While I’m a big believer in life outside of and after work, I do recognize that our careers consume a disproportionate amount of our time. For a lot of our life, it’s hard not to say that we are what we do for a living. So while it is wise for many reasons not to define yourself by what you do for a living, it is also wise to pick a career and a work environment and corporate culture that you can thrive in professionally and enjoy personally.

   I’m actually a mechanical engineer by trade but I had been working in software sales with Oracle and other companies for several years when I was approached by a head-hunter recruiting for Ericsson in 2000. Cellular was just hitting mass-market and I saw wireless and telecom as an excellent field in which could expand my interests and experience. Ericsson is a world-class company and I thoroughly enjoyed my 10 years of working with talented and enthusiastic people under great leadership. However, relatively recently, I went through a career change where I joined not only a new company and a new corporate culture but a new global culture as well.

   In January 2011, I joined ZTE, one of the major telecom vendors in the world. The company is based in China but I joined their Canadian local company as the VP of Network Sales. To be honest, I did so with some trepidation since I had heard multiple “horror stories” about the working with the Asian vendors. However, after meeting with one of ZTE’s sales directors, Dan, and the local CEO, Charlie, they seemed harmless enough and the office environment seemed warm and welcoming. At the time, ZTE Canada reported that it had 70% local employees. While this was true, they had hired many local Chinese staff so it did feel more foreign than 70% local.

   In my first 3 months with the company, we were quite busy with several key sales projects kicking off with tier 1 Canadian carriers. ZTE has the widest portfolio of all of the large telco vendors and they have a value proposition of being a high value supplier (great quality at best in cost of ownership) so that meant we were often invited to participate in operator requests for proposal. The first thing that became quite apparent was that the Chinese work ethic is among the best in the world – or at least at ZTE it was. Because of the 12-hour time difference between Toronto and the Chinese product development centres, it is a common practice that the local Chinese product managers and engineers would spend their days working with the customers and the local staff to understand requirements and generate questions, then they would go home for dinner and later hop on the telephone with the Chinese product managers to address the questions and requirements. This is not to say that this is a requirement of the job and a forced working condition, neither is it something that happens every day but it is clear, when push comes to shove, they are prepared to put in the effort. While first few months were extremely busy, it was also a great time to bond with my new found team.

   Sometime later that year, I hired a colleague, Luis Blanco, with whom I used to work with at Ericsson. Luis had been out of Ericsson for about two years running his own telecom training business but wanted to return to a larger team and loved being closer to the technology and solution-oriented and problem solving nature of the large telco vendor environment. Around a month later, I hired another local staff member, a sales Director named JD Abram. He was working on the enterprise sales side of one of the large Canadian carriers and was looking forward to the challenge of being on the other side of the table as it were. So now were a local team of 3 inside ZTE Canada which had about 100 employees at the time. Here’s a shot of a lot of our ZTE Canada team on the Chinese New Year celebration we held in January 2013. 

   As you can guess from the spread, which was mostly cooked by the staff, the culinary experience of working with a Chinese company is one of the greatest benefits. While I have always loved eating the North American versions of Chinese food, I was not at all prepared for what lied before me as I experienced true Chinese cuisine. Firstly, as we also know from North American Chinese food, there are many regions which define many different styles and tastes within the various Chinese cultures including Hunan, Sichuan (or Szechuan as we call it in N.A.), Peeking or Beijing, Shanghai, and the regions and flavors go on and on. One story that I like to tell is when we were eating lunch with a customer in ZTE restaurant attached to our development centre in Shanghai. Our CEO Charlie asked the customer and I if we liked chicken. This sounded excellent to both of us so he included a dish in the lunch order. When the dishes came, Charlie pointed out the chicken dish which was beautifully prepared with vegetables; the chicken pieces themselves were bite-sized and were of a reddish colour, presumably tossed in some red flavor sauce. However, when I tasted the chicken, I was surprised to find it of a texture that I have never noticed for chicken. I asked Charlie what part of the chicken this was and he said “the hat” and motioned with his hand planted on the top of his head. Ah the red rooster hat… that’s what I was eating. In general, this is something that I have noticed as a cultural difference: many westerners don’t appreciate the texture of what we might call gristle or cartilage, while this texture Is a favorite, as far as I can tell, for most Chinese. You can see many examples of this with soup served with tendons, fried jelly fish, boiled chicken feet, duck tongue etc. Regardless, while there are some cultural culinary differences, Chinese cuisine represents a major opportunity for westerners to explore a whole world of taste and cooking styles; only a few of which have managed to cross the Pacific to America. While we are most aware of appetizers and mains, there is also a world of sweets and deserts that both savory and sweet that await the tempted pallet.

   The work of art above is a savory and sweet combination that was served in another dinner in Shanghai. Appropriately enough, its called "Swan and Egg" (except in Mandarin of course ;-); the swan is crispy and savory while the egg-shaped portion is creamy and sweet.

   As with any new company, it is the people you work with and the new friends that you make that provide the opportunity for real personal growth. One such contact is my new friend Dianiel who lives in Shanghai and works in ZTE’s Wireline Product Line marketing group there. Daniel was my personal tour guide around Shanghai. He would not let me pay for a single thing as we toured the night time city and took the ferry from Puxi to Pudong. Here’s a shot of Daniel and I in front of the Pear Tower.

Shanghai is one of the pearls of the orient with a major contrast of modern China on one side of the Huangpu River, Pudong, and Puxi (pronounced Pu-shi) the more classical and historic section on the other side.
   You may note that the picture of Puxi is reminiscent of European styling; this is due to concessions of the French and English during their commercial entry to Shanghai around the turn the 20th Century. On the Pudong side, the look and architecture are very bright and modern with the aquarium, the Peal Tower and many other extravagant architectural works of art defining and beautifying the skyline both day and night.

   I was also fortunate enough to travel to our headquarters in Shenzhen on another customer visit. Shenzhen is also a beautiful albeit very young city; it was built developed by China as a key technological and commercial centre to “compete” with Hong Kong while it was under British control. As Shenzhen is very close to Hong Kong, it is common to stay there and drive over the bridge to Shenzhen on mainland China as a day trip. I was fortunate to have the pleasure of staying one night at the Peninsula Hotel as we were to host our customers at a dinner at a restaurant atop the Hotel.

    This shot is one of Victoria harbor from the 25th floor restaurant and lounge. The Peninsula is a great place to stay and dine but it doesn’t come cheap. I also took a couple of pictures while going for a quick walk through the Kowloon area near the Peninsula; the bright shops and lights were amazing and the luxury shopping was every bit as lavish as that found on 5th Avenue New York, Rodeo Drive in L.A. or the luxury shops in Geneva, Switzerland.

   All in all, my time with ZTE has been both an excellent professional and personal experience. The people are warm, engaging and hard working and the opportunity to travel with work to see a part of the world that has always been on my bucket list is a huge bonus. Equally, the opportunity to share traditional Chinese meals with my new friends and taste beautiful foods that they always look forward to introducing me to is both a culinary and social delight. The world is becoming more and more a global village, and as such, there are excellent opportunities to mix your career interests with cultural and personal expansion. Unfortunately, my Mandarin is not developing as well as my pallet but who knows; in time, I hope to at least be able to at least greet new friends and order my favorite dishes ;-).  Who says you can't mix business with pleasure?