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"Management Wisdom under the Starlight"
Event
#2 – 5 March 2008
Building
on the overwhelming success of the inaugural session,
"Management Wisdom" Event #2 was staged on 5 March
evening at the same venue.
In collaboration with the Hong Kong Chamber of Small
Business Ltd. (HKCSMB) we have invited another pair of SME Award
winners to come share their experience and wisdom.
They were Ms Elaine Ho, Principal, He Qilian &
Associates (solicitors firm), and Dr. Oliver Yau, Managing
Director, Objective Solutions Ltd., winners of the 2006 SME
Award in the "Professional Services" and
"Information Technology" categories respectively.
Registration
began at 6:45 pm. Before
the party sat down to enjoy the delicious food (Chinese cuisine
in fusion with western presentation), hosts and guests mingled
and chatted taking the opportunity for networking with each
other.
Host,
speakers, organizers and guests took a (partial) group photo
before the event.
Picking
up feedbacks from the first event the organizers this time spent
less time on the speaker introduction.
Dr. Dominic Wong, the anchor for the evening, assumed the
role of MC of the event as well, fully reflecting the
multi-faceted competencies of capable leaders.
After the main dishes have been served the sharing
session started. After
a brief introduction of Elaine, the first speaker, Dr. Wong
invited her to describe her strategy and the unique path that
she has taken, as a female pursuing a rather challenging task,
both in terms of profession (a solicitor trained up under the
Common Law system striving in a totally different legal turf)
and in business line (developing an almost virgin business –
that of providing cross-boundary legal services between the
Mainland and Hong Kong, and subsequently between Mainland and
overseas). Elaine's
pursuing story demonstrated her vision and perseverance.
Starting a repositioning of her professional career
stimulated by a head-hunter who told her that fluent Putonghua
and operating between Hong Kong and the Mainland were the two
most needed competencies for her, she painstakingly took the
thorny career path of developing social and business networks in
a virgin land no other solicitor firms bothered to explore –
Zhejiang Province, spending one-third of the year staying in the
various cities there to lay the groundwork.
Through her hard work Elaine transformed herself from a
lady who did not even speak a word in Putonghua to one who can
fluently and effectively negotiate with all parties in the
Mainland. She also
described at length how she took advantage of CEPA, being the
first batch of professionals setting up operations in the
Mainland, as well as her adoption of "Blue Ocean
Strategy" in promoting new businesses – those that help
Mainland private enterprises to "reach out" to Hong
Kong and onward to other overseas countries.
To
allow for a fair share of time for our next guest speaker, Dr.
Oliver Yau, our host had to cut short the Q&A session for Ms
Elaine Ho. While
both speakers were from the services sector, Dr. Yau's
application software/IT solution operation is way different from
Elaine's professional practice. Instead, his company, Objective Solutions, focuses on only a
very small market, successfully tapping and serving a high
growth and high margin industry – the jewelry manufacturing
industry. By
focusing and doing it well, he managed to carve out an enviable
market share from a niche market, facing far less competition
than many of his peers. In
the pursuing presentation Dr. Yau amazed the audience that he
had in fact probably broken the Guinness record for award
winning (if there is such a category) – gaining over twenty
awards/prizes within a period of two years.
Oliver shared his business secret – entering and
winning in competitions as a less costly strategy for corporate
promotion and PR. He also described how he made use of the award-loaded
reputation as an advantage in successfully winning the
government's Innovation and Technology Fund for fueling his
heavy investment in developing industry-based solution systems.
His experience set a good role model for other SMEs,
particularly those striving in the higher technology areas.
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Felix Chan, Life Hon. President of HKCSMB
raised a question on behalf of local SMEs
to the speakers. |
Dr. Wong, anchor and host, made his
concluding
remarks and express thanks
to the two guest
speakers. |
As
the Q&A dialogue proceeded towards the ending part of the
evening, the topic shifted towards Putonghua and language
communication. Besides
learning from Elaine how to effectively pick up the skill of
speaking Putonghua well, the audience further earned a bonus as
Dr. Dominic Wong, host, shared his wisdom of how to speak better
Putonghua. He
pointed out that besides understanding well the four tones used
in Putonghua, thinking through and practicing to speak out
sentences that can be written down word by word in Chinese would
help ensure the Putonghua is not ‘Cantonese-style’.
He pointed out that Hong Kong people are so used to
speaking Cantonese and their spoken vocabularies are dominated
by Cantonese phrases and terms that in fact cannot be written
out.
Host/anchor Dr. Wong presenting certificate
of appreciation to Ms Elaine Ho. |
Dr. Wong presenting certificate of appreciation
to Dr. Oliver Yau. |
Just
as the previous function, when the cross-flow was reaching its
climax, time also ran out.
As the clock stroke past 10 pm. the host had to call the
event to a close. On
behalf of the organizers, IIM and HKCSMB, Dr. Wong presented to
both speakers certificates of appreciation, and the audience
expressed their gratefulness by a hot applaud of hands.
While the party departed, the enjoyable memories lingered
in the minds of the participants…and the wisdom shared all
became the intellectual assets of those attending.
["Management
Wisdom under the Starlight" series is supported by the IIM
Foundation (IIMF). In
fulfillment of the Foundation's goal of promoting and enhancing
the professionalism of management (especially cross-border,
cross-cultural, international management), funds are being
expended in video shooting and subsequent production of video
clips to be posted on IIM's website for easy access by members
and the public. Further
announcement will be made when the "Management Wisdom"
series excerpts are ready for viewing on the web.]
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