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OPINION

NETWORKING

‘Networking in Sweden needs more guanxi’

Jimmy Zhao, CEO and founder of mentoring app Lunchback, argues that the fast-paced Swedish startup community needs to learn from Chinese traditions when it comes to relationship-building.

Published: 12 January 2016 08:22 CET
'Networking in Sweden needs more guanxi'
A woman meets Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg at a conference in Beijing. Photo: Andy Wong/TT

You might have just landed in this beautiful Nordic country, or you might have been living here for quite many years. Either way, let's be brutally honest: networking in Sweden is broken.

People try to network at some of the many different mingle events, and spend a lot of time trying to find new people to add to their social media profiles. But how efficient are these events? Do you get much out of them? I never did.

When I came to Sweden around 10 years ago I invested a lot of time in networking and meeting people. I made so many 'hi-bye' friends at these events – more than you could imagine.

In the culture I grew up in, people value 'guanxi' – a Chinese word describing a deep, meaningful connection. Mentorship and knowledge exchange is valued so highly that there is an old Chinese proverb: “Being a mentor for one day, means a lifetime fatherhood.”

For this reason, relationship-building is a big part of business and social culture in China. When I first came to Sweden, I was far from my family and friends, and my biggest worry was that I would not be able to find success as an entrepreneur without the right 'guanxi'.

Everyone wants success, and no one is born knowing how to get it. The way to learn is to ask the ones who have been there and done that. Successful people say that finding a mentor is the biggest factor in achieving success. We can't learn the hard lessons all by ourselves, and we can't pick up the huge amount of implicit knowledge in a business community by ourselves. We all need help from someone in order to learn.

Needing others is not a weakness; it's a strength. Your ability to copy someone successful is the biggest predictor of your own success. It has been said that good artists copy but great artists steal. Most of the people who were successful had mentors. Albert Einstein had lunch with his mentor every Thursday. Bill Gates had Paul Allen and Warren Buffet had Benjamin Graham.

Here is the golden rule of networking: you shall spend your time in thirds.

Spend one third of your time mentoring the people who are not as knowledgeable as you are, and they will return the favour by making you feel good about yourself.

Spend one third of your time with people who are on the same level as you, because they will give you a new perspective on the things you (think you) already know.

Spend one third of your time with people who are a decade or two ahead of you, because they will make you uncomfortable but teach you the secrets of their success.

You may be asking yourself, why would successful people want to meet a person like me? You may doubt that you could be interesting to them, and you might be afraid they will reject you. They might. But there are some strategies you can use to get them interested. First, be humble. You are asking them for something, and it's best to be up front about that. Second, persevere. Keep trying, and don't take No for an answer. At least not the first half-dozen times.

Guanxi is the connecting force in the world, and I want to create more of it. This is the reason that we started Lunchback, an app that can be used to find yourself a mentor in your local area. From this experience, we know that successful people who want to be mentors are available and interested in helping more junior people to succeed and progress in their careers.

Networking should not be about fleeting encounters, it should be about creating community. The most valuable social capital is the intimate, supportive relationships that spur collaboration while deeply satisfying our human need for connection, belonging and meaning.

These are the rules we should all live by:

1. Inspire and teach others with great stories, and be ready to learn from them too.

2. Build friendships, not just hi-bye relationships.

3. Show love: appreciate the mentoring and love who you are.

4. Have fun: the unexpected moments are often the most fun and most meaningful.

You will be surprised at how willing other people are to meet you in real life – all you have to do is ask for it in a safe environment. Mentorship is the shortcut to your success. It won't come easy, it still takes a lot of hard work, but this difficulty is what makes success worth celebrating.

Remember this equation: your success in life = the people you meet + what you create together.

Jimmy Zhao is the CEO and founder of Lunchback.

FOOD AND DRINK

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

Should you tip in Sweden? Habits are changing fast thanks to new technology and a hard-pressed restaurant trade, writes James Savage.

Published: 5 April 2024 13:59 CEST
OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits. 

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user). 

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

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