Engagement & retention in China

China: looking for meaning in the Corporate environment

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

Having a dinner with some of my EMBA students and my young assistant I had the opportunity to discuss about an important challenge the Chinese society is facing: the loss of values and meaning. The huge transformation Chinese people are living brings the feeling of having lost common values. The ones from traditional culture have somehow lost their strenghts after the cultural revolution, the new ones coming from the West are accepted but felt as external. The young generation feels lost, without points of reference in this extremely fast change. The more mature people are worried about this lost of ethical values and standards. 
In this context my assistant explained me that many young people look for values and meaning in the organizational context, they are attracted by strong corporate culture that can give them a sense of belonging and "spiritual", "value based" directions. In the meanwhile they do an individual search for alternative thinking where they may find a path to happiness. Positive psychology starts to have a strong appeal in China: trainings, videos about this new approach are becoming more and more commonly distributed here in China and this seems to be one of the possible answers to young Chinese' quest of sense of community and meaning. Here attached an example of a video on Positive psycology by a Harvard Professor posted on web channels in China with Chinese subtitles: See the Video
If there is a lack of well being in current Chinese society, on the other end it is important that a movement of search is under going. 
Even if personally I feel difficult to find an answer to life meaning only in the corporate environment, for sure in terms of engagement and retention  the companies have now a huge opportunity. If they find a way to build a real sense of belonging they may succeed in engaging the young staff not only using, the less effective, economic incentive. We are observing today a rise of quest of collective sense, hopefully organization can be the first step to find an answer and than maybe collective society will follow.

Marco Polo Consulting training

Cross-Cultural training Faist-Minigears in Suzhou

By Giorgia Madonno - Marco Polo Consulting


Here below some pics form our last training in Suzhou:
an advanced session on Cross-culture. 

We talked about Italian and Chinese communication and conflict management, how to be a good leader in China, Generation Y, Women leadership and Innovation in China

We also invited Andrea Fenn from Fireworks to introduce social media in China. A lot of discussion, exercises and contents. 

University EMBA lessons

MIP-TONGJI University EMBA
HR & Organizational behaviors class

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting



Today I started my EMBA class at MIP-Tongji University in Shanghai.

The lessons are about HR & Organizational behaviors. The EMBA students are all Chinese entrepreneurs and top managers in the industries of Design, Urban planning, Engineering, Real Estate.

During this first 4 days we spoke about Engagement and Performance, HR Business Partnership, Staffing, Performance management, Learning, Succession planning & talent management, Compensation & benefit.

Here below the Syllabus:

Leaders in different industries, organizational levels and business growth stages may encounter similar but not identical challenges in terms of people and organization, but they will have the same objective: improving performance and engagement within their organization. Taking the perspective of organizational leaders, we are going to discuss the main organizational challenges and to provide approaches, knowledge, theory and best practices to improve the effectiveness of organizations and people.

The course is structured in 2 main parts:

1)      Human Resources Management

2)      Organizational behaviour

The “Human Resources Management” part focuses on the most important processes and approaches finalized to improve performance and engagement in the organization. Human Resources can be managed having a business partnership approach and playing several integrated roles: Strategist, Change agent, Employee Champion, in addition to the most traditional Administrative expert role. We will discuss about Leaders and HR function responsibilities on people and organization. Through examples and best practices, we see how the recruitment process can be optimized in order to bring the right talents in the organization. We focus on long term plans for talent identification and development in harmony with the company business strategy. Competencies, learning, performance management, compensation and benefit are the other HR aspects the course is focusing on. 

We study how to set up the structure and manage the development of an organization, manage effectively the change, leverage the corporate culture asset and communicate internally and externally having in mind an employer branding approach.

The “Organizational Behaviour part could be defined as the “study of people’s behaviour within organisations and relative dynamics”, in other words how people and teams influence and view the organisation, in order to reach their objectives, as a group or as an individual, and therefore achieve the success of the organisation.

Lessons focus on individuals, team and organization, they show how to manage group dynamics and each person’s personal contribution, in the most positive way.

We see the value and challenges of individual diversity, and aspects linked to self- awareness and management, personality, emotional intelligence, career anchors and values, stress management, cognitive styles and cultural diversity.

We therefore cover topics related to the team: group dynamics, stages in team development, the roles in a team, the potential dysfunctions of a team and how to overcome them.

During the course there is also a session focused on Coaching theory and practice for leaders. Coaching is a very powerful approach that is more and more used by leaders and external coaches to develop talents or people who have to improve their performance in the organization. Coaching can be used to address behavioural change, lack of performance, career management, cross-cultural or communication challenges. Coaching is a perfect topic to close our course: it is both an HR practice and a managerial skill for  organizational behaviours improvement .

Some of the materials and examples discussed in class focus on situations specific to China and organization operating in “knowledge intensive” service industries; others represent global best practices and knowledge and thought not directly linked to your current environment can provide ideas and approaches that you can use to improve the effectiveness of your organization.