Blog-Layout
Empowerment of locals assures sustainable success
Xiaolong Hu
"China Business requires local empowered Team"
Report and Teaser, Webinar 12. August 2020
After 30 years of growth, China has become the world's second most important economic force. The potential of the Chinese market is not only attractive in itself, it provides additional impetus for many companies for products and services for the world market. In order to tap into this potential, German SMEs should value and consider a multipolar business model. Regardless of the size of the business share, their Chinese branches are to be given sufficient freedom of action in order processing, market processing and innovation activities.
On August 12, 2020, the China-Team invited four experienced China managers and China experts to discuss the necessary authorization of the Chinese subsidiary of German SMEs as a success factor in the monthly webinar "Expert Talk". The essential findings are documented here.
Ms. Lilian Matischok, the experienced expert in Industry 4.0, digital transformation in the manufacturing industry, and B2B platform economy designed and moderated the event. Guided by her questions the experts on our panel worked out the importance, quality, and development of authorized China teams.
Mr. Dieter Kaufhold, experienced Agile Coach and Change Manager at Leica Geosystems, made it clear that a good manager acts as a “leader” with focus on empowering employees. This leads to a flat hierarchy. Thus, major changes are to be expected at the middle management level.
Guido Maune, Managing Director of Melitta in Shenzhen, can look back on his more than 20 years of experience in China. His most important methods include trust and respect for activating the most effective Chinese teams and motivating them to peak performance. He himself also benefited from the positive experiences and was able to continuously develop his leadership skills and leadership style in China.
For Dr. Martin Kovacik, formerly VP Engineering of the KraussMaffei Group, Segment IMM in China, was a special experience that, the way to gain trust from Chinese employees and teams were very similar to that in Europe. It is important that the manager remains authentic. For him personally, it was quite a bigger challenge to get room for manoeuvre from the headquarters and he himself was authorized as a China executive. Among other things, it was his greatest moment of success when he got the authorization from Germany for his innovative projects in China.