Richard Eu is chief executive of Eu Yan Sang, a company specializing in traditional Chinese medicine and natural health supplements.
Q. When did you first become a manager?
A. I was an executive director of a merchant bank, heading the corporate finance department, early on in my career. But I think I really became a manager later on, when I joined the Dataprep Group in 1981. It was a distributor for Data General minicomputers.
Q. What were the early lessons you learned from that experience?
A. That you shouldn’t listen to too many people. In the beginning, I was very inexperienced and brand new to the industry, so I was listening more to the people I thought knew everything, rather than following my instinct.
We were selling minicomputer-based word processing systems. When IBM launched this product — they called it the PC — everybody in our company denigrated it. They said, “We are high-end computing, this is low-tech. It’s nothing. For toy use.” I was looking at it more from a consumer’s point of view and they were looking at it from a technical point of view. They were too close, and they were all computer science graduates. They were all obsessed with hardware. I trusted them, and what happened after that is that the whole minicomputer industry was completely wiped out. So what I’ve learned there is that you could really disrupt an established industry and you should never take anything for granted.
Now I listen to people. But at the end of the day, it’s still instinctive, and I follow my gut. I cannot explain, it’s not rational, but partly it’s because of this past experience.
Q. What does leadership means to you?
A. The leader has to have a clear vision and be able to communicate it and be able to convince people to follow you. People will not follow you just because you pay them more money; they’ve got to follow you because they believe in it.
Q. So how do you manage that?
A. I have to sell them what my beliefs are and get them to buy into it. It’s all about communication.
Q. Does leadership come naturally to you?
A. I think so — partly because I’m a first born. All through my life, from a young age, I’ve always been the one trying to encourage people to do things
Q. Has your leadership style changed over the years?
A. As you get older and a bit more experienced, you feel a bit more confident about your own convictions. I would say this is what has been happening in the last few years. In the early days, I wasn’t really sure. That goes back to my IBM story.
Q. Do you favor a top-down management approach?
A. No, it’s got to be consensual, even though at the end of the day you have to make the final decision.
Q. You are now leading your family business. Is there a different challenge here?
A. I think in a family business situation you probably have a better opportunity for developing good long-term leadership, because as a professional manager your shelf life can be shorter. You can, of course, be effective in the short term, but today it’s harder and harder to get professional managers who actually stay the course for a long time. To build and see through their vision of a business is tough. I don’t say it cannot be done, but more and more, at the very big companies, their C.E.O. is there for a very short time.
With a family business, you can take a much longer-term view. We’re not so concerned about having to make better numbers for the next quarter. Of course we’re listed and responsible to shareholders, but as majority owner we can also be very clear with shareholders that we want to take the long-term view.
Q. What about the downside?
A. There is an additional dimension with a family-owned business. There is the dynamic between the public and the family, and the dynamic within the family that you have to manage. And with the family, it’s not just about money; it can be emotional too. Luckily, there is a good relationship amongst all of us in the family.
Q. So what would be your advice to the chief executive of another family business?
A. You’ve got to be very open and don’t take it too personally if someone treads on your turf. The way I see it, we’re a family, we’re all in it together. We should be totally open with each other. If they want to ask questions, I don’t have a problem with that, and we try to sort out our differences amongst ourselves without washing the dirty linen in public.
Q. What are the qualities you look for in your managers?
A. You try to look for some kind of empathy. Technical skills are a given, so I’m trying to look more for a mental connection, because those are the people I will have to work directly with. Compatibility is important.
Q. You have some experience managing across different countries and cultures. Have you seen some differences between managing in Australia and managing in Singapore or other parts of Asia?
A. I think you can be more direct with a Westerner. They don’t take it so personally if you tell them they made a mistake.
Within an Asian context, criticism is more sensitive. If you’re too blunt, it can cause an issue. There is still a question of face. So I think you need to adapt wherever you go.
There is an Australian way of doing things, the way you treat your staff and everybody calling you by your first name. Not something people would do here, though I don’t really care.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/business/global/22iht-manager22.html?partner=rss&emc=rss