| I have long heard that Doctor Guan Hao knows
well how to enjoy his life. Although she has been working
for six years after obtaining her doctor degree, she is still
attractive in my mind, younger than I have ever imagined.
She looks calm and pure without any complicated expressions
on her face. Her tender smile, decent gestures within some
squareness, and leisure tones all made me feel relax during
the interview. On the hot summer day, it is quite comfortable
an experience to have such a conversation with her¡ FuTURE FORUM Secretariat Yang Jingke
During the conversation with Doctor Guan, ¡°innovation¡±
was a very frequent word, which was the interest and motivation
in her research work. Maybe such an attitude also makes
her open-minded and creative.
She has been working with Nokia Corporation for six years
after graduation. People usually change their jobs frequently
in the first two or three years for better offers; however,
she works steadily until now without leaving. In her opinion,
a job can not only evaluated by the payment and benefits.
The most essential thing is whether this place has anything
new for you to learn and keep on updating. If there¡¯s nothing
new to learn, and you have no passion to learn, then it
is time to leave. But if there are more to learn, but you
still quit your job due to other attractions, you will lose
the opportunity to gain experience and accumulation in life.
She is deeply attracted by the constant updating of knowledge
when doing the research work. New things keep emerging,
which makes her study restlessly and never be a so-called
¡°veteran¡± worker as time goes by. This is where her current
interest in work lies.
Dr. Guan is a sensitive woman. Her ideal lifestyle requires
no ¡°have-to-be¡± standards. She said interest was the important
factor. She described the ideal life like this: 80 percent
of the work is what she¡¯s willing to do, and at the same
time, she doesn¡¯t have to consider much about the external
factors such as payment. Such an idea has penetrated through
every aspects of her life. She thought that very different
results would come out from the situations when doing a
job with external pressure or internal motivation respectively.
In her opinion, researchers need inspiration more than anything
else. If you are pressured to do something, you will lose
your passion for creation. Based on this, she, as the team
leader of a workgroup, spends much time considering how
to arouse the group members¡¯ enthusiasm through their interests.
When listening to Dr. Guan, you will feel the sense
of speculation. She liked to analyze questions from various
perspectives, as well as from both positive and negative
aspects. For example, when talking about the research work,
she thinks pure environment and broad communication are
both contradiction and unity.
In her point of view, research needs new ideas and constant
innovations. So a pure and comfortable environment is best
for her to collect her own ideas.
On the other hand, research is not something to do behind
the closed door. She first realized this as early as she
was in school. At that time, she was studying the CDMA spread
spectrum. She thought that she knew so much about this as
she started it very early in the field. However, when she
attended a conference later and exchanged with some specialists
from different fields and industries, she found what she
was doing was just a dot on a vast paper, or even a tridimensional
space.
This made her realize that one may do something perfectly
when one does it behind a closed door. But as one does it
this way, one may shut off a great amount of information.
Sometimes, even the technology you are researching is not
needed anymore. So doing a research requires either one¡¯s
own space, or the various ways of communications.
At this point, she believed that several multinational
enterprises somehow have obvious advantages¡ªtheir researchers
are all over the world. They are able to access more outside
comments and feedbacks. The timely communication and exchange
among various regions can make companies always stay at
a world¡¯s top level.
Dr. Guan has ideal life expectations in her mind.
But you will not find she complain the real life and work
pressure. She always smiled, peacefully and tenderly. Her
words indicated her great interests in her current job.
In her opinion, the so-called pressure is having no ideas
how to deal with unexpected problems and conflicts. However,
it¡¯s useless to only realize the pressure. The best way
to set off the pressure is to put your energy on dealing
with them.
Besides the approaches hired to deal with pressure when
it comes, Dr. Guan thought people should avoid some pressure
purposely. She told us about a training class in Nokia,
which taught them how to arrange their own time. After the
class, everyone realized that they were busy doing their
researches, but never considered other things other than
their work. They began to think about whether there was
a balance between their work and life, or whether there
was a proper lifestyle structure. Dr. Guan said she felt
very strange at first when the company gave such a class,
which seemed to encourage employees to reduce their work
time. But in fact, when you think about it carefully, you
will know if a company eyes on long-term outputs from their
employees, it should guide them to find a balance between
life and work. This will provide a constant development
opportunity for both the company and the employees. Otherwise,
if the company and its employees are always engaged in an
intense condition, they will lose the passion for innovation,
and be tired of their jobs. It is like to kill the goose
that lays the golden eggs, which will never benefit both
sides.
About the Forum
When talking about the forum members¡¯ enthusiasm, she made
a vivid metaphor that it was problem of ¡°which is first,
egg or hen?¡±. It is important for someone to take first
step. She said that people who attended the first forum
conference were just for a try. This was very natural since
no one knew what the forum required and what the work¡¯s
operational forms were. The theme should be made clear in
forum¡¯s second and ever after conferences, which will let
the topics be further developed at a deeper research level.
On the other hand, if all the members just want to be lookers-on
in the conference and no one take the first step, the work
could not be started practically. So it¡¯s important for
the group leaders to take the lead. If the leaders can do
something in their positions, they will bring along other
group members and inspire more to join in. Whether one can
make this progress into a virtuous circle is the key to
the improvement of the forum quality.
Dr. Guan loves travelling. She once mentioned that in her
school years, she really admired the traveling life described
in Taiwan writer San Mao¡¯s books. Two things will be considered
when Dr. Guan chooses travel locations. First, the beautiful
landscapes; second, the life there should be different from
her daily life. For instance, her next step will be Tibet.
This is Dr. Guan. behind her intelligence and calmness are
her degage personality and uniqueness, which is the combination
of sense and sensibility. She can easily get rid of pressures
around her, and make herself move smoothly between life
and work, and truly achieve the ideal of enjoying life as
well as enjoying work.
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