China Times Blogs and Tweets on Crisis Leadership

China Times Blogs and Tweets on Crisis Leadership

I would have posted this blog and a number of Tweets from Xiamen and Shanghai, but I was blocked from teaching Chinese business leaders some modern lessons of history in crisis management and leadership.
My weekend of teaching and two days of conversations with my colleagues in China were limited by my addiction to using the web for teaching and examples. My access to Youtube for teaching my class of Executive MBAs was also prevented. I tried to locate equivalent videos of the CEO of Mattel apologizing to the Chinese government and to the people of China, but the videos so readily available via Youtube were not available on more than one China site. It was a shame because I really wanted to help the 33 business leaders (age 35-55) who own their own firms or are CEOs of others that crisis management can be taught and practiced by observing the mistakes of others. Naturally, there was a lot of “news” about Tiger Woods that gave me an opportunity to provide instruction on a failed crisis leadership display 1. He did not respond in a timely fashion, 2. He did not apologize, 3. He did not respond personally (except through an “announcement” on his website. 4. He was not forthcoming about the real issues in even a slightly transparent manner, 5. Even after an initial delay of 2 days and later of 5 days; we do not know what he really wants us to know. And, obviously a man with over 7 million Google “hits” cannot ask for privacy or to be left alone. Tiger, like the Hong Kong movie star Edison Chen, “hunter” VP Dick Cheney, David Letterman, Jack Welch, Governor Blagovich of Illinois, or the officers of any publicly traded company cannot expect privacy. They are now all “public figures” in the broadest sense. The business leaders in China that I know (over 1,000 whom I have educated and trained) now know that they are public figures (hard for many corporate officers all over the world to accept). They are especially “public” if they make, distribute, sell or retail high risk and high visibility products or services: toys, food, pharmaceuticals, cars, cosmetics, products with long directions of operation, education, legal services, health care and others. They are also at risk if they make or market products for the elderly, children, women, the poor, disabled, uneducated, and more.

I wish the Chinese government would allow educators and others to access the lessons of history so that their citizens will not repeat the mistakes of the West.

Xiamen University EMBA program in Integrated Marketing Communications

One of the privileges of being a professor is the freedom to be an academic entrepreneur. Tonight in Xiamen China (a beautiful city on the China east coast near Taiwan), we celebrated the creation of an executive MBA (for senior managers and owners of corporations) that emphasizes integrated marketing communications (IMC). My colleague and former student, Kevin Mao, and I opened discussions with Xiamen University' Graduate School of Management 2 years ago. With the cooperation of the faculty of IMC; we will begin to teach classes in the Graduate School of Management at the highly rated Xiamen University on IMC. Thirty-five excited EMBA students (including more than one Chinese millionaire, two newspaper reporter and the Channel 2 Xiamen (Business), a University Vice-President and various deans experienced a dedication to studies over the next two years. IMC and selected Kellogg faculty will come to Xiamen beginning this Fall to teach in an intensive 2-4 days the EMBAs. While the degree and course granted is strictly from Xiamen University; the support given by our IMC and NU faculty has encouraged the first IMC program in China. I spoke to the group about research supporting their actions, trends in social media giving them new strategies and tools for marketing and communications and the fact that Northwestern's IMC program graduates over 30 Chinese students each year who should be excited to find CEO's of Chinese corporations who understand IMC hiring in the future.