Mike Hoer: At Home in Asia
As a rule, American
business people have never earned high marks at foreign languages. In
fact, they're usually pretty dismal.
AI General Manager Mike Hoer
is just the opposite. Conversant in Japanese, Korean, and Cantonese,
he's also entirely at home in Mandarin, with a genuine interest in the
language itself. He'll readily explain a proverb or pun, describe a
local dialect, or give you a quick lesson in the Chinese tone system.
And with more than 25 years of experience, he also deals as easily with
street vendors and shop clerks as with senior executives and government officials.
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| Asian Industries General Manager Mike Hoer |
As should be clear, these skills are an absolute must in a country like China.
They allow Mike to make
decisions without outside "filtering," to act quickly on new business
developments, and to build stronger relationships with his Chinese
counterparts--a necessity in a culture where "first make friends, then
do business" is a fundamental principle.
Perhaps most importantly,
they enable him to connect personally with his own Asian Industries
staff in ways that would not otherwise be possible.
Born and raised in
Colorado, Mike's first contact with Chinese came in 1975, when he
accepted a mission with the Mormon Church and, by the luck of the draw,
was sent to Taiwan. (Missionaries may choose an English-speaking or
non-English-speaking mission, but have no say in the country or
location.) "The Church views this destination as a divinely inspired
choice," says Mike, noting that it played a major role in his future.
"I think I would have had a successful life in any case, but a lot of
the direction was set by that first experience in Taiwan."
Back in the U.S., Mike
continued with Chinese at Brigham Young University, and, in 1979,
became one of the first group of American students to study in the
People's Republic.
The Americans enrolled at
the Beijing Language Institute, sleeping on bamboo cots and sharing
classes with students from Iraq, Iran, North Korea and other countries
that were then aligned with China. Thanks to their strong showing in
the course, Mike and a friend were later permitted to travel through
the country independently--the first time this had ever been allowed by
the Chinese authorities.
By 1980, Mike was back at
BYU for business school, looking for a career that extended beyond
translation or teaching. "My first professor of Chinese still hasn't
gotten over it," he says with a laugh. "We speak occasionally and he
still tells me that I'm a huge disappointment--a promising language
student who sold out to the corporate world!"
Following his MBA graduation
in 1982, Mike also had the chance to set up the first American-style
management program at the University of Xi'an, in western China. He and
his wife, Laurie, spent a year at the school, with Laurie (by far the
more popular instructor) teaching English and Mike running the business
program.
"I just took the textbooks
from BYU and taught them in Chinese," says Mike, who was also recruited
to play on the university's fledgling basketball team. "They figured an
American would know something about the game." At the time, the matches
were played on unpaved earth courts. "This definitely improved my ball
control," he recalls. "The timeouts were also interesting. Whenever we
called time, my teammates would pull out cigarettes and start to
smoke!"
Over the next several
years, Mike continued to move around the world, working for Arthur
Andersen in the United States, and later for Schlumberger in Japan,
Nigeria, and Singapore. In 1989, he joined Conti Chia Tai International
as Vice President and CFO. He became VP and CFO of Asian Industries in
1992 and General Manager in 1996.
Having lived in China for
much of his adult life, Mike knows the country about as well as any
Westerner can. Still, he's often amazed at the changes he's seen over
the last 20 years--whether it's the adoption of Western dress, the boom
in construction, or the general growth in wealth and living standards.
Leaving lunch one day in
Beijing, we pass a store selling imported Italian tile and $7,000
ceramic fountains, and learn that no fewer than seven fountains have
been sold in the last month alone. Mike shakes his head at this, and
notes the enormous contrast from the 1970's.
"Young Chinese today have
absolutely no idea of what it was like. You had to wait three or four
months to get a bicycle, and you couldn't even eat without a ration
card. There was also much less personal freedom. People couldn't speak
freely, and students were followed when they left the university. My
room was regularly searched and my mail was opened and read all the
time."
Mike notes that China,
despite its shortcomings, has come a long way since then, and that the
distance travelled is often overlooked. "Americans can have unrealistic
expectations about China, and often focus too much on headlines and not
enough on China's long-term development. They forget how much progress
has actually been made in a very short time, and how much the country
has changed in almost every way."