Old Hands Make Light Work-Huang Ho-ming

On a bright, cool Tuesday morning in late January, after pushing through the crowds of people flooding into Daan MRT station on their way to work, then heading 17 floors up in a nearby building, I reach the offices of Atelligent Global Consulting. Stepping into a 33-square-meter open-plan office space and looking out through the large window of the only fully enclosed office in Atelligent's headquarters, I see row upon row of office buildings, along with the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University and the lush greenery of Daan Forest Park. You might think this is the office of Atelligent's CEO, Huang Ho-ming, but you'd be wrong.

Turning around, I see the 176-centimeter-tall Huang pop his head out from a small cubicle nearby, then step out. This tiny, seven-person company is a massive contrast with his old role as general manager of Hewlett-Packard's Taiwan operations, when his offices were over 20 times this size and he had over 800 staff; but it's also the starting point for Huang's "new life."

What, me retire?

"My old working life was all about social status and money. This second life is all about making my dreams reality." Huang, who turns 60 this year, is full of enthusiasm as he talks about the ideas and dreams he has for this new life.

Huang says, "I think I made the right choice. Unless you take a half-hearted approach to your work, the amount of energy you spend as the regional head of a massive multinational company is huge, as is the stress it causes. This is even more so in the IT world, where everything's changing rapidly and you need to stay on the cutting edge. It's a constant battle to stay ahead." After 23 years with Hewlett-Packard, Huang says, he'd done as much as he could both personally and for the company, and it was time to pass the torch. And so, at the age of 45, he decided to bow out of the rat race and prepare himself for the next phase in his life.

From the moment he made the decision to when he actually stepped down, Huang was as focused and driven as ever, spending a full five years laying his plans. Every week, he would set aside some time to meet with five groups of senior managers and give them personal guidance in preparation for his departure. Some of the managers were excellent at management, but not so great on the interpersonal front, while others lacked business experience, having come from a tech background. Huang held nothing back in his guidance of these managers, in the hopes of laying the foundation for a prosperous "post-Huang" era at HP.

Back to school

While Huang learned to "let go" of his old role, he also began preparing for the next stage of his life and career in line with the ideas of Irish management guru Charles Handy. The first step in this was to do something he'd left undone as a young man due to family circumstances-undertake graduate study abroad.

"My main goal was to use this academic training to bring together my 20-plus years of practical experience and inspire new ideas, perspectives, and lines of thought in myself. I also hoped to use it to supplement my management knowledge in order to set up an international consulting firm in the future."

Huang put his words into action, and continued on to become a business doctoral candidate at National Taiwan University. For three years, study was his main focus, and having to report to the school three days a week meant he had to juggle his still-heavy workload at the company, his preparations for his successor, and his coursework, which left him burning the midnight oil on many an occasion. Despite the mind-boggling amount of work, Huang was happy, since he knew everything was in preparation for a new, better career and a new start in life.

In 2000 Huang Ho-ming finally stepped down from HP. Initially Huang was all set to tackle his long-anticipated next career challenge, but fate had something else in store. He was tapped by the government to head up the Institute for Information Industry, meaning his plans had to be put on hold. His doctoral studies had to be delayed by two years (resulting in the degree taking seven years to complete), and his plans to start a consulting firm were put on the back burner. Finally, in the autumn of 2003 Huang left his job as head of the institute and returned to his previous plans, formally establishing Atelligent Global Consulting.

"Setting up an international consulting firm like McKinsey & Company had long been my goal. I wanted to use my experience to help companies from the Greater China region stake out a place amongst the world's top 100 brands." Having finally escaped the spotlight that comes with being a leader in the tech sector, Huang says he "viewed this new job as a labor of love."

The birth of Atelligent

Because of this attitude, Huang was largely happy to take on the challenges of his new company, and it goes without saying that moving into an unfamiliar field and unfamiliar work style brings with it some major changes and challenges.

In his old jobs at HP and the Institute for Information Industry, Huang had his own secretary and his own driver. Now, as the boss of his own company, he had to do everything himself. He even began taking the MRT to get around. "It was basically a one-man show," laughs Huang. Having once had hundreds at his beck and call, now he is on the front line himself, greeting clients personally, which has kept the well-mannered Huang's feet firmly on the ground.

Thanks to Huang's own hard work, Atelligent was able to break even in just its third year of operation. In its fourth year, the achievements were even more striking, with the company earning high marks from the Industrial Technology Research Institute's customer satisfaction surveys and major tech companies of the caliber of Asus and Zyxel seeking Atelligent's services for senior management training.

However, no matter what measures you take psychologically, you can't fight Father Time, and increasing age will inevitably take a physical toll.

"Seeing the vigor with which my 28-year-old son Huang Shih-chia set out and started his own company, I began to realize I was getting old," says Huang. Nonetheless, he refused to kneel before old age, and instead sought out means to adapt and remain capable of doing just as much as ever.

By way of example, Huang talks about his lifelong love of tennis. As a young man, he would leap around the court, saving every ball he could get near, but at 50, playing like that would only result in injury, loss, and eventually a complete inability to even take to the court.

"Now I've learned to play smarter, not harder. If I can't get to the ball in time, I'll let it slip, call out 'nice shot!', and have a laugh with my opponent."

Out of the fast lane

"You only pass by this way once, so you need to treasure each moment, not waste it. I'm not worried about getting old, and I'm always thinking about what I can still get done and what new things I can still get out and experience." To elaborate, Huang goes on to talk about cooking-a good meal needs time to cook and to reach its optimal flavor, and this is something younger people can't force themselves to learn quickly. "That's the value of older people in the workforce: only an older doctor, with years of experience, knows how to cure the worst diseases."

"If capable people can stay in the workplace longer, they can contribute to society rather than becoming a burden on it," says Huang. It's just a matter of moving from the high-speed expressways to the slower-paced country roads. Personally, Huang says, "Becoming a consultant and helping guide companies to greater effectiveness gives me a sense of achievement, keeps my horizons broad, and doesn't leave me sitting around bored to tears and out of the loop."

As Freud said, love and work are the two fundamental elements of human life. Maslow built upon this with the concept of a hierarchy of needs, starting with personal safety and security, and building up to the need for self-actualization. In Huang Ho-ming, we can see a concrete example of these ideas in action.