| I often get asked by mainland professionals for my thoughts on the value of getting an MBA, or if it is worth the time and investment to spend a few years abroad. Sure, an MBA is a good thing to have. So is the chance to study or work overseas. They are certainly beneficial if you can afford to do them. At the same time, they are far from being a must for your career success in China. The main message that I try to convey is that you shouldn’t place an overemphasis on these things for your professional development and long-term success.
In the final assessment, it is not your credentials that matters most to multinational employers today. Rather, it is your ability to demonstrate and deliver outstanding performance and results. Nothing has a greater impact on your ability to stand out and advance your career than performance excellence, especially when delivered in those value-added areas that respond to the key challenges being faced by fast growing, global companies in this market.
The Delivery Of Quality And Excellence In Everything You Do
According to the executives that I talk to, that commitment to doing things with excellence in mind needs to be stronger within many mainland professionals who are looking to advance themselves into higher-level roles. They believe that too many are satisfied with just completing the process when taking on a task, as opposed to placing their emphasis on the quality of the result. They may finish the job on time, but they do not address important questions like, “can the result that I’m delivering be viewed as an excellent one?” Or, “what could I do to attain a better outcome?”
Graham Brant spent nine years with Microsoft, holding roles as the CEO of Microsoft Hong Kong and the managing director for Microsoft’s Asia Pacific consulting services. Graham recalls an instance that occurred in Beijing while he was running Microsoft’s consulting services practice. “During a staff meeting, I happened to ask a BD manager on our team what his main objective was at the moment,” he recalls. “His answer to me was that it was to set up as many client meetings as possible. My response to him was, “no, actually, your objective should be to set up as many quality client meetings as possible.
I needed to make the point clear to him and the rest of the team that I didn’t just want him to arrange meetings without some critical thinking behind each one. He needed to be assessing the quality and priority of each potential client opportunity. There’s a big difference in how successful you’re going to be if one out of every two client meetings that you arrange can produce a result, as opposed to one out of every five. Whether you’re talking about performing as a business or as an individual, that’s the difference between being highly successful or just average.”
The Concept Of Excellence
Julie Zhou shares a similar view regarding the need for mainland professionals to raise their performance standards. “The thing that I see that limits the advancement of many into management roles is very basic. They do not deliver excellence in their job,” says Julia. “Too many think that the work that they deliver is good enough, or confuse effort with quality of work. They tend to be task-oriented and are able to do their job competently, but not with the objective in mind of driving for and delivering an excellent result. A big part of the problem is that they’re not very in touch with the concept of excellence, let alone what is required to consistently deliver it. You won’t catch the attention of top management just by being competent, or just by doing your job.
I tell these staff that everything they do should impress those around them, whether it’s their colleagues, their boss, their senior management, or their clients. The way to greater opportunities begins by doing a great job, not just a good job. Once people have confidence in your ability to deliver quality work, then it becomes easier for them to trust you with greater responsibility.”
Graham also points to the critical importance of focusing on details in the work your deliver. “When it comes to excellence and quality, and therefore, success or failure in many cases, it’s often the last 5% that can make the difference,” he notes. “I learned that one the hard way. Early in my career, I had a chance to help win a major project with a new client for the company. Our team had the best solution and price. It should have been a sure thing. In delivering the proposal, however, I accidentally printed out a copy that did not go through the spell-check. Unfortunately, that was the copy that got sent to the CEO of the client. A week later, the proposal came back in the mail. No comments were attached, only red marks identifying the spelling errors in the proposal. Needless to say, we lost the project. It wasn’t hard to understand why. If the proposal we delivered was so sloppy, what could the client expect from us during the project delivery?”
Do Others View Your Work As Excellent?
To determine what level you are performing at in your job, ask yourself questions like, does the work and the results that you deliver allow others to view you as someone who is excellent, or just good at what you do?? Is your expertise outstanding, or just good enough to handle basic situations in your job? Are you holding the work that you produce to high standards, or do you just do what is needed to get by?
Perhaps the most telling question to ponder that can put your capabilities in perspective is, how easy would it be for someone else to come in and do your job, and even do it better than you if given the chance? The answer to that has to do with how much value you bring to your role, whether that’s exceptional efficiency, volume of workload that you are able to handle, delivery of quality results, or the ability to find better ways of doing your job. To consistently deliver excellent work, you need to develop sound, professional approaches to doing things. As a manager, that is particularly so in areas like the way you run projects, present ideas and results, cooperate with other team-members, approach and make decisions, and resolve issues.
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