Silicon Hutong

You can't dive the Pyramids, but you can dive the Great Wall

In the Hutong

Blinds shut, air conditioning on ful

1743 hrs.

Last weekend, The Village Grouch of Sinoscuba led ImageThief and a small band of my fellow Dadu-based divers to a reservoir north of Tianjin. Their mission: to dive the Great Wall.

To those of us who picture the great wall as a series of small citadels on jagged peaks linked by a serpentine brick breastwork, the very idea of diving the Great Wall is a bit absurdist. But there is actually a section that found itself drowned by a reservoir in the 1980s that extends to a depth of 65'.

Will took his underwater video rig with him and got some cool footage. Check it out at the National Geographic site here.

Olympics: Whither the Great Venues?

In the Hutong

Productivity = no TV in office

1917 hrs

We are still over a month away from the opening ceremonies, and I am already hearing of reporters filing stories on the "Olympic Legacy." Yeah, I know, it seems a bit early for that kind of speculation, but especially for those of us who will remain behind when all of the athletes, officials, and visitors have left, it is a matter of real concern.

From the point of view of the people here in the Hutong, the infrastructure improvements alone are worth the hassle of the games coming to town. We are being left with: a beautiful (huge) new airport terminal with an extra runway on the side; the beginnings of a rapid transit system worthy of the name; a whole lot of new buildings; wider streets; and vast belts of green where once was concrete.

Quiet Giants

Oh, yes - we're also getting some brand new sports venues, and all the rest are getting facelifts.

It does not take a futurist to know what will happen to these magnificent venues after the Paralympics closes in September. Some, like the beach volleyball arena, will come down instantly. Others will see their seating removed. A few - most notably Arup's iconic National Aquatics Center, or The Water Cube (that's [H20]^3 for my fellow geeks) have been designed with a post-Games life in mind.

But many, I'm afraid, will stand silent for much of every year.

There are two issues, separate but somewhat related.

Promoters must Promote

First is the dismal state of the live events business here in China. I do not put myself out as an expert in this field, but I've been working along the edges of the business for long enough to know that the problem here is neither the number of people who would attend a concert, nor the cost of a ticket, nor of a lack of bands, symphonies, stage plays, artists and the like who would be willing to come to Beijing.

The problem is with the promotions side of the business. Live event promotion is for all intents and purposes a state monopoly. With all due respect to the hard-working people in that monopoly, it is too often fair to say that events are poorly promoted, badly managed, and sometimes not fun at all. And that's just from the consumer point of view. I can only imagine how it must drive sponsors and tour managers nuts to deal with promotors who do not appear to be interested in helping to put on a killer event.

Just to take promotions: I read the weekly entertainment giveaways as closely as the next guy, and I find myself learning about events, plays, concerts, and the like either the day of or a week after the fact so regularly that it is infuriating. I can more readily find out about who is playing the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles next season than I can find out about a concert in Beijing a month from now. Frankly, unless I see an ad two weeks in advance in The Beijinger or I'm regularly checking the Emma website, I may never find out.

Unfortunately, I doubt major improvement - a stage where tour organizers and event sponsors are all talking about how easy and enjoyable it is to take a show through China - is in the offing anytime soon. That would require genuine competition in the live events promotion space, maybe opening it up to other state-owned media organizations like China International Television Corporation, Shanghai Media Group, China Radio International, or even the Phoenix Satellite folks. That is just not in the cards right now.

We need a new ball game

The second issue is the state of professional sports in China. There is more to creating a successful (dare I say "world-class") sports league that slapping some spiffy kit on a bunch of healthy young males.

If you want an idea of how far professional sports have progressed in China, take a look at professional soccer. There is a league. It has its hard-core of followers. But it is by no means the popular sensation here that it is even in Japan, much less anywhere in Europe.

I once had a long, drink-sodden discussion in a karaoke bar with one of China's senior soccer coaches. He blamed China's lack of soccer prowess on a whole range of issues: lack of endurance, lack of speed, inadequate diets as children, whatever. And he may have been right.

When you look around the world at some of the leading sports leagues, though, you start to see a pattern emerge. When a country is a global leader in a given sport - any sport - it is because of a system.

Take English soccer. Sure, there are plenty of foreign players in the Premier League. But English soccer got where it was because of the Football Association. With clubs in nearly every city, suburb, village, and hamlet across England, all ranked in over a dozen tiered leagues based on performance, you have a system designed to screen, identify, and develop talent from the largest possible pool over the longest possible time.

