Learning the Winners Mindset from Terry Guo Tai Ming of Foxconn

Learn the attitude and aptitude of successful entrepreneur Terry Guo, founder of Foxconn, world largest contract manufacturer of commutation and electronics systems and devices. Learn his views about the non-teaching value of success and the valuable lessons from failures. Learn how one can scale up to mega size and yet remain agile and flexible. It is not just elephant, but, dinosaur, that can dance.

While Foxconn may not be most profitable and valuable company in the world, its size and speed, in the subcontract manufacturing world of communications and electronics are well-known. If we want to learn how dinosaur, not just elephant, can dance, then we can learn much from Terry Guo, the founder of Foxconn. Many of the consumer electronic devices that you have may have come from Foxconn such as your iPhone, iPod and iPads.

This post is the first of a series on the sayings of Terry Guo gathered through the internet and organized from the view of an entrepreneur hoping to make his business a big success like Terry's.

Here is the mind-map and I have also added similar sayings of other management and business gurus for linking you other relevant sources. Hope you will find them useful.

I have tried to consolidate the sayings of great and successful people together in a big mind-map. See this Success Principles from Li Ka Shing Quotes.

Back to Terry's teaching on the Success Mindset:

On Terry's "success as a very bad teacher", there is the contrary view of the Appreciative Inquiry, which advocates careful study into the what and why that make you successful. Fixing what is wrong does not ensure you will win in the next bid. You really have to find out what the customers truly want. We have to watch out for our defect fixing mindset causing us to forget about innovating for the better. See Mind Value: The Mentality & Danger of TQM. Nevertheless, Terry is warning us about the danger of success, especially success that comes easily. It has the tendency to make us proud and make us think that we are right where the reasons for our success may not have anything to do with us at all! e.g. Tsunami or earthquake in certain may affect the supply of certain products and create a temporary rise of demand for your products that is of lesser standards.

Remember, the better thinking mindset if not A or B, but keeping both in dynamic balance. See Thinking Frameworks for better way to think and learn.

Next post: Leadership and HRM of Terry Guo Tai Ming of Foxconn

Lim Liat (C) 29 March 2013

Communication According to Zeng Zi

Ancient Sage reminds us that our character, attitudes and body languages are key factors in communication besides the words we used our messages.

The purpose of communication is to gain understanding, build relationships and accomplish things together. Western mindset may place accomplishment of tasks before relationships. But Chinese and may be Eastern mindset will place relationships before the tasks.  The key point is relationship building is important and communication is more than just the words exchanged.

Stephen Covey's 7 Habits for effective people has a habit 5 seek first to understand and than be understood.  I think it is a key principle for communication.  The ancient Chinese has much to say about communication and relationship building too. I will just quote a simple one from Zeng Zi 曾子, a disciple of Confucius and a senior of Mencius.

 【论语泰伯第八】... 君子所贵乎道者三:
    1. 动容貌,斯远暴慢矣;
    2. 正颜色,斯近信矣;
    3. 出辞气,斯远鄙倍矣

The wise gentleman values the following 3 virtuous behaviors:

1. His demeanor and manners are far from crudeness and snobbishness.
2. His facial expression is accepting and trustworthy (near to integrity).
3. His conversational tone is far from vulgar and unreasonableness.

It shows us that we communicate with our total being such as the status of our heart (peace, happy, grateful or anger and bitter), attitudes, body behavior, facial expression and tone of our voices.

There are some people, usually you can hear them over the radio or read them in their social networking posts, when in trying to impress and be different have erred to wrong side of being crude, rough, vulgar and hatred.  The challenge for good communication is to create harmony, agreement, acceptance and call for actions. We can learn a few things from Zeng Zi.

A few takeaway we can learn are:

1. Character building is a key part of communication.
2. Our mental conditions and attitudes affect communication too. Keeping our heart at rest and being  hopeful and sincere are important.
3. Body Language and Voice control are key factors too. Don't be snobbish, crude, rude, vulgar but be polite, respectful, welcoming and sincere.

Lim Liat (C) 7 March 2013

Leading in Uncertain Times - Learning from Ps Andy Stanley

The building blocks for building a successful enterprise and the principles for leading an organization in uncertain times are essentially the same according to Andy Stanley. We just need to do more for clarity, flexibility and transparency. This reinforces the methodology for building successful enterprises.

I have been listening to Andy Stanley's Podcast for many years. Recently, he has one titled "Leading in Uncertain Times" which is one of the subject that should interests everyone in times of uncertainty best coined as VUCAD, Volatility, Uncertainty, Complex, Ambiguous and Deception. I have written on this topic in Wisdom for Success in a 21st Century VUCA World and shall be giving such a talk at the ITMA Singapore AGM Dinner on 19 March 2013.

I had previously wrote about Andy' earlier podcast on "Better before Bigger" on Learning CPM from Andy Stanley the Pastor. I think it would be very useful to combine the two podcast together and present them in a mind-map shown below:

The top yellow branch shows us how to grow a enterprise or a church. The lower blue branch shows us the three principles of how to lead in uncertain times. The interesting part is that the 3 principles of clarity, flexibility and transparency match exactly the 3 building blocks for a  growing an enterprise. The way to build successful organization is reinforced by the principles to run enterprise in uncertain times! We just need to hold on to them more and communicate them more often in the present uncertainty.

Lim Liat (c) 6 March 2013