Chào ban (Hello)! Tôi tên là Trân (My name is Trân)!
Our lectures this morning consisted of an introduction to production in the Mekong Delta and a basic teaching of the Vietnamese language. In the language class, we learned the pronunciation of Vietnamese letters and how to introduce ourselves, and closed out the session with our Vietnamese peers helping us convert our American names to our Vietnamese ones. Lucas, the UEF student in my group, derived my name from the Vietnamese princess Huyên Trân. My American name, Mikaela, comes from the Hebrew name “Michael,” meaning “Who is like God;” thus, choosing Huyên Trân’s royalty reflects the nobility from my name. As Lucas helped us with the conversions, it was interesting to get a glimpse into the origins of our names and how they are shaped by language.
Moving on to our afternoon site visit to GreenViet—a consulting company focused on transforming offices and facilities into green buildings—I was excited to hear Mr. Quang (GreenViet’s cofounder) speak about the company. Since my presentation group was assigned to GreenViet, there were multiple points when I was familiar with the content. Despite this, it was engaging to listen to Mr. Quang share how his company grew since its founding twelve years ago. He went over multiple strategies they utilized in GreenViet’s expansion, all of which draw from the idea of “swimming fast and deeply” and “biting everything possible.”
The walk to GreenViet!
This mindset comes from the aggression of a shark, which is necessary as they face the industry giants they face the more they grow. Some of their strategies are straightforward, such as diversifying their clients to ensure they are always in business (Mr. Quang explained this in the context of the cycle of business: if you are engaged across multiple companies, you will always be in business with at least one company who is “up,” even if your other partners are “down”). However, I found what was most significant was their acceptance of smaller projects. Being surrounded by American companies back at home, it is easy to get stuck in the idea of “bigger is always better,” but learning about this method of company growth was a reminder that smaller projects are just as, if not more, important.
Taking advantage of smaller projects builds up to the larger ones. Mr. Quang explained that with potential clients’ uncertainty with green buildings, building a repertoire with smaller companies allows larger ones to have trust in their mission. Along with this, GreenViet firmly believes in utilizing new engineers to grow their team, thus having smaller projects allows members with less experience to integrate into the pace of their projects.
Mr. Quang introducing himself and the company he co-founded, GreenViet.
With GreenViet’s expansion, it is important to look at how they are affected internationally. Within their company, they certainly make an effort to diversify their engineers using interns from different parts of the world. For instance, this year they have interns from Sudan, a Vietnamese-American, and a Filipino. Additionally, they have a good relationship with universities from Singapore and universities from the U.S. Although they integrate different cultures and intelligence from all over the globe, they are still affected externally by foreign affairs. Our discussion was greatly about the tariffs, most recently between the United States and China.
While I won’t get into the specific details about those current events, the tense relationship between the U.S. and China impacts Vietnam. This mainly has to do with the fact that China utilizes Vietnam as a manufacturing hub because of its geographical proximity, the financial aspect (though, it is not the cheapest country to manufacture in), and most importantly the similarities in their cultures. China has to do this because of variety of reasons, one being the One-Child policy, which affects the search of labor. With a shortage of females, textile and electronic industries are affected because they need females’ fine, detailed skills (because of their biologically smaller hands). And most males inherit their parents’ wealth, making them financially able to avoid working in the factories.
All of these facts make GreenViet reliant on international business, but Mr. Quang shared that the Vietnamese people have the mindset of survival. With their deep history of being taken over by China, France, and the United States, the Vietnamese are naturally in defense mode, which carries over into their business. That said, they might be reliant in some sense, but as GreenViet expands, they are finding their strength in resilience against the giants of the world.
Learning about Green Viet’s mission was engaging, not only because of their incredible work culture, but also because of the knowledge I gained about how the world affects industries in Vietnam. This seems to be an important theme as we learn about different Vietnamese industries, and I am interested in understanding more about how so many different areas of work are impacted by changes in the international business environment.