Take American baseball. The kids start with t-ball, then move on to little league, then high school, then college. At each level, only the best stay with it as they grow. Then there are seven levels of professional minor-leagues as development programs for the major leagues - last time I counted, there were over 329 teams in five countries all developing professional baseball players for the 30 major league teams.

American basketball and football rely much more heavily on high schools and universities to develop players, but given that these two sports are arguably the most successful and lucrative sports at the collegiate level, they do a fine job screening, recruiting, training, and preparing athletes. (I'm not in favor of this approach, personally. The Village Grouch and I both advocate either a minor-league system like baseball or an association system like English soccer. But that's not happening anytime soon.)

Japanese baseball, Canadian hockey, and Australian rugby all follow similar systems.

The formula for developing exciting professional team sports, therefore, is simple: create a system that by enabling broad participation at the earliest practical age ends up casting the widest possible net talent, opening the door for each player to get the the best opportunity for development, and you wind up with a huge pool of talented team players rather than a few stars surrounded by second- and third-rate players who are just no fun to watch.

China needs to find a way to duplicate the essence of systems like those of the Football Association and Major League Baseball in a way that is locally appropriate. Of course, the scale of such an undertaking means that it will take at least a generation to produce professional sports of a high caliber. But now is as good a time as any to start.

Wanted: motivated bureaucrats

If any of the above is to change, it will require some severe motivation from someplace very high in the government. More than just about creating sports leagues, holding concerts, or filling expensive venues, this is about creating industries of entertainment, ways to identify, nurture, showcase, and reward talented Chinese people as well as bring them the greatest talent from around the world.

If the hearts of the nation's policymakers are not stirred into passionate pursuit of robust live entertainment and sports industries by the prospect of the economic development and opportunities they would bring, perhaps the sight of these giant venues - national treasures - sitting empty and quiet will do the trick.

I think it will happen. China's leaders detest waste and love an opportunity.

Now if someone would just make the suggestion.

BOCOG's Edict to the Media

The Lanai in the Treetops
Grateful that the Fort DeRussy disco has quieted down
2153 hrs.

Among my vacation reads is BOCOG's guide for the foreign media covering the Olympics.

Admittedly, it's not quite a gripping as the rest of the stack of books I picked up while over here, but it provides some interesting clues about what we are going to see pumped out of Beijing this summer.

The entire 47mb tome can be downloaded from BOCOG by clicking the appropriate link on the press release page, if you're interested. Otherwise I'll be posting some thoughts once I slog though it.

McDonald's Mary Dillon on Olympic Sponsorship

In the Hutong
Stressing about my physical
2119 hrs.

AdAge interviews McDonald's Chief Marketing Officer Mary Dillon on Mickey D's plans for the big event this summer, including bringing 200 kids from around the world to Beijing.

The Darfur question comes up of course, and it's pretty clear that McD's is not going to be walking away from the Olympics.

Pretty clear though, that nobody is yet asking the big question: does Olympics sponsorship deliver return-on-investment?

McDonald's Mary Dillon on Olympic Sponsorship

In the Hutong
Stressing about my physical
2119 hrs.

AdAge interviews McDonald's Chief Marketing Officer Mary Dillon on Mickey D's plans for the big event this summer, including bringing 200 kids from around the world to Beijing.

The Darfur question comes up of course, and it's pretty clear that McD's is not going to be walking away from the Olympics.

Pretty clear though, that nobody is yet asking the big question: does Olympics sponsorship deliver return-on-investment?

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Heaven

In the Hutong
Asking for a "do-over" for my CNY break
1035 hrs

This morning brings us another noble but empty gesture in the long history of political activism in Hollywood.

I regard Steven Spielberg as as one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of the craft, a fine humanitarian, and, really, one of the good guys. I understand what motivated him to turn down the invitation of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games to join Zhang Yimou's team charged with creating the opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympics. I applaud him for following his conscience in the matter.

At the same time, I cannot help but wonder if his gesture, however noble the intent, will do any real good.

A Little Trouble with Big China

If there is a single lesson to be drawn from history, it is that the Chinese government has a passive-aggressive streak that is both wide and deep. Public efforts by governments, organizations, or individuals from outside of China to coerce or embarrass Beijing into a policy change on matters either foreign or domestic do not work. Instead, they consistently provoke a visceral negative response that is often seen by outsiders as disproportionate or even extreme.

There are cultural, historical, and political reasons for this. One need only review with a measure of empathy the past two centuries of China's international relations, its serial humiliations at the hands of the European powers, Japan, Russia, the United States and even, briefly, Vietnam to understand why no Chinese leader, government, or party could be seen to cave to a foreign demand.

