Chinese entrepreneur advice clubs ‘more useful from EMBA’

February 27, 2014 Leave a comment

Chinese entrepreneur advice clubs ‘more useful from EMBA’

Staff Reporter

2014-02-22

In order to improve corporate governance, growing numbers of Chinese entrepreneurs are resorting to EMBA programs and private coaching from their peers in the form of corporate clubs, according to Chinese-language China Entrepreneur magazine.

During a private coaching session recently, for instance, a group of entrepreneurs offered their diagnosis to the chairwoman of one Chinese company after a briefing and a round of Q&A. “Your company lacks a distinct objective, has an abnormal culture, and suffers from a wobbly strategy,” said one entrepreneur, a comment which brought the chairwoman to tears.

Such private coaching sessions typically consist of a briefing, Q&A, and recommendations. The participating entrepreneurs have formed a club featuring monthly activities such as group discussion, dining, and instruction. Club members offer timely advice to their peers and share corporate problems, giving their peers not only professional assistance but also psychological support.

“The club membership has helped me greatly alleviate the pressure and solitude associated with the management of my company,” says Yu Zhonglan, a female entrepreneur who has been in a corporate club for four years. Yu said that the club is even more helpful to her than the EMBA program she attended previously.

At club gatherings, members often seek advice from peers for such sensitive questions as: how do I dismiss right-hand employees who don’t identify with the company’s objective? How do I restore confidence after a major mistake in decision making? Should I divorce my alienated wife and marry an intimate girlfriend?

Such sensitive questions reflect the close link of the club membership. In fact, trust is the key quality binding the club. “Club members can even show their authentic accounting books to their peers,” point out Wang Ge, a member of the corporate club.

 

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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