missing scotty

i have been spending a lot of time in china. this is not time that i am particularly enjoying, or that i want to spend, but work is work and off i go. the role is managing a group of people, who i cannot have a direct conversation with. i have an interpreter to help, but have started to figure out that there is more than language in the way. this is one more step in the process of becoming an expat manager, realizing that all people are the same, but that there are differences which cannot be forgotten.

the office i am visiting is different than the others in the company. it was acquired and has not been brought into the cultural fold of the larger entity. we have locations all over the world, others in asia, but this one is the most foreign. there is a level of isolation that is driven by more than language. the feeling of distance, or possibly highly indirect style, is everywhere in china. as conversations are taking place i find myself questioning what the person on the other side is really saying. the words convey a message, but i sense i am missing the actual meaning.

this is larger than the team i am meeting with, it has come up in almost every interaction. i have noticed selective communication in taxis, restaurants and the hotel. after years of living in malaysia and becoming accustomed to a less than western approach, i am truly shocked at just how indirect an entire city of people can apparently be. i began to wonder how deeply seeded this was. what could be fundamentally different to explain what i was seeing?

the obvious answers were living under communism, religious or language differences or the impact of historical feudalism and dynastic emperors. there were plenty of socio-ecomomic, political and historical areas to consider. i felt as though i might never really get an answer that would provide the clarity i wanted. but then it happened, during a conversation i tried to use a cultural example to explain a point and i realized that chinese engineers lack a key element of knowledge that all the other engineers i have ever worked with have had.

i have been in situations where language was an issue. i have worked in former communist countries and interacted with people still living under communist regimes. i have traveled in historically feudal societies, and have never felt the way i do in china. all software engineers i have worked with have had one item of similarity no matter where they came from. all had been introduced to engineering by montgomery scott, aka scotty.

while talking to someone in china i wanted to use the recurring theme of kirk calling down to the engine room during a crisis and asking how long a critical reconfiguration would take. scotty would reply with something like, “it will take 8 hours captain”. kirk would command, “you have one mr. scott” and hang up without listening to further argument. scotty of course is the classic technical person professional, competent and a bit conservative. kirk is the classic business manager, dealing with stressful situations which the technology guys do not fully understand.

scotty is one of the reasons technical people run head long into hero mode. they were brought up on years of scotty proving that he could do 8 hours of work in one hour when the chips were down. he could perform under the highest pressure and quietly save the ship from destruction. technology guys eat this up, they want to play with their engines and do the impossible. with age and experience this might get washed away, but more likely technical managers just get better at anticipating dangers and managing up.

what does this have to do with china? when i said, “remember on star trek, when kirk would call down to scotty?” i was saw a confused stare and was told by the interpreter that the government does not allow chinese to watch star trek. my head was spinning with the concept of a part of the world, or worse a group of software engineers, who have not watched generations of enterprise crews accomplish the impossible. how can any software shop that does not expect a captain to leave the bridge and lose his life while patching the deflector array stay motivated to follow into crisis.

i asked if this upsets the chinese people. the reply was “we have become accustomed to the pain”, which is exactly what i mean about being told one thing that clearly means another. americans might reply “yell yes, and i am not going to take it any more”. malaysian’s might reply, “yes, but there is nothing we can do to change it”. the answer in china does not even admit the anger, it shades the truth.

as i reflect on this, i remember spock in “the wrath of khan” when he tells kirk that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. i also remember the federation has done away with private property and capitalism, while it understands self-sacrifice for the greater good. these are clearly ideas closer to communism than the decadent western ideals of enlightenment.

this all leaves me wondering what the leadership in china is so afraid of. why do they want to keep the federation away from the people?

let your engineers be scotty.