Pain Points & Coaching-Consulting Opportunities in Asia

Written by APCA Staff

Each and every month, we receive many inquiries from both members focused on the Asian markets and prospective members investigating the potential of Asian markets as to what opportunities exist for both Coaches and Consultants (sometimes they are one and the same) .

Well, to understand what opportunities exist, it would behoove us to first understand what pain points exist now and what pain points are expected to exist in the mid-term and long-term future.

It goes without saying that Asia is a huge and diverse market not only culturally and often linguistically but also in terms of the stage of economic development and political stability.

We have modern economics like Singapore, Japan and Korea juxtaposed to developing nations like India, China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.

And yet, within China and India, there are extremely modern cities. This hints at the fact that there are many, many layers of nuanced reality take in and to understand.

Generally speaking, however, there are pain points which we have either worked to solve directly or our members have or which we are aware exist. Obviously this is not intended to serve as an exhaustive -- take this list for what it is; a starting point to help you understand how to think through opportunities which exist now or that will exist in the mid-term and long-term future.

China
If we look at China, we see a huge population with tens of millions still working in agriculture or living in squalid conditions while in major hubs like Shanghai and Beijing and even Dalian, modern conveniences prevail. 

China is also struggling with rising wages, an aging population, various ethnic conflicts or potential ethnic conflicts, a major pollution problem and the need to shift from family run or parochially-run businesses to modern, global ventures.

There is also a China Brand issue. 

Some firms have taken on this challenge like LeNovo in computers (acquiring IBM's Thinkpad Division, NEC's PC business and Motorola Mobility from Google), Haier in appliances (acquiring Sanyo's White Goods business) and Hisense in the television business (acquiring Sharp America's TV Division).

India
If we look at a country like India, we see shining beams of light with some movement to deregulation and others like the Make In India program. Yet there are also dark clouds on the horizon with the massive pressure to facilitize those factories with robots and other factory automation solutions, thus, precluding, the employment of unskilled, low-skilled and semi-skilled labor.

Japan
If we look at a country like Japan, what we see is a falling population and an aging population. At the same time, we see Japan has some fantastic world brands -- Toyota, Sony, Toshiba and many, many more.

Yet at the same time, Japan has hundreds of fantastic second tier and even first tier brands which are unknown outside of Japan. 

On top of this Japan is also in the midst of so-called deflation but at some point it has begun to become inflationary.

Further Analysis
This analysis can easily be performed for each country in the region and from it, we can also see that some nation's have surplus labor while others have labor shortfalls, inflationary or deflationary environments to contend with and so on.

Overall though, the coaching and consulting services needed in the Asian region will and do range from the following:

• Branding
  
• Corporate governance education and reform
  
• Labor deployment
  
• Communication & skills training
  
• HR & organizational transformations
  

...and among many, many others. 


In the future, we'll take a look at Thailand, Korean, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore and Hong Kong.