Cummins’ Jean Hou directs IT & champions emerging markets

“Our systems need to be flexible to meet today’s demand in emerging markets,” she says. “I help both sides understand the need and communicate.”

China, India and Russia are Jean Hou’s areas of responsibility for Cummins.

Jean J. Hou works to overcome cultural differences and miscommunications at Cummins Inc (Columbus, IN) and its global connections. Her Chinese background is an asset for her and an advantage for the company.

Hou is Cummins’ director of IT, and also its quality champion for emerging markets and businesses. IT was her entire focus at first, until she and the company recognized the value of her Chinese background.

“Cummins is a mature company in the Midwest,” she says. “Our systems need to be flexible to meet today’s demand in emerging markets. I help both sides understand the need, and I help them communicate.”

Engines and more
Cummins and its complementary business units design, manufacture, distribute and service engines, as well as related technologies like fuel systems, controls, air handling, emission solutions and electrical power generation systems. The company generated net income of $801 million on sales of $14.34 billion in 2008. It has customers in 190 countries and territories, served by a network of 500-plus company-owned and independent distributors and about 5,200 dealers.

Clearly, Cummins needs to manage cultural and language differences of all kinds.

Early days in Taiwan
Cummins’ IT director/quality champion grew up in Taiwan and studied Chinese literature at Taiwan Soo-Chow University. She completed her BA in 1976 and worked in various design businesses in Taiwan for three years.

Design was interesting, but she felt that her creative flair needed a different outlet. So instead of clothing or interiors she decided to design software, and she came to the U.S. to study her new subject.

She earned an MSCS in 1984 from the State University of New York at Albany. While in grad school she met, and later married, another Taiwanese student. They wanted to settle down in a comfortably small city, and Columbus, IN looked perfect.

A Midwest family
Hou settled in as a software engineer at Cummins while her husband set up an engineering outsourcing and consulting company. Their two children, a daughter now twenty-two and a son now twenty, grew up as American kids, and the family enjoyed Columbus’s convenience as well as its architectural beauty. “It’s a small town, but very open-minded,” Hou says.

Cummins, a leader in diversity
Cummins, too, is open-minded. The company has been a leader in diversity throughout its ninety-year history.

In the 1960’s CEO Irwin Miller championed civil rights and put the company’s muscle behind the commitment. He founded the National Council of Churches’ commission on religion and race, funding it with corporate money.

The commission participated in anti-segregation demonstrations, sent teams of troubleshooters to defuse tense situations and helped get nearly a hundred demonstrators freed on bail. Jointly with nine other groups it sponsored the 1963 March on Washington. Miller’s legacy continues in a corporate culture of inclusion and activism led by current president Tim Solso. The central vision is for Cummins employees to treat everyone at work with respect, even though a global company can sometimes be at odds with local laws, as in the case of sexual orientation and treatment of women.

“This is what we are about, regardless of where we do business,” says Lisa Gutierrez, Cummins executive director for global diversity. “We follow the laws where we do business, but we start with the premise that everyone who comes into our work space must be treated with respect.”

Unconventional career move
Cummins encourages employees to consider unconventional career moves. That was how Hou found herself at an executive management training course in Pittsburg, PA in 2000. She lived and learned with colleagues from Germany, France, Italy and the U.K. as well as the U.S. for six weeks, and it opened her eyes.

“For fifteen years at the company I thought only of my CS major,” she says. “I never thought of my other skills. But now I realized that I could use my diverse cultural background.”

In 2003 Cummins offered Hou the emerging markets position she holds now. She reports to Steve Chapman, group VP for emerging markets and businesses, and leads a group of fifteen to twenty people. All of them, including herself, travel internationally. They teleconference once a month and meet face to face every quarter.

China, India and Russia
China, India and Russia are Hou’s areas of responsibility. She speaks Chinese and English is the language of business in India, but she relies on translators in Russia.

Each country has its own cultural challenges, and time zones can be stumbling blocks. But Cummins’ diversity policies guide it in adapting to different cultures, and the company’s partners and employees are expected to adapt, too: for example, holding meetings keyed to a variety of time zones outside the U.S.

“We want to find connections between corporate culture and local culture,” says Gutierrez. “It’s a journey, and we are in the middle of it.”

Cultural disconnects?
In China, being quiet and not talking too much is considered a virtue. It’s one that Hou shares. Always being friendly and polite, being Chinese and a “lady,” often work to her advantage.

“At meetings, people have more patience with me if I ask them to explain again,” she says. “They may argue with each other but they don’t do that as much with me.”

Back home in Indiana
Hou has been involved in Cummins’ Chinese affinity group since it was formed in 2002. It serves about 150 employees in Columbus, most of them native Chinese who came to the U.S. for education. All have advanced degrees; only a few speak English as a first language.

The group arranges formal and informal seminars to connect junior staff with senior staff and corporate execs. They match new hires with senior engineers as mentors, and arrange celebrations for the Chinese holidays to make the company and the city a home away from home.

Hou and her husband have expanded their own international interests to benefit their adopted home town. They helped the city arrange a sister-city relationship with Wuxi, China. And Hou is a member of the city’s delegation to recruit Chinese companies to locate facilities in Columbus. Two have already done that, and others are planning a move.

“It’s a win-win situation,” Hou says. “Here, we need more business. There, they want to see the world and make their businesses grow.”