Moving On, Moving Back

Wednesday marked our sixth anniversary. It's crazy to think we have been in Asia for a little over 2 of those 6 years, 22 months of that being in Taiwan. These past two years have proved to be a great learning and growing experience. Probably the biggest trial(s) of our lives in more ways than one. One of the most difficult aspects of our situation here has actually been Cody's job.

During the twenty-two months in Taiwan, Cody has been the only white face in his office, speaking and working almost entirely in Chinese. That was far from the hardest part though. The Chinese management styles and office culture tends to be drastically different from those in the States. At least in Cody's office. The General Manager (GM) reigns with a very tyrant/dictatorial/micromanagement style. Meetings almost always involve the GM yelling directly at his subordinates for an hour or longer, Cody being no exception. You can imagine what kind of environment this creates throughout the office. And what type of self-esteem it creates--or probably more accurately--destroys. On top of that, Cody was thrown into a desperate situation with minimal to no sales or marketing and weak management. He ended up taking on several roles in addition to his official titles and duties as the Commodity Sales Manager and Marketing Manager, including leading several teams at leadership training conferences.

Though the past two years have been beyond stressful, aggravating, challenging, demeaning at times, and incredibly overwhelming, Cody has persevered and proven to be extraordinarily hard-working, determined, smart, ambitious, patient, ethical, kind, humble, and successful. All qualities I am so grateful to have in my husband, and I'm sure his co-workers are glad to have in a manager.

In fact, Cody did more than just survive these past two years. He was promoted to commodity sales manager within five months of joining Schindler Taiwan. He developed a quantitative, systematic formula to accurately predict market size and trained his salesmen to a degree that they scored the highest results in the South East Asia group. Obviously his dedication was a major contributor in the increase in sales by 76% and market share by 163% since 2008--the year he came to the Taiwan office. Additionally, he has consistently ranked in the top five among all the attendees at leadership trainings that are part of his involvement in the Schindler management program.

Over a month ago Cody received an offer to transfer to Hong Kong to be the Marketing Research Manager for all of Schindler in South East Asia. Though the negotiation process has been challenging and less than rewarding, we have decided it is the right thing for us right now. I am hopeful the new position and office culture will be a drastic improvement from the situation right now. We accepted the offer on Monday and will be moving [back] to Hong Kong September 30.

After six years, I'm even more grateful to be married to as incredible of a man as Cody and even more in love with him. I'm happy that I get to share life's adventures with him. Now on to the next one!