Biggest culture shock for all the foreign language teachers I had in high school - “When I ask someone ‘how are you doing?’, people only say Fine. And you?’…We don’t ask just to be polite, we seriously want to know how you are doing!”

I wasn’t quite convinced by this until I knew Daniel, the UK dude, who gave me a really tough time by asking “how are you doing, Roxie?” every time he saw me. He would stare at me with his eye wide-open as if he was trying to squeeze some answer out of me, and if I simply said “not bad” or something like that he would say “come on, I mean how are you REALLY doing???”

So I tried very hard – there was a time I saw him almost everyday, and you cannot imagine how hard it was for me to search for words to describe how I felt! Then after 1 year or so whenever people asked me the same questions, I finally felt comfortable to say “Well so so, because such and such.” or even “Terrible! Because of bla bla bla” I was pleased with myself – now I can talk like a native, ha!

Then I found out THEY ALL LIED!!!

There was this morning in our NYC office, people asking each other “how is your day?” After a round of “Excellent”, "Fantastic”, "Amazing”, I started with “Not so well. This & that happened…” All these native fellows started at me, apparently incredulous, and said “You know what, I like your honesty! That’s really special!”

…!!! Don’t you want to know how I REALLY feel!

I guess this has a lot to do with how people define “I’m doing great” and how honest they are with their feelings. To me, I have to feel incredibly GREAT and have seriously nothing to improve to tell people I’m doing great, which seldomly happens in my life. That’s why Daniel had so much fun asking me how I was doing, because it was 1000000 time harder for me to feel “great” than other people, and I had such big trouble expressing my negative feeling as an introverted Chinese.

So I myself was surprised this Sunday, in Bryant Park, when some random people started talking to me and asked “So you are a foreigner! How do you like your life here?” With a big smile, I responded so naturally “It’s been great! I love it!”

Wow!

1 month ago, I was still bothered by lots of stuff I saw, I did, or I heard of. And my life has been full of “so so” or “terrible” feelings for more than one year.

I just learned how to shift my focus – from the things I COULD care about to those I SHOULD care about. Surprisingly I found out there aren’t so much falling into that category. The criterion is extremely simple: does it make me HAPPY if -

• I do what others expect me to do instead of what I really want to do
• I tell people what they want to hear instead of what I really mean
• I spend time on others’ priorities instead of my own
• I make judgment based on other’s opinion instead of mine
• I do nice things, instead of useful things

???

I am reading this great book, “The 4-hour Workweek”, which talks about eliminating all the unnecessary work/concerns/relationship/influence/rules and focusing only on the things excite you. You can eliminate or outsource 90% of what you are doing/have to do now and feel 900% happier.

Only talk to the people that help you learn, do the tasks that push your result happen, build relationships that inspire you, think about problems that you can change in 1 month, and ask only yourself whether you are happy with what you do.

“Less is More”.

There are 6 billion people on the earth, 880 friends on my facebook, a dozen really close friends, several co-workers, and a few family members, but I should really care about the feeling of only one person – that is myself.

I learnt from Daniel that I need to be honest to others. Now I’m learning to be honest to myself – ask only myself what I really want.

“How are you doing Roxie?”

I am honest & I am happy with my life :)

Peter has got a keyboard, and we took it to girl’s apartment since he is away. Immediately our little apartment is filled with awkward chords: Tiffany trying to learn playing keyboard, and me guitar. We could have played much better music simply by exchanging instruments – Tiffany can do guitar pretty well and I played piano for 10 years.

I didn’t expect myself to touch a keyboard ever again. It surprised me that I can still play the keyboard and master my fingers without much difficulty, given the fact that I stopped playing piano 6 years ago, as soon as I found a decent excuse to quit. My grandpa always tells me how he regrets not being able to master an instrument when he was young, and how reckless I was to give up piano.

However reckless it was, my reason to quit is simple. Playing piano is never something I enjoyed doing, even though I committed (kind of forced to) to it for 10 years. I didn’t find the music I played anyhow close to be “beautiful”. To me, the music from my piano is not “music”, but a impressionless translation of the composition. I simply hated doing it everyday, and I hated the composers, all of them. Not until after I quited playing and listened to other pianists playing did I start to realize the beauty of piano, and try to understand the musician’s voice through their music.

Surprisingly, the fact that I never understood piano didn’t stop me from getting a certificate of 8th grade amateur pianist (the highest grade is 9). Why? Because people don’t judge your qualification by your understanding, feeling and passion towards music, but solely by your techniques. So long as you are willing to spend years practicing a few opuses appointed by the music academic, you can get the certificate. How ridiculous it is for people to believe they can produce musicians like a factory produces cars?

Many of the Chinese children shared the similar experience with me – started playing some kind of instruments (the most popular ones being piano and violin) at a very early age, (I started at 6 which is already considered late), was educated on how to get a certificate, hoped to gain some credits to be admitted to a famous school, and quitted playing as soon as they didn’t need it anymore. If you walk around my university and grab some random students to talk, you’ve got little chance to find someone never learned playing instrument. The chance is even slimmer for you to find someone learned playing, but can talk actually about the beauty of it.

Same happened to learning painting, sports. or dancing. Not that none of the people actually enjoy it, but most of the people didn’t get what they deserve to learn – WHY to do it, instead of HOW to do it. If any of my teachers have had spent some time telling me how to put emotion into the music as well as techniques, I would have sticked to my piano much longer and got much more out of it.

My parents or my piano teachers never intended to waste my time, even though they made me spend 10 years playing soulless music. The whole purpose is not to develop my passion towards music, instead, it’s all about becoming competitive in the industrialized education system. It’s not only about piano, or the education out of school – it’s happening to everyone, everywhere. People are taught HOW to write an article, speak a language, and solve science problems, but never WHY. They are told to DO it, but not UNDERSTAND, or ENJOY it. Not that my parents and teachers didn’t see how much I was tortured by playing to get a certificate, they are just forced to do so – how am I supposed to WIN when all the others are doing it?

But, are people really getting competitive in this system? Or, rather, is our society becoming competitive or sustainable with all the people who are building it? What kind of talents are we supplying to the society? How can people work to bring anything to next level if they don’t enjoy doing it at all? What is the purpose of education? Issue certificate or inspire ideas? Encourage people to think differently or alike? Provide talents as solution or copy machine?

People are self-educated when they are driven by passion. However we are centralizing all the resources to take out proactiveness from the system and educate people NOT to be passionate about what they are doing. What do we expect from the people extremely priviledged to complete a higher education, but the only thing they learnt is to do as told? Our education is the most horrifying waste of resources I’ve ever seen!

What can we do about it? In this competitive environment, how to create an education system that inspires people to learn out of passion? When the resources are so scarce and centralized, how do we impact more people? Where should we start?

I’m haunted by those questions everyday.

While I was writing this blog, Tiffany was playing the chords over and over again. Apparently the joy she was gaining is much more than what I got in 10 years, even though she will never get a certificate.

For a while, I was taken away by the music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vO92REraUo

You think AIESEC is unique and the first choise for students?

Not really.

This is how you can easily create another AIESEC and become a powerful competitor:

First of all, create a vision – anything similar to develop youth leadership in a global network would work fine. People love that crap more than you think.

Secondly,  organize some oversea events – workshop, training camp or organization visit for 2 weeks, etc. Make sure people can go to US, Europe, at least Canada, for those events. There are tons of agencies in those countries willing to organize such activities. Don’t worry about cost – remember this is the era of globalization and people will pay for going to those countries to learn about it.

Then, identify several universities/high schools/actually we should start considering primary school, and promote your oversea activity there. Of course you need to have network there but that’s not hard to work on. Hold some seminars around youth development to grab attention. Make sure you invite some foreigners to talk. University students will be just good enough. When you become famous you can invite externals. Hold conference & global village. Talk about your vision, globalization and gaining a winning position in life. Train people on leadership skills and cross culture communication. Talk to the students and the parents about “Make a difference in your life (or your child’s life)”. People love hearing it. You will be surprised how easily they get motivated. Oh, what’s more, teach people how to do roll calls. People will feel like living a new lifestyle. “Life changing experience”, isn’t it? Use powerful words. You know all that AIESEC tricks to brainwash people.

Then it’s easy – just get people sign up and pay good money to go to US. Remember keep feeding them motivating speeches through various events.

It’s not the end! After they come back, recruit them as “Members” of your organization so that they can keep the program going on their campus and keep “exploring their leadership potential”.

Piece of cake, isn’t it?

People are already doing it. And making it big. This is a typical Chinese model but according to my observation, shouldn’t be too hard to create similar model in other countries.

That makes me wonder – what if someone keeps doing this and expanding to more & more countries, say, 100 countries, and completely takes over AIESEC’s market? Don’t think it’s impossible, AIESEC did it in 60 years by part-time work, and AIESEC is not one of the most efficient/business focused organizations I’ve seen. What is AIESEC’s competitiveness? How do we convince the best people to join AIESEC instead of other organizations? People will get leadership experience, oversea experience and global netwrok in OTHER places.

So the question is, if everything in AIESEC can be copied so easily, (and trust me, people can do it much better than AIESECers), what’s our competitive edge?

AIESEC leadership opportunity is unique because it’s around real business, not because of our conference, training and seminars. AIESEC global learning environment is unique because it enables people to network through business cooperation. Everything is around the core – exchange. Not that exchange program cannot be copied – but it takes much more time to establish the connection with thousands of traineeship provider in over 100 countries. And we need to agressively expand that business network to keep our winning position in the competition. New markets. New products. New partners. Everyday.

But are we spending enough time and energy in becoming a real expert in global exchange program today? How much time are wasted talking repeatedly about all the vision, seminar, leadership workshop, training stuff, which can be copied overnight? In the end of the day it’s not copyright that will keep our market position. It’s the growth of our real business.

Are we clear about what keeps us unique and growing in 60 years as an organization? Do we talk about it enough? Are we strengthening it? Are we taking action fast enough against all that competitions?

View AIESEC as a business, isn’t it clear we are not focusing on the core of our business? On the other hand, if we aim to develop future business leaders, isn’t it essential for our members to learn run AIESEC as a business TODAY?

李开复

时光荏苒，时光匆匆走过了一个四年，回望过去四年我在谷歌的职业生涯，所有的快乐、成就以及曾经面对的困难与挫折，所有的这一切如同一部电影在我的脑海里不断地闪过。在这离别之际，我不禁百感交集。在这四年时光里，谷歌中国从一个很小的雏形一直慢慢发展壮大，一直到今天，它成为了一家平稳，成熟，走上轨道的公司。

在整整四年的时光里，我努力地把Google“平等、创新、快乐、无畏”的精神带到中国。这个过程并非一帆风顺，但是我们坚持着自己的信念与价值观，保持着超强的耐心精耕细作。

我们压抑着做更酷、更炫的产品的欲望，努力耕耘最佳中文搜索。今天，谷歌中国的搜索质量已堪称最精确、最完整、最即时。优化中文搜索后，我们又开启了数十个产品，让谷歌中国的版图渐渐清晰。其中谷歌地图、谷歌手机地图、谷歌手机搜索、谷歌翻译都已经达到中国第一。另外，音乐搜索的推出，可以让网民首次享受到正版免费的音乐，创立了全球音乐下载的崭新模式。

特别令我难忘的是我们热爱中国的员工面临雪灾、地震、风灾做出的及时产品和贡献，证实了谷歌中国人爱谷歌也爱中国，证实了谷歌中国人既能创新又有爱心。

当我随意走进咖啡馆，看到年轻人在用谷歌的整合搜索查询信息，用地图查看实时交通流量，在iGoogle上挑选自己喜欢的“皮肤”（计算机界面），或者在用谷歌音乐听正版歌曲时，我都会露出发自内心的微笑。

谷歌是一个伟大又可爱的公司，我非常感谢有这么一个千载难逢的机会，来从无到有地打造谷歌中国。在谷歌，我学到太多太多，无论是互联网技术、创新模式、价值观。

对于谷歌，我现在已经没有遗憾，但我的人生还有一个缺憾没有实现，我想去弥补它。在过去的20年，我有幸在乔布斯、盖茨、施密特等身边学习成长，我有幸在PC时代历经苹果微软，我有幸在互联网时代历经谷歌，我有幸看到三个世界一流的公司的成长成功，我有幸在美国硅谷和中国的中关村崛起时，在这两个地方做过最有创意的工作。我拥有更多的是在科技领域的知识，更了解是企业成功的秘笈。这些职业经验才是我最有价值的资产，我非常希望能够把这些资产传授给中国青年。

我的下一步就是和中国青年人一起打造新奇的技术奇迹，我想用自己的主动性做一个掌控全局的工作。我已经到了这个人生阶段，再不去做，我真的很怕来不及了。

所以，尽管加州的山景城再次向我伸出了橄榄枝，希望我再续约四年，但是我却在此刻做出了发自内心的选择，我希望帮助年轻人圆梦的同时也圆自己的创业梦想。

这个周末，我终于能够从业务发展、战略策划、离职宣布、工作交接中松一口气。这个周末，我会把我的思路理顺。下周，我会和大家分享的我的“从心选择”计划。

每当我想到我将迈出的一步，我就会想起苹果创始人乔布斯的名言：

“最重要的，拥有跟随内心与直觉的勇气，你的内心与直觉多少已经知道你真正想要成为什么样的人。任何其它事物都是次要的。”

把青蛙放进沸水里，它会立刻跳出来；如果放进温水里再慢慢加温，它就会坐在那里一动不动直到变成田鸡汤了。

IC Malaysia被人问到最多的问题是：你会去选AIESEC International吗？——不，因为我不想slow down。

在IC和人讨论的话题最终都归结到institutionalize：即使在如是的一个青年组织，人的思想也仍然随着组织规模的增大和层级的复杂化而逐渐固化，在大多数的国家，member新鲜的创造力因为管理层的思想顽固和执行不力而失活。4年之后，我愤怒又有些悲哀的发现，在AIESEC也可以看到John Wood写到的自视甚高而整日空谈的NGO的影子。

幸运如我，成长在一个飞速发展变化的国家，拥有选择和行动的权利去创造不断加速的生活，在AIESEC，也置身于日新月异的Mainland China和处于革命期的US。每天的主题都是变化，更快的变化，更多的变化。人就是在这种环境中变得更为警醒，灵活，不安于室，直抒己见，从而释放出更多的动力去推动环境的变革。你能感觉到那种躁动和兴奋吗？

我想我不用谈太多一个组织是怎么失活的。Stay positive，下一个问题是，如何去寻找恒沸的水呢？

长远看来，只有靠自己煽风点火呀。