And it is not that the Party will not stand for it - the Chinese people will not. A little time in Internet chat rooms in China or actually speaking to people here would tell you as much.

None of this, of course, a justification of unconscionable policy - a history of conquest and oppression or a national or cultural inferiority complex does not excuse bad behavior in any form.

But it calls into question the competence - or sincerity - of self-appointed diplomats who ostensibly set out to change such behavior when they do so without considering the medium, the messenger, and the delivery as carefully as they do message. Failing to do so may make good copy, but it does not lay the groundwork for change.

The Spielberg Ultimatum

For the sake of argument, let us grant Mr. Spielberg, Mia Farrow, and the other well-meaning luminaries of the Save Darfur Coalition the highly questionable assertion that the warlords in Khartoum would play the lickspittle toadies and do whatever Chinese diplomats told them to do.

Building the necessary consensus within the Chinese government and among Chinese policy-makers in order to get China's envoys to issue those orders requires navigating not only the currents of international relations, but more critically the byzantine politics of the Communist Party and the Chinese government.

Either Mr. Spielberg, Ms. Farrow, and the Save Darfur Coalition do not know any of this - which calls into question their competence as activists and public advocates - or they are ignoring it, which makes them insincere and suggests other motives are at work. I believe in these people, so I think the problem is the former.

Mr. Spielberg certainly deserves credit for making an effort: for sending a letter (publicly - oops) to Hu Jintao; for stepping out of his director's chair long enough to meet with China's special envoy to Sudan and the Chinese Ambassador in New York last September; and once again with diplomats in Los Angeles a few weeks ago.

Alas, Mr. Spielberg's prodigious talents as a filmmaker and his huge compassion for the suffering people of Darfur are not matched with talent in international relations. Ten months later, things are still bad in Darfur, so in Mr. Spielberg's assessment, the Chinese carry the full blame. No credit for the effort, mind you. No appreciation for efforts followed by encouragement to do more. This is Hollywood, folks. If you can't make a miracle in 10 months, you're out.

A pity, then, that the world does not work by the rules that govern filmmaking.

As a result, all of Mr. Spielberg's efforts with Beijing have come to so much less than they might have. How wonderful it would have been to have Mr. Spielberg as a genuine public ambassador, someone with credibility and real pull in China who could help make things happen. Or, indeed, to see China active in the resolution of the Darfur situation, finding out later that Mr. Spielberg and Ms. Farrow played critical roles in driving the process.

It could have worked that way. But that won't happen now. Instead, Mr. Spielberg has slammed the door on China.

And, rather than rethink their position, the Chinese will certainly return the favor. In fact, it is entirely possible that Mr. Spielberg's gesture will undo much or all of the good that has been done to date.

The Third Way

It is useful to remember that the implicit in the concept of diplomacy - whether conducted by governments or activists - is the idea that reaching a mutually agreeable outcome need not entail either appeasement or coercion.

Making strident pronouncements and issuing public ultimata is as odious - and, ultimately, as ineffective - as being nice to the big dragon (or bear, or falcon) and hoping that it will do what you want. Effective diplomacy demands determination, but it also requires tact.

I am a great admirer of Mr. Spielberg, Ms. Farrow, George Clooney, Don Cheadle, and many of the people involved with the Save Darfur Coalition. I sincerely hope they understand that if things are worse there now than they were a year ago, perhaps a change in tactics is in order, because pumping up the volume is certain not to work, despite the great hopes of those good people to the contrary.

And I sincerely hope that whoever replaces Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Dr. Rice, and Mr. Gates next November understands that as well.

For the sake of the people of Darfur.

Saying "SNAFU" in Chinese

Heqiao Tower, Guanghua Road, Beijing
Waiting for another meeting to start
1535 hrs.

Melinda Liu over at Newsweek blogs on the run-up to the Olympics in her Countdown to Beijing blog. Covering the Olympic ticket website meltdown, Melinda asks some really good questions.

She also quotes yours truly.

BOCOG Don't Get Web.

Worth a read. Her point is simple: right now everyone here is wondering what has gone wrong with the systems at BOCOG to allow this to happen. Clearly, the IT problem stems as much from radically incorrect assumptions about website usage, if not a complete breakdown of communications between the people building the web capability and the people giving them orders.

It would be really easy to point the finger at the IT suppliers, system integrators, and the like. Ugly truth time: Lenovo has the institutional memory of all of IBM's past Olympic IT sponsorships on their side. It strains credulity to believe the problem was the lack of advice from the tech team.

