Understanding Context & Trust - Video 5

Summary

This video, created by Aspire Institute, covers the importance of understanding the context in which businesses operate, as discussed by Kim. It highlights the concept of contextual intelligence where Kim talks about the biases in assuming what works in one context applies to another without adaptation. The discussion extends to comparing Google and Tencent's unique workplace cultures, demonstrating how distinct contexts require different approaches. Kim emphasizes that while the essence of practices may be universal, the application is context-dependent, underscoring the need for translating and adapting strategies to local environments.

Highlights

• The essence of contextual intelligence means recognizing biases and adapting strategies accordingly. 🤔
• Even technological expertise doesn't automatically transfer across different cultural contexts. 🌐
• Google’s 'googly' culture might not fit everywhere - Tencent’s strategy is an example of this. 🧐
• Context-driven strategies can create successful business ecosystems, like Tencent's Antarctic Club. 🐧
• Adapting ideas to local contexts isn't just beneficial - it's crucial for success! 🎯

Key Takeaways

• Context matters! 🎯 Businesses can't just copy-paste strategies from one place to another without considering local differences.
• Google might be 'googly,' but not every company can be! 🏢 Different work cultures need different practices.
• Tencent's approach of supporting its employees' startups is genius! 🚀 They maintain a relationship even when employees leave.
• Cultural nuances are pivotal - a strategy suiting California may not fit seamlessly in China. 🌏
• Translation and adaptation of strategies are essential - it's more than just transferring knowledge! 📚

Overview

In this insightful video by Aspire Institute, Kim delves into the nuances of applying business strategies across different contexts. He introduces the idea of contextual intelligence, emphasizing that while expertise and technology are transferable, the successful application of strategies heavily depends on understanding and adapting to local contexts. Whether it be entrepreneurship or corporate strategies, the one-size-fits-all approach rarely works.

Kim uses intriguing examples to underline this concept, comparing the work cultures of Google and Tencent. While Google is celebrated for its 'googly' corporate culture, Tencent approaches employee engagement and innovation differently, proving that even successful models require contextual adaptation. This is particularly evident as Tencent fosters an ecosystem where employee startups are supported, maintaining connections even beyond direct employment.

The discussion extends to broader insights, such as the critical need for translational science within multinational companies. Kim illustrates how corporations like Google and Tencent need to translate and adapt strategies from one context to another for efficacy and success. He emphasizes that cultural and contextual awareness can turn potential pitfalls into thriving strategies, making it clear that context is king in strategy application.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Contextual Intelligence The chapter begins by introducing the concept of contextual intelligence, which arises from the author's attempts to synthesize ideas about context, action, entrepreneurship, and strategy. Encouragement from an academic dean led to the author compiling these ideas into a Harvard Business Review article focused on contextual intelligence.
• 01:30 - 03:30: The Concept of Contextual Intelligence The chapter titled 'The Concept of Contextual Intelligence' addresses the inherent biases present in human cognition. It highlights how people often rely on recent events (recency bias) or readily available information (availability bias) to assume applicability of past experiences to future situations. The discussion suggests an awareness of these biases is crucial for developing contextual intelligence, which refers to the ability to understand and navigate different contexts by recognizing the role these biases play in influencing our judgments and decisions. The chapter might include examples or takeaways from classes or educational settings as the transcript mentions classroom discussions.
• 03:30 - 06:30: Case Study: Cement Industry and Context Variability The chapter investigates the challenge of transferring skills and success factors across different countries within the cement industry. It examines a study with large sample data, which reveals that success as a cement plant manufacturer in one country, such as Brazil, doesn’t necessarily translate to success in another, like Spain. This is due to the variability in contexts across different nations, emphasizing the complexity of international operations in the cement industry.
• 06:30 - 09:30: Google's Practices and Global Applicability The chapter titled 'Google's Practices and Global Applicability' explores the challenges and intricacies involved in transferring technological expertise across different global contexts. By using the example of cement manufacturing, which has remained unchanged for 150 years, the discussion highlights the distinction between having technological know-how and understanding the diverse contexts in which this expertise is applied. The narrative emphasizes the need to adapt to different worker expectations, government regulations, market conditions, and commercial frameworks that may vary significantly from one region to another.
• 09:30 - 11:30: Tencent's Unique Approach to Workforce Management In this chapter, a unique issue in workforce management is illustrated through the example of cement buying practices in India. It highlights the challenges related to quality control in material procurement. Unlike institutional buyers in industrialized Western countries, in India, the cement is sometimes adulterated with water, which raises concerns about safety and the integrity of construction. A personal anecdote is shared where a family member had to supervise the building process to ensure the cement was not tampered with, emphasizing the lengths one might have to go to in order to maintain quality.
• 11:30 - 14:30: Contextual Adaptation in Different Environments The chapter discusses the concept of contextual adaptation in different environments, highlighting real-world examples such as the tragic earthquakes in Turkey and Morocco. It emphasizes the importance of adhering to building codes to prevent disasters. The chapter illustrates how natural disasters can reveal the necessity for better regulations and adaptations in construction practices.
• 14:30 - 18:30: Translational Science and Knowledge Transfer The chapter "Translational Science and Knowledge Transfer" discusses the importance of understanding the context in which one is trying to apply a specific body of expertise. This involves being aware of the surroundings and conditions that affect the implementation and success of knowledge transfer.

