Continuing in the spirit of fast paced, challenging and new opportunities - I continue to get more and more responsibilities. One of my external market facing responsibilities is being the IFRS leader for Taiwan. IFRS standard for International Financial Reporting Standards, which basically are a set of internationally accepted accounting standards that is different from the existing accounting rules in many countries (including Taiwan, Canada and US). At the same time, most of these countries will be adopting IFRS in the years to come. For Taiwan this is a significant change and from an accounting firm perspective, potentially could create significant service (and revenue) oppportunities for us.
Compared to two years ago I am significantly more comfortable speaking in Chinese. Don't be fooled - its all relative and you have to keep in mind I had very very little before coming here. I'm personally very happy and surprised at my progress.. It's been great, but challenging.. Learning languages has required bold moves in terms of trying to speak, being vulnerable, etc. Quite contrary to my natural personality or preference, but learning Chinese was a key objective of being out here.
Daily conversation in the workplace is one thing... speaking in front of strangers and groups is another. I'm already way over my head conducting business in Chinese, speaking in front of students, teaching classes, etc. For the most part, these have been internal meetings or when external, its been in smaller groups where people can understand that I will have an accent, make mistakes and have limited vocabulary.
Well friends, I want to ask you to pray for me... yes, to pray for a very practical but perhaps not so significant in the grand scheme of things (egthis may not change lives in the foreseeable future)... however, I'm scared.
Next week, I'm representing our firm at a fairly significant conference. It's held by the Accounting Research Foundation in Taiwan, one of the key standard setters. Almost all of the key regulators, academia, our competitors and key senior finance people (CFO types) will be at this conference. They're coming to hear the latest news and views from the "experts" on how Taiwan will adopt these new accounting standards.
I get to do a presentation and then participate in a panel. Will I even catch the question correctly?
Oh.. in case you haven't figured it out, this is all in Chinese... and today they told me that the session is oversold and will have over 400 people in attendance. This is front page financial media stuff in Taiwan - the equivalent of a SEC conference in the US or a CICA conference in Canada.
My slides are still not done as the content is already hard to get right (in English)... how and why am I the best choice to do this?
Help!
If this wasn't enough, I'm also the Technology Industry Leader for our firm in Taiwan. What does this mean? Who knows - perhaps it means that I'm the leader who will bring the best thought leadership, subject matter expert and industry experiences to our technology clients. Taiwan has a very long, successful and mature history in the technology industry... how do I do this other job? Well.. another plea and prayer for another day.
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