Tết Nguyên Đán, more commonly known by its shortened name Tết or “Vietnamese Lunar New Year”, is the most important and popular holiday and festival in Vietnam. It is the Vietnamese New Year marking the arrival of spring based on the Chinese calendar, a lunisolar calendar. The name Tết Nguyên Đán is Sino-Vietnamese (từ Hán Việt) for Feast of the First Morning, derived from the Hán Nôm characters 節元旦.

1. What do you and your family prepare for Tet?
2. How do your family decorate your house for Tet?
3. What are you going to do during the coming Tet?

By: Lê Trọng Hiếu

NOTICE: Advance club will be off this Sunday 1st January, 2012. We’ll be open again on 8th Jan. 2012. See you then.

Some people would have you believe that men are better at running businesses because they have the necessary qualities somehow built in. It’s biological, nature, not nurture. Usually such qualities include toughness, aggression, rationality, dogged determination, and ambition.

Many women argue that they are equal to men in doing business well. That they are on a par with men and are as mentally capable as men in those tough business jobs and even they have more suited characteristics given by God in negotiating and winning the contracts such as: appearance, softness, and delication.

Let’s share with us what conclusion you can come up with regarding to the following point.

Guideline for discussion:

1. How different are men and women in running the business?
2. What are the strong points that make men outweigh women in doing business, and vice versa?
3. What type of mistake does each gender often make?
4. As a man or a woman, which gender would you prefer being on the other side of the negotiating table? And why?
5. If you are an employee, who would you rather work for, men or women?

The recent “Arab spring” and performance of companies I have joined convince me that leadership styles not only affect to their subordinates, business performance but also their future.

Depend on their own personality, knowledge, circumstance, subordinates, etc. each leader choose suitable a style for themselves. Some follow autocratic style: All decisions are made by himself without taking advice from his inferiors. Some prefer democratic style: they always share information to their staff, get feedbacks and consultancy before making any importance decisions. Besides, free-rein mode sometimes is preferable: Bosses try to minimize their workload and maximize management efficiency by authorizing and asking them to take full responsibility. Their staff feels free to do many things as long as they complete the committed work. Inversely, nowadays, several leaders still choose bureaucratic way: works always follow complicated procedure without exception.

During the time of management, they have received both positive and negative comments. Many of them are reluctant to change or are on the way to find the reasonable model so that they can control hard realities

Group discussion:

1. How many leadership styles do you know? What are pros and cons of each?

2. What is your boss’ style? What are the most beloved and hateful characters of him

3. What affect to leadership style? How do they contribute to business results?

4. How can you lead a team where many persons better than you?

5. What are difference between leadership and management?

Case study:

You are a young staff but thanks to your tireless efforts and forward-looking vision, you are nominated as group leader. In your group, some experienced staffs think they are better than you and thus always show their in-cooperative and disrespectful attitudes to you. Will you:

• Ignore their attitudes and try to show your ability with the hope that someday, they will changed their mind and serve you.

• Or Dismiss the stubborn staffs and recruit new ones, who less experienced but more friendly

• Or solve it in your special ways.

Prepared by: Pham Thanh Trung & Phuong Thuy

Vietnam’s investment planners are forecasting a massive surge in the foreign direct investment (FDI) capital on the back of the country’s recent diplomatic successes. According to a survey conducted by the Asian Business Council, Vietnam ranked third for investment attraction among Asian nations in the 2007-2009 period, after China and India. According to a report published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), TNCs (transnational corporations) see Vietnam and Indonesia as favoured destinations for FDI in the South East Asia region in 2011 and 2012.

ADVANCE Corporation has been working for 60 years in electrical distribution industry, encompasses the wholesale and retail sales of electrical equipment and products for electrical distribution. Their channels include online sales, industrial suppliers, home building centers, electronic suppliers, and manufacturers selling direct.

ADVANCE sees Vietnam a potential destination for investment in the South East Asia region, and has built up a Project Team for this market. Your project team will work on the analysis into Success Factors of Doing Business in Vietnam, which is part of the proposal to Board of Directors.

Your team may analyze:

1. Long-term Plan
2. Shor-term Plan
3. Investment Scale
4. What are the favorable conditions in Vietnam for foreign investment?
- Politics (Laws/ regulations, policies, political stabiltity, etc.)
- Economy
- Socio-cultural Pattern
- Technology
5. What are the obstacles of keeping the corporation’s principles of branding in Vietnam? What are the measures?

By: Nguyễn Phương Thuỳ

Maybe we do not know who first said, “Customer is the God”, but we all agree with that view.

A customer (also known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is usually used to refer to a current or potential buyer or user of the products of an individual or organization, called the supplier, seller, or vendor. This is typically through purchasing or renting goods or services. However, in certain contexts, the term customer also includes by extension any entity that uses or experiences the services of another. A customer may also be a viewer of the product or service that is being sold despite deciding not to buy them. The general distinction between a customer and a client is that a customer purchases products, whereas a client purchases services.¹

Let’s imagine that we are all business people at the Hanoi Advance Club today. We have prepared simple questions to help you to develop your understanding of your customers and how to develop and maintain good relationships with your customers. So, you are free to pick a business that you would like to do now or in the future. Maybe it is a café, a hotel, a restaurant, a taxi company, or a new bus company for Hanoi! For each business that you have chosen to discuss in your group, please consider and answer these questions about your customers. Keep smiling!

1. For whom are we creating value?

2. Who are our most important customers?

3. What type of relationship does each of our Customer Segments expect us to establish and maintain with them?

4. Which ones have we established?

5. How are they integrated with the rest of our business model?

6. How costly are they?

Also, please prepare a Customer Profile for your business with the Empathy Map provided.

Reference: Business Model Generation²

Prepared by: Đào Hồng Dịu

Edited by: Lê Trọng Hiếu

I have heard at least three times from foreign partners complaining about Vietnamese telling-lie habit, or Hanoi is in the top 10 most famous pickpocket cities in the world. Everyday I see people quarreling, fighting and killing each other just because of some very tiny things. I see diseases of achievement, formalism, corruption, heartlessness happening everywhere from street to school, hospital, government office…. No one I can call “children of fairy and the dragon” nowadays. Where are our history, tradition, Confucianism values?

 Now let’s talk about who we are and what we have:

1. What is culture? How do you distinguish culture, civilization and education?
2. What is national Identity of Vietnamese culture and how is it different to other Asian countries as well as Western countries?
3. Does National Identity of Vietnamese culture change over the time?
4. How can you decode the chaotic situation in Vietnam society with the degrading of social morality and tell us how it contradicts with the rich and magnanimous history of Vietnam, Vietnamese culture and people.

By: Cao Tuan Vu

• In what way, these sentences can be interpreted discrimination?
• Should ethnic minorities follow the Kinh? Why? Why not?
• How does discrimination harm ethnic minorities?
• How does it affect people’s attitude and behavior?

By: Đỗ Phúc Huyền & Bảo Chinh