I think the issue is more systemic: none of the old folks running BOCOG - or even the IOC - truly understand how much of an online Olympics this is going to be. If 8 million people hitting the site sounds like a lot, what about 80 million, or 280 million, on the day of the opening ceremonies?

Good Morning, gentlemen. This is your Wake Up Call

The ticketing fiasco is a wake up call. BOCOG should by now realize that the online infrastructure for these games will be just as critical as the new airport, the new venues, the new public transport, and new hotels. Failure to address these issues will leave as much egg on Beijing's face come next August as any problems in meatspace.

Windows and Hoops

In the Hutong
Slowly decompressing
1456 hrs.

As Tim Chen makes his move from the leadership of Microsoft China to his new chair running the NBA here in the PRC, everyone seems to be asking two things: how badly will this damage Microsoft, and why is Tim doing this?

To answer the first question, you have to look at why he was brought into Microsoft in the first place.

The People Artist

When Mr. Chen arrived at Microsoft four years ago, the company faced challenges on all fronts. They were seen as distant and arrogant by consumers and the channel, all of whom ; manufacturers resented the company and brazenly shipped computers loaded with pirated copies of Windows; the government was making noise about Microsoft's perceived monopoly and was openly supporting Linux and other free and open source software; the company was getting no credit for its research and development efforts in the PRC; and, to make things worse, relations between Microsoft's own people in Redmond and Beijing were hardly optimal, fraught by misunderstandings on both sides.

Certainly from an outsider's point of view, all of these things were getting worse - so much so, in fact, that many of us wondered if Mr. Chen had taken leave of his senses by leaving the rapidly-recovering Motorola to go to work for a sinking ship.

As it turned out, the move was a good one for all involved. The company's own press release suggests how things are getting better, but there is more to the story than Microsoft is giving away.

(Note, before I go on, that I am not what you would call a Microsoft fanboy, nor do I consider myself a particular Friend of Tim's. I'm speaking with an outsiders perspective here.)

Turning a Corner

In the space of four years, Mr. Chen ensured that the company reversed its slide with all of its critical audiences, not by micromanaging, but by catalyzing change in each problem area through personal attention and careful appointments of key managers.

Across China, the company began rebuilding its reputation with consumers, enlisting deeper support among the channel, getting key manufacturers to begin paying for pre-installed copies of Windows, reinvigorating its relationships with government across all portfolios and all levels, and making significant progress in its fight against piracy. The government's outspoken efforts to drive the adoption of Linux have faded, and the company is getting more credit for its R&D.

Internally, Mr. Chen pulled the company together by installing experienced, China-savvy leadership in each department. He built a bridge between Redmond and the "sub" in Beijing through increased contacts and an all-out effort to educate headquarters in the challenges - and opportunities - the company faced in China, while at the same time proffering solutions rather than making excuses.

After Tim

To credit Mr. Chen alone with all of the improvements in Microsoft's fortunes in China over the last four years may be stretching the point. But as my father was fond of pointing out, a fish stinks from the head. At the very least, Mr. Chen was a critical agent of change, applying effort and attention in those places where he saw that properly-applied effort would help turn specific problems around.

What he left behind was a company heading in a far different direction here than it was when he found it, with the people and systems in place to continue that momentum. Assuming Microsoft can choose a successor (whom, for the moment, remains The Player to be Named Later) with a vision that will ensure Microsoft continues to address its problems and grab its opportunities in China, the company's future in the PRC looks bright indeed.

After Microsoft

By all rights, Mr. Chen's efforts at Microsoft should have won him greater rewards and opportunities inside the company. In all likelihood, that was not in the cards. Growth for Microsoft is now a matter of adding and acquiring new businesses, and the company's senior leadership is fairly set in place. Mr. Chen's growth opportunities at Microsoft would probably have been largely limited to growing the China business incrementally. That's not a bad opportunity, but it's probably not the sort of thing to keep a guy with solid entrepreneurial/intrapreneurial instincts happy for long. Having to fly economy class on trans-Pacific business trips probably didn't help.

The NBA makes great sense. While people closer to Tim than I have joked that he was making the change to get Olympics tickets, my bet is that he is even more excited by the scope and depth of opportunity open to the NBA in China specifically and Asia generally:

• First, the NBA is seriously ramping up current activities, and they go way beyond player recruitment, licensing, and the occasional exhibition game. The NBA China Games, NBA Madness, NBA FIT Camp, Jr. NBA, and the NBA Cares Tour, plus all of the work with the Olympics, Special Olympics, and Paralympics should keep Mr. Chen busy for a bit.

