My job in many ways involves me being a chameleon. Last week I was sales, purchasing, the president's assistant, and a travel agent. Today I was a machine trouble shooter, shipper, trainer, and outsourcing sales manager. Those are pretty standard roles for me.
Still today I was caught a little off guard about a new role my boss wants me to do. A little background first. In China, the top people never get involved early in any business meeting or new project. They leave that to an underling. Some businessmen and politicians even have designated people for this. The underling handles the details and works out unsavory or tough things then the bosses meet at the end and shake hands. The idea being the big guys are too busy and they don't want to play hard (publicly) or bust chops.
So my boss is taking a trip for a big meeting in Shanghai (we are talking meeting with CEO's and other big guys), which means he can't be seen as too involved early on. He also wants to throw a little curve ball toward the guys he is meeting. That means I'm coming and giving a presentation in Chinese to these big shots.
The fun thing is that when I go in and give this presentation I will be introduced as an IT professional. Frankly, that couldn't be further from the truth. I know next to nothing about IT. But I'm not paid to say no. So on Friday evening I will be an IT professional.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment