of questioning my superiors about the reasoning behind their decisions, and I can easily envision myself providing suggestions and feedback to my supervisor. In fact, I think I would love the prospect of being paid to be a voice of dissent. Furthermore, I would feel excited knowing that I was contributing to the cutting edge of research in my field, and that I would be working with peers equally well versed in my field of expertise. I would also feel satisfied knowing that the company valued my opinion.

Some people might contend that the lack of a creative faculty would be reason enough to work at a traditional company like Lenovo instead. However, I staunchly believe that this is the exact reason why I should work at a company like Google. Creativity can be cultivated, and I want to immerse myself in an environment conducive to innovation so I too may benefit. After all, if I work at Lenovo instead, I will simply be conditioned to follow instructions all the time – something I think I would not enjoy.

Thank you for reading!

Reflective Journal Entry 1

Good day, Ms Yeo and fellow classmates. Today I will be discussing our SES Tutorial 1 in my journal entry.

Today, we discussed cultural intelligence in class, based on 2 articles: one by Glenn Hopis and the other by David Livermore. After a brief discussion, we arrived at the conclusion that cultural intelligence is defined as the ability to function in a multiracial society. We also discussed the four aspects of cultural intelligence: Drive (basic motivation), Knowledge (about other cultures), Strategy (in the form of research conducted and reflections done before and after meeting a person from a different culture) and Action (taken to adapt oneself to a foreign culture). Today, I also experienced a very novel approach to lessons. Ms Yeo (our SES teacher) did not participate much in the discussion itself, instead asking the students questions and getting their responses in order to move the lesson forward. It did require much prior reading and a familiarity with the basics of the topic at hand in order to understand and participate in the discussion.

I found the particular pedagogy very interesting and worthy of mention. In a way, it accomplished much in one swoop. Not only were the students tested on whether they had done the essential readings, but the lack of participation from the teacher also encouraged active and spontaneous participation in the class discussions. Although I was a little nervous at first when emerging into this completely new classroom environment, I still managed to contribute my part towards the discussion, by offering my point of view on a large number of issues and sharing my personal experiences.

That brings me to the next thing. I felt that this teaching method also had another benefit: to allow the teacher to better understand the students based on their personal experiences. Some people in class, including me, shared their experiences about interacting with people from other cultures. The style of the lesson was more personalized and individual, aimed at encouraging students to answer their peer’s questions and the teacher’s questions through personal sharing. This particular emphasis on personal sharing also acted as a sort of quality control: by asking students to share their personal experiences, the students would consciously make an effort to choose the ones that were most relevant and important as they would not want to look bad in front of their classmates.

I also have some thoughts on the lesson content itself. During the lesson, we learnt about the importance of cultural intelligence. Some examples were raised: Before a hypothetical exchange programme to Turkey, how would we make preparations to fit into a vastly different society? During interactions with people from foreign cultures, having cultural knowledge helps us avoid unintentionally causing offence, while improving general communication by adapting our language, tuning ourselves to pick out the words that may or may not be mangled by accent. Additionally, the world is becoming increasingly interconnected. It is highly likely that wherever we go, we will bump into someone from another culture. Having cultural drive allows us to pick out the subtle differences in behaviour, and translate those into appropriate responses. For example, it is best not to talk about pork when we encounter a Muslim, or beef when we meet a Hindu.

Based on my personal experiences with people from other cultures, talking to such a person may require reducing one’s pace of speech, using gestures and other sign language or even speaking entirely in a different language. For example, when I went to Suzhou last December, I spoke almost exclusively in Mandarin as the Suzhou students had a poor standard of English. When I did speak English, I had to simplify my speech and cut out all the typical Singaporean slang to optimise the communication. The Suzhou students did appreciate my attempts, and reciprocated by speaking in more simple Mandarin that I could understand better.

Learning about their culture did pay off as well as I was able to talk with some of them about prominent Chinese and Singaporean singers, such as Jay Chou. I was also exposed to a whole library of songs I had never heard before.

Ultimately, cultural intelligence is not easy to obtain. There will always be those rough moments and tough times. But it is these that make the experience worthwhile, no?

Daniel Tan, 3S105. Signing off.