• Care and feeding of sponsors like Haier (the official HDTV of the NBA), Lenovo, (the official PC Partner of the NBA), DHL Express (the offical Logistics Partner of the NBA in the Asia Pacific region) will be important, as will cultivating new sponsors the NBA wants and needs for its broadcasts and live activities in the region.

• Deeper licensing opportunities, extending past the NBA to include teams and individual players, would benefit greatly from someone like Tim with his experience fighting IPR violations.

• There are a host of unspoken opportunities implicit in cloning the NBA in China. The NBA's partnership with the Chinese Basketball Association has a lot of room to grow.

Plus, let's face it: the NBA is more than sports, it's show business. Hopefully, Mr. Chen will have a lot of fun.

Congratulations, Tim.

Cross-post: Thierry Henry and the Care and Feeding of Talent

We write about sport but rarely here at the Review, and that's because it is written about so widely and so well elsewhere. But when something happens in the world of athletic endeavor that seems to call for comment, we will. In this case, it is the seemingly ho-hum news of the departure of Arsenal team captain Thierry Henry for Arsenal's Champions League bete noir, Barcelona.

While it is by no means easy to be an American living in China and supporting any English football club, satellite television and the Internet do a passable job of keeping me and my fellow soccer fans here in Beijing plugged into the goings on. What I have also discovered is that, if nothing else, distance lends perspective.

So despite the frustration that accompanies my favorite team losing its most valuable player, not only do I understand the reasons for Mr. Henry's leave-taking, I think it offers an excellent lesson for managing talent, especially for those of us running businesses in the people-rich but talent-poor service industries in the PRC.

Why He Left

Thierry Henry spent 8 years at Arsenal, and they were good ones, too. During his stay the club won the League and Football Association cups multiple times, set a new, seemingly invincible record for consecutive wins, moved into a brand new stadium, and earned the grudging respect of their opponents. Henry himself did brilliantly, and by October 2005 became the top scorer in Arsenal's long and storied history.

The one accomplishment that remained out of Arsenal's - and Henry's - grasp was the European championship. A single point loss in the finals of that competition, combined with the gradual departure of the team's core players, made it increasingly clear that the Champions Cup victory would be a long time coming.

In other words, Henry had been in one place for eight years - a long time in any profession. He had accomplished much, but he had achieved all he could reasonably hope for in his current situation. And after being tapped as captain of an increasingly inexperienced team, he found himself saddled with the hopes of a squad that was used to winning. No one knew better than Henry that what lay ahead of Arsenal is years of rebuilding, not a redux of its halcyon years of 2000-2004. Leadership is a lonely thing, and there is nothing lonelier than leading a group of much younger people when the odds are against you.

What the new situation at Barcelona offers is a warmer climate, a team made up of peers, and an real shot at the one victory that has eluded him in his career - the Champions League - within the few years he has left on the pitch.

Feeding Stars

Here are the lessons I'm taking away from this situation, lessons I won't forget because every defeat Arsenal suffers over the next three years will serve as a reminder:

1. Even Stars Get Bored - or Burned Out. In China as in athletics, tenures are short because the pace of life is grueling and because change is constant, and not everybody is Cal Ripken, Jr. The situation you provide to a person today will probably not suit them forever, no matter how many new challenges you throw at them, and sometimes the harder you try to keep them in place, the more frustrated they'll get.

2. More Responsibility is Not Always the Answer. Many managers tend to forget the simple fact that each person is motivated differently. Some may rise to the challenge of having an challenging new assignment given to at them after five years, others may bristle. When motivating a star, you either need to offer something that touches his or her deepest desires and motivations, or you start working on a transition plan.

3. Offer a Realistic Route to their Goals. Or, help them go somewhere that they can reach them. Do everything practical to build a situation in house where the star will achieve the things that are important to him or her. If it can't be done, don't push it. Send them on their way with your blessing.

It's not the Star, it's the Galaxy

4. Even a Star Needs Mentors. True achievers have reached that point largely because they have spent their lives learning from different people, and taking the daily counsel of people they admire and respect. When you take that away, leaving them with a significantly reduced group of mentors - even when some of those mentors are peers - they feel like they've stopped growing. Real stars know that they bask in the reflected light of others, sharing their energy, measuring themselves against others, and finding their own unique strengths as a result.

In short, stars need understanding, genuine respect, and an ecosystem of like individuals to thrive. Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman, in their book 
Organizing Genius, taught me that extraordinary people are happiest - and accomplish the most - when they are part of great groups.

Bon voyage, Thierry, and bon chance. Thanks for the victories, and enjoy Barca.