CINCINNATI, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- Although nearly everyone in the world is feeling the ripple effect of the current global financial crisis, an optimistic leader from a well-known U.S. multinational business sees an opportunity in such a crisis.
In an exclusive interview with Xinhua on Friday here, Robert McDonald, chief operating officer of the Procter & Gamble Company (P&G), showed the two Chinese characters he wrote himself with the Chinese writing brush: Wei Ji, meaning crisis in English.
"In my speech in Brussels on Thursday, I borrowed the two words from the Chinese culture: Wei Ji," McDonald, who has been with P&G for almost 30 years, said. "Wei means danger and Ji means opportunity. So you should see opportunity in danger. I think the Chinese people are very smart, the two words put together mean crisis."
AVOID BECOMING A BOILED FROG
"Businesses can often become the boiling of frog," McDonald said. "Frog is cold-blooded, so if you take a frog and put in the pan of boiling water, the frog will jump immediately. But if you take the frog into the pan of luke-warm water and increase the temperature slowly, the frog will not notice the change of real temperature and eventually die from the boiling water."
"The point of the story is that businesses can become the frog and the environment changes around them, they are not changing quickly enough to adapt themselves to that new environment, so they become the way of frogs," he said.
In business, the danger emerges slowly. "You have to be aware of the environment and be ready to change," he said.
Take the Fortune 50 in 1955 for example. Only nine of them are on the list today. So, 41 of the top 50 top companies 44 year ago are no longer on the list. "We don't want this happen to P&G, which is on the list, P&G has been around for 171 years and we want it be around for another 171 years and more," he said.
LEADERSHIP IS WHAT COUNTS
Nowadays, companies are facing rapid-changing environment and crises, such as the global volatility and change which saw consumer spending down and costs up. Businesses, big or small, call for people with effective leadership to help them out of crises and lead them to success.
"What is critical is leadership," he said. "What makes good companies is leadership."
"Leadership is nothing more than an individual observing," he said. "You have some people watching you and say 'That's our leadership!' So, leadership is a label for our behavior."
"At Procter&Gamble, the leadership and its behaviors are watched, and they will become models, the models we call five Es," he said, referring to Envision, Engage, Energize, Enable and Execute.
Envision means to create the future; Engage requires efforts to build relationship and collaboration; Energize calls for efforts to inspire others; Enable means to build capability; and Execute means to deliver outstanding results.
Apart from his tight schedule, McDonald always manages to devote significant time to teaching leadership principles, values and ethics inside and outside the business.
"I definitely believe we can train the leadership," he said. "I spend a lot of time teaching leadership, and the hardest thing to teach is the leadership's love, the love for the people they are working with, the need of love, because that love is too fundamental to the authenticity of leadership."
"The leader has an ambition for the company, but not the ambition for themselves, that's the authenticity of the leadership," he said.
Leadership is an important part of the P&G values, which include integrity, ownership, passion for winning and trust.
"Look back to my military days when we are in dangerous situations, I really learnt to love the people I worked with and learnt to rely on them and they relying on me to get out of the situation," he said.
McDonald graduated 13th in his West Point class and served as an army captain in the U.S. armed forces until 1980 when he joined the Procter&Gamble.
"I joined the Procter&Gamble because it is committed to improving the life of our consumers," he said. "Improving lives through leadership is always important in my life."
"I have never in all my life, in any career, in any country, at any time, met a person who tries to fail. Everyone I have met wants to succeed. So the job of the leader is to help people succeed," he tells new recruits, colleagues and countless other individuals whose lives he has touched with his guidance and counsel.
A Harvard Business School professor, who spent a lot of time studying the company, wrote an article saying that "the reason why we are successful is because we spent a lot of time training staff members of our company about principles and values of our company," he said.
"We use our history and archives as a way to train our people to know the history of our company," he said.
ĦĦĦĦABILITY TO LEARN
"Whether you have an ability to learn makes difference between a successful leader and an unsuccessful one," he said.
"I did not expect to live outside the United States for 15 years, the world has changed, so I have to change, too. When you look at my bio, the foreign language is not my best subject. But, when you move out of your culture, you have to learn foreign language, because if you do not learn the language, you do not learn the culture; if you do not learn the culture, you do not get in touch with the people. You cannot touch life and change life," he said.
His first overseas assignment came in 1991 when he was appointed general manager of the Philippines. In 1995, he moved to Japan as vice president and general manager of the laundry and cleaning products business. In each stage of his career, he has left businesses in a better place than he found them -- stronger, more capable and energized.
"The challenge is that we've grown up in a country, in a culture, so we are cultured in a certain way. Culture, if not adaptable, to leaders globally may be a barrier. So, it is very important to have the ability to learn, because over a long period of career," he said.
One example shows how important it is to learn a foreign language and foreign culture.
"In Japanese, there is a word called Tagami, it is actually (made up by) two Chinese words, a character for hand and a character for paper. Put them together, in Japanese it is a letter. But in Chinese it is tissue (Shou Zhi). So, in Japan, if you see the sign of Tagami, you go into a post office. In China, when you see the sign of tissue, you go into a bathroom."
"So, please be careful, otherwise you will make grave mistakes," he said, with a laughter.
ĦĦĦĦDIFFERENT NEEDS OF PRODUCTS
In Japan and China, one of P&G's top skin care products is skin whitening. Olay skin whitening is a very popular product in China and Japan. "It seems that Asian consumers like to have white skin. That makes sense. In both China and Japan, when you see people playing golf, they will put on long-sleeve shirt, a hat, sometimes even under an umbrella," he said.
"Why skin whitening is so important in Asia? When in Japan, I ask my Japanese friends, they told me Geisha have white skin," he said.
"So, in Asia, white skin is a symbol of beauty. Why white skin is a symbol of beauty? I don't know, but in business you have to ask questions why five or six times before you get to know the answer. For the answer to this question, I guess that in Asia, civilizations developed around rice paddies, those people who are working in rice paddies have darker skin, those people who are in a castle or somewhere, you have white skin. so white skin represents a symbol of position, wealth and beauty," he said.
But for our consumers in Europe and America, they have skin darkening. So why?
"Again, I don't know the answer. But I can guess. When I was young, after the school holidays, our teacher asked us to write an essay about where we went for holidays. Those whose parents are wealthy, they can go to Florida during winters. Those who went to Florida can write beautiful essays, because they have their skin darkened from pool," he said.
"Language exists in a culture. Translating a language into another is to translate it into another language," he said.
SINO-US TIES
On the day when the exclusive interview was conducted, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in China for a visit.
"I think the U.S. government recognizes the importance of China," said McDonald, who is also director of the U.S.-China Business Council.
"I understand the Chinese people," he said, adding that during his visit to China, he has spoken with leaders and ordinary people there.
"Everybody understands the importance of the partnership between China and the United States," he said. "It won't do any good for not to have a strong partnership."
Special Report: Global Financial Crisis
