Patrick Keenan

Lina Poa

Recipe for Success: Lydia Lee Talks Training in China

With the vast economic expansion of China, overseas companies, especially American corporations, are flocking to set up shop. But getting a piece of the pie means learning the recipe, so to speak.

Enter Lydia Lee, newly promoted director of GolinHarris in Shanghai and Guangzhou. Lydia joined the Shanghai office over a year ago after gaining extensive business experience in the US and in her native Taiwan. She has led marketing and branding campaigns for consumer and technology products in the US, Asia Pacific and Latin America, and for companies such as Nestle, Coca-Cola, Tabasco, Blockbuster and 20th Century Fox.

Since joining the agency, Lydia has spearheaded GH’s crisis and media training in China. Breakthrough recently caught up with Lydia to find out more about her training experience and especially how she can help companies entering the China market.

“Foreign-owned plants are opening in China every day,” says Lydia, “and knowing about the Chinese political, social and economic climate is vital for their success. US companies, when moving into foreign markets, have often remained America-centric, historically speaking. However, in China, people are keen to retain their culture and heritage. So unless corporations cater to the China market, they will not survive.”

To further illustrate the challenges US companies face in China, Lydia explains that the value systems in China and the US are polarized. “In the US, the value system is led by law, followed by reason and then feeling. In China, however, this is reversed, with feeling (otherwise known as guanxi, or relationships) being the most important, then reason and lastly law.”
When asked about some of the differences between business in the US and in China, Lydia says that if there were a crisis in the US, the talk of monetary compensation would often be under the table, whereas in China this is openly talked about and expected by the public and the media. For example, if someone is badly injured at a factory, it is customary in China to give assistance and financial aid to the person and their family straight away. “Here in China we give red envelopes for Chinese New Year, so the topic of money is not the taboo it is in the US. Overseas companies need to acknowledge this,” she says.
Lydia adds that overseas companies are often left in the dark when entering China due to the uniqueness of China’s values, government platform, people and media. “Throw a crisis into the mix and it can spell disaster,” she cautions. “Reputation is especially fragile when a company is entering China for the first time, so being prepared is imperative.”

GH’s training offerings can help foreign and local companies develop a crisis management response in the event of an issue arising. Lydia’s Asian and US experience means that she is in a unique position to bridge the gap for US companies entering China.

“Our training sessions are tailored to meet the requirements of a particular client,” she says. “For crisis training, we focus on providing the tools that a company needs in order to deal with a crisis appropriately. We can’t predict when a crisis will happen, but when it does, it is vital that corporations are prepared. During training sessions we also teach clients about the Chinese media, and we give tips on presenting and how to answer difficult questions.”

The eight-hour intensive training sessions consist of equal parts media and crisis training. “The sessions are very interactive, and we provide real-life scenarios,” says Lydia. A unique aspect of GH’s training offering is that the sessions intrinsically combine both crisis and media training. “It is vital that in a crisis, you know how to utilize the media and understand the media landscape,” she explains. “GH media and crisis training shows how to leverage the media in order to reach out to stakeholders and maintain corporate reputation.”

Since she started with GH, Lydia has conducted more than ten crisis training sessions ranging across industries such as education, industry, pharmaceuticals, and food & beverage. When asked about the highlights of her job, she says, “Keeping business and keeping clients happy. It’s always very satisfying when I get an email from a client telling me that they have remembered something they learned in training and were able to put it into action.

“GH crisis and media training is like insurance for a company. The best part is when clients tell me that attending a GH training session really made them evaluate their company and actually helped prevent a crisis.”