Somewhere here is the future

It’s a curious fact that although technology is a globalised phenomenon, what people do with it is a very different matter.

I am here in Changsha, Hunan Province. Don’t worry if you have never heard of it. You will almost certainly never have been here, even though it is a city of seven million people. I have been here three times now – each time for more than a week and never seen another non-Chinese face. Yet curiously it is the centre of civilization. A taste of the future for us all. Maybe not in its exact eastern form – but in essence most certainly.

For a country with an average income that is substantially below the minimum wage of most European countries it is curious how many people drive around in sleek modern cars. Not brands that we would recognize in the west, but strangely familiar in design. The lack of materialism is also refreshing in such a modern, almost space-age landscape. My five star hotel charging fifty dollars a night serves litres of hot water free to its guests in the lounge – the nearest thing to a bar in the place. No-one is drinking alcohol – although everyone is chain smoking. Business meetings are completed by groups of tieless me, whilst wives sit aside in small huddles and if you ask for a cocktail off the menu you are told that you can only have iced tea.

Yet it is the future in its own special way. The avenue outside stretches as far as the eye can see – decorated every few metres with clusters of lights like bouquets and pairs of bright red tea pot shaped lights with streamers. Tall buildings zigzag with neon moving in different shapes and colours and everyone you meet has a similar animation in their face. Not so much Times Square as somewhere you go with a time machine. I guess someone, somewhere must be depressed and under stress in a country that works six days a week and often commutes vast distances across huge cities each day. But you would not know it from the vitality and resilience you see everywhere.

HR professionals are forever seeking to maximize employee engagement. But here is a society amounting to 20% of the world’s population that is apparently fully engaged.  What can we do in a western culture riven by jealousy, materialism and skepticism to create an island of corporate engagement?  The answer is hidden in the streets of Changsha – but it is not going to betray its secret without our abandoning deep set western values, assumptions and cold logic.

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