Deep roots, high reach: think boldly, act boldly, serve with wisdom, compassion and creativity

Why I am doing an MBA

After many years in work, I needed to put my knowledge in order and upgrade myself with global management knowledge, so that I could apply it straight away in my company. I am studying the MBA Global programme at Greenwich Vietnam (Can Tho campus, Intake 2) on a scholarship from the university; the disclosure about that scholarship is on the Scholarships page. I have three reasons, in this order:

1. To organise what I know and put it to work in the company.
2. A degree awarded by the University of Greenwich (UK) carries personal credibility.
3. The network: lecturers, guest speakers who own or run large businesses at C-level, and fellow students at Greenwich Vietnam and around the world, connected through COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning).

How I lead

When staff resist change, I decide from the top and support closely: I fix the direction, train people in person and check regularly. Once the direction is clear, my style is to delegate and coach.

I am direct about business. About schools and policy, I am more careful.

How I see AI inside a company

I see three kinds of position:

• Some positions replace people with AI agents.
• Some positions stay human, and in my view their productivity rises tenfold because the person manages a team of AI agents of their own.
• Some positions only use an AI assistant.

Some people are being replaced, and I do not avoid saying so. The tenfold figure is my own judgement, not a verified statistic.

Sustainability and ESG for small businesses

For small and medium-sized businesses, I treat sustainability (ESG) as a long-term foundation: start early, even when the profit is not visible yet. I back that position, and I still ask for evidence when a company claims that "doing good pays".

The values I follow

I put how I live and work into one sentence: firm roots in tradition, rising through innovation, acting with mindfulness, and serving from the heart. The shorter version in English is stay hungry, stay foolish, stay compassionate: keep wanting more, be foolish enough to dream big, and keep an open heart to serve.

Firm roots, rising high

My core values come from love of my country and belief in the strength of the Vietnamese people. I believe independence and self-reliance are the most important foundation, for a nation as much as in business and personal growth. Culture is the root and the starting point of all lasting development.

Wisdom and compassion

Only when the heart understands the heart is there real kindness; wisdom without compassion produces tools with no soul.

In business as in life, I tackle social problems from an ethical foundation, combined with technology and innovation.

Thinking from first principles

Whether we rise or fall depends on how we think: break any problem down to its original nature, then rebuild from the foundation.

I combine First Principles Thinking, as Elon Musk uses it, with Phạm Nhật Vượng's philosophy of attacking rather than defending, and with the "5 hoá" method and operational optimisation. I believe success comes from daring to drop old assumptions, going to the root of a problem and rebuilding it with simple, optimised thinking.

Dare to think, dare to act

Dare to think, dare to act, dare to fail, but stay firm on the core goal and flexible on method. I learn from Steve Jobs about simplifying and focusing, and from Trần Đình Long about being careful in planning and decisive in action. I believe in creativity built on knowledge and history, I value R&D and the habit of trying things, and I accept risk in exchange for lessons.

Service

To succeed you need ambition; to be happy you need to serve.

I tie my business goals to serving society: products and services must give real value to users. I measure success by profit and by the effect of what I do on the community. I believe in the spirit of "We can do it": Vietnamese people can stand alongside the major powers and make world-class products.

Mindfulness

Peace is not when life has no storms, but when the mind is not shaken by them.

I live fully in the present and keep my attention on the task in front of me. I value self-awareness, managing my own energy and adapting to change.

Learning without stopping

I believe real success comes from turning Data into Information, Information into Knowledge and Knowledge into Wisdom, and I learn more from failure than from success. To me, work-life integration is not a balance between work and life; it is blending them into one continuous process of learning.

Integrity

Understand yourself to correct yourself; understand others to help them.

I build relationships on integrity, fairness and ethics, and I believe a leader must be the first to set the example. I am willing to admit I am wrong and I do not hide what I do not know.

3S

Three S's I work towards: depth in my profession, depth in how I understand life, and depth in understanding the underlying laws of things.