Why the Chopstick Friends Invite James Rhee

Ha Dang - Respect Vietnam Strategic Advisor
Sep 19, 2025
5 min read

Updated: Sep 20, 2025

The opportunity to welcome James Rhee to Vietnam comes through the kind connection of Maria Chung, Board Chair of the UN International School. For the Chopstick Friends, this is more than just an invitation — it is a continuation of a decade-long search for answers to one of Vietnam’s most pressing questions: How can we shape a future where learning, innovation, and governance reinforce each other for sustainable growth?

Why Learning?

As a latecomer to the world’s accumulated knowledge, Vietnam has long relied on its strength in learning fast, learning deeply, and often at a fraction of the cost that others have paid before us. This ability has fueled rapid growth. Yet a deeper question remains: Is Vietnam’s growth truly sustainable?

This is why the Chopstick Friends — a circle of like-minded leaders, policymakers, investors, entrepreneurs, and academics — have turned learning itself into the central lens. Not just individual learning, but how organizations learn, align, and adapt as living systems.

The Organizational Challenge

Think of organisations in Vietnam as a body in motion. The body runs, eager to grow. But the parts — arms, legs, lungs, heart — often do not fully coordinate. Running too fast without alignment risks collapse, inconsistency, or missed opportunities.

This is the famous strategy–execution gap: when vision at the top is not