Understanding Context & Trust - Video 5 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Kim I was um uh developing these these ideas about context and action context and Entrepreneurship and strategy and so on and uh AR then Dean uh uh Nan said to me why don't you pull these ideas together in a in a in a succinct uh Harvard Business review article so I wrote this article called contextual intelligence and really the um uh the
• 00:30 - 01:00 the point of the article was to say that it's surprising to me how uh how in a sense how bias we all are of course we know this from those who study cognitive biases right that we automatically tend to assume you know these all have fancy labels like recency bias availability bias Etc but really what it comes down to is that you tend to assume that what you just went through is probably applicable to the next yes so if you ask you know as I do in class sometimes uh Jan riffkin another colleague that we
• 01:00 - 01:30 all know and I did this analysis where we uh showed that if you look at really large sample data and that's in this article in really large sample data um uh it's very hard to see evidence that if you're a good uh cement plant manufacturer in one country uh that your skills are going to transfer over to another country automatically yeah so if you're in Brazil and if you go to uh Spain it's not clear that just because you work there it's going to work
• 01:30 - 02:00 somewhere else even in the same technology making cement has not changed for 150 years um it's you know Limestone and clinker and this and that it hasn't changed but even something as state as that it's very hard to of course your technological expertise transfers but your ability to connect to the context is is another bucket of stuff that you need to pick because the worker expectations might be different the government context would be different the market context will be different the commercial constructs would be different you know in in mexic go in the old days
• 02:00 - 02:30 they would buy cement one bag at a time yes in some of the industrialized West you would buy you know institutional buyers so simple examples like that in India you would adulterate the cement with water and then worry about the house collapsing the next right so uh I remember when we were my dad was building a house for us in in Bangalore yes that was a big worry is is the cement going to be contaminated got it and so you we one of the family members had to literally go and stand on the building side to make sure that they weren't mixing
• 02:30 - 03:00 because they would to use it some elsewhere use it somewhere else and and you know by the way you know like we've been fortunate to have lots of people from Turkey come inava and and the the the the the recent tragic earthquakes in in turkey and the disaster of those building to do some some something about building codes not being respected we had there was earthquake in Morocco last night yes and similar similar types of things happening there also so this this this article really contal intelligence tries
• 03:00 - 03:30 to ask uh tries to uh ask people to be aware of the context within which they're trying to leverage a particular body of expertise that's really what it says um and I thought I would use an example of Google Google is a company that everybody's heard about it's an amazing uh success story rightly so search engine Etc um but famously um one of our colleagues Boris gyberg um had a nice a case study called
• 03:30 - 04:00 can what do it what does it mean for Google to be googly googly isn't that like a cricket term goog is for those from the Commonwealth who play cricket like I did Growing Up googly is a particular type of uh uh uh ball delivery that tricks the batsman not the batter the batsman in cricket jargon into responding in a particular way that's not what he meant that's not what he meant what he meant was what's the essence of being somebody in in the Google
• 04:00 - 04:30 Google citizen structure yeah they call it googlers or then they how googly are they how googly are they yeah so so so that's the question that Boris was kind of trying to focus on in that in that piece of material and I must have encountered it somewhere and I was doing a little bit of work at at X yes uh X was uh not Elon Musk new X but X was Google's Google's R&D Advanced R&D shop like way out there at R&D shop like
• 04:30 - 05:00 projecton putting up balloons for internet access autonomous cars there ET so X is just a for for n moonshot gallery moonshot gallery yes I'd love going there so and uh there's a very interesting guy astr tell who R who runs it uh anyway so somehow somebody maybe one of our previous uh um students at who went to 10cent in uh in China um in shanan um
• 05:00 - 05:30 uh must have heard me talking about Google and googly and so on and so I got invited by 10cent to come and say tell us what you learned from the tech economy in in the US about how we can learn from it and 10cent is no shrinking violet it's an unbelievable company they they produced uh WeChat or they created the conditions under which WeChat was allowed to uh allow to develop and weat is a phenomenal success I like it much more than WhatApp for instance um uh so
• 05:30 - 06:00 that so so it's a appropriate uh setting within which to ask how does tensent in shanan with Chinese engineer learn about googliness yes and learn from it yes just like Google should be doing the same thing from T saying how can we learn from it and uh so I thought it was interesting that they took the time and energy to try to figure that out not that I'm the repository of knowing how Google works but that but that I was acting as
• 06:00 - 06:30 a trigger of a conversation set of conversations at T and that that carried on for quite some time so was his side has this to be a search engine optimization expert he knows all the tricks yes I'm the I'm the joke here is that I'm stuck in the Dark Ages so which is not entirely untrue so um so what was interesting about this is um you know Google famously has practices like 20% of your time off to do creative stuff as long as you do all your work you know
• 06:30 - 07:00 full infrastructure facilities that you can basically live your life in there uh dry cleaning Pet Services grooming barber shops Etc and the whole idea is that to keep you there so that you can you can you can focus on this um so we had a we had lots of discussions about the transferability of some of these uh of course the overall idea is to motivate Talent yeah right so this goes back to the to the early early point we were making about institutional voids the overall idea of motivating Talent of
• 07:00 - 07:30 course is universal you want to motivate Talent everywhere the question is how does a rubber meet the road right what is it that takes uh a wouldbe engineer or a coder yes in the Bay Area uh or in the west yes um to be motivated and to show up to work and produce really good code and partner with people and solve big problems and so on as software continues to quote unquote eat the work um and is that going to be the same thing that motivates uh the Chinese software engineer yeah um so
• 07:30 - 08:00 unsurprisingly of course some of the practices are are are similar you want challenging circumstances you want Dynamic teams you want people that you want to hang out with and those are those are Universal what's really interesting is that the Chinese context the one thing that I'll use to make the point that context May differ in a first order way is that um I think when I wrote when I wrote a case on 10cent maybe about initially four five years ago and then rewrote it a couple years ago um 10 cents were work force
• 08:00 - 08:30 was I want to say doubling every 2 or 3 years right and at any point in time more than 50% of people or 70% of people had stayed there had been there just two years those was a brand new because you're ding so fast you're growing so fast uh and so I would very much run the session to our students in in Cambridge or our participants in Cambridge as how do you build a trillion dollar Enterprise right where your entire Workforce just showed up yes right and
• 08:30 - 09:00 the whole mindset was different and you can imagine that Google practices are not going to slot in there quite so easily when everybody's new every day yes right um and literally what they've done is they've created sort of a firm with what I would just think of as permeable boundaries right so you come in and the expectation I think in C management at least I think this is how I would think about it if I were in their shoes is that you know most of these people will will leave in 2 3 years they'll go go do startups um their startups May Fail and
• 09:00 - 09:30 then they created they they they had something you know their logo is the skute Penguin yes they created something called the Antarctic club for their alums which I thought was a genius yes and it just meant that people stayed in their their orbit orbit they funded them they didn't insist on control things that just seemed like an aema to our private Equity uh folks uh but it worked because they got to keep them in the system they kept cycling in and out yes and I would ask uh you know our um uh
• 09:30 - 10:00 Executives from large corporations how many of you work in a place where you can just say uh you know I've been here two 3 years or four years or 5 years and I'm done and I'm out and oh by the way can you invest in me on the way out yes and then once it fails Z answer zero how many of you work in an organization even the most Progressive Western companies let alone Middle Eastern and Indian other companies how many you work in an organization where such a person can fail and come back and say I failed I want to come back
• 10:00 - 10:30 yes um this is the company that's created so it was sufficiently different in hyper growth times in China that the Googl practices would transfer over an intent and abstract idea yes but you needed a lot of this contextual intelligence to make it work in that particular context so that's the spirit of just remembering that uh context whether it's in you know uh farmers in Insurgency ridden Northern Nigeria or heart Sur in uh Southern India yes or
• 10:30 - 11:00 software engineers in southern China or poo Alto um all have to have a mental map of what is the context within which they're solving problems and doing cool things yeah and what's what's interesting about this is this example is that like you know like there's like there's knowledge Arbitrage you can learn from somebody else but then you've got to do this translation contextualization function to say what of this can actually apply here and how do I need to adjust it and I I like the way you're putting it because it triggered two thoughts in my mind
• 11:00 - 11:30 immediately um one was we have you do this in your Labs here translational science right you've got all these amazing scientists around us at Harvard and MIT and local universities and people are coming up with this cool science but the handholding that's needed to get that science to actually affect medicines devices materials uh is non-trivial so there's that transational exercise that we see in so many different contexts or I'm remembering another colleague um an Argentine guy who taught in France in
• 11:30 - 12:00 font Blau yeah Gabriel zansi yes who had a very in study where he he looked at ideas within a large multinational could could it be adopted by another part of the mation answer was not really it just took too much trouble to transfer it yes so the point being that these translational ideas are are important and in a sense uh this Google tensent example is just a is just another example of be careful where you get the
• 12:00 - 12:30 expertise from and how it Maps into your particular framework