What works in the US may not work in China and the way Microsoft did it in China is a good lesson in understanding how to win it in different countries with different cultures.

How Microsoft conquered China - July 23, 2007

the Microsoft chairman is “bigger in China than any movie star.” Last spring President Hu Jintao toured the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash., and was feted at a dinner at Gates’ home. “You are a friend to the Chinese people, and I am a friend of Microsoft,” Hu told his host. “Every morning I go to my office and use your software.”

It was not always so. Microsoft bumbled for years after entering China in 1992, and its business was a disaster there for a decade. It finally figured out that almost none of the basic precepts that led to its success in the U.S. and Europe made sense in China.

I was reading the book The Labors of Hercules, a mystery novel by Agatha Christie.  I came across this, and this is food for thought.

The protagonist was asking if the person was unhappy and the detective replied, " He is so unhappy that he has forgotten what happiness means.  In fact, he is so unhappy that he does not know that he is unhappy."

Maybe this pertains to many of us who are caught in a whirlwind of activity and busyness.  Is life for you just overcoming one obstacle after another.  Did you really have time to pause and think about the business of being happy, which after all is what it is all about?

We probably always think we will think about happiness when task x and y are already finished, but when it is done, we go about to do task u and task z that there is never time to pause.  Do you have a feeling that time is passing you by and before you know it, all the things you want to happen to you will never be there for you again? 

This may be something that would be worth pondering.