Charles writing his life story, RESTly (10)

My 5th big transition --returning to Hong Kong and making career change--took place in late 1986. Thinking that I could not continue to stay in Canada in a state full of dilemmas, I flew back by myself to Hong Kong and started working in a SME at a management level, through the introduction of an old colleague. I thought that a new life could begin. But it turned out to be a narrow path again. I was forced to resign after working there for only 3 months, because I could not cope with the conflicts between three bosses and their poor management styles which contradicted to what I had learnt from the MBA course.

What followed was a few months of looking for a comparable position. In vain, I started to pick up some part-time courses to teach. Unfortunately at that stage, my wife flew back to Hong Kong with our one year old daughter from Canada and had to experience pressure, again!

Since then, I began to teach management subjects on contract terms at different universities and organisations in Hong Kong (PolyU, CityU, USU, UKU, HKMA, HKPC). Although income was moderate and unsteady, I was thankful that I could get away from the chaos of the business arena.

Out of self motivation and for career advancement, I spent the last sum of saving for pursuing a doctorate degree (DBA) organized by a British Institution (IMC, U.K.). After about 4 years of extremely hard work, I achieved this new goal in 1990. The Action Learning management approach (that I still strongly believe in) advocated by this Institution  was not much appreciated by the management academics I had worked with. By late 1990s, I received less and less teaching contracts from CityU (probably due to a mismatch between Action Learning and its academic culture) and I had to find other ways to earn income. Slowly I realized that God might not want me to get a full-time teaching post in a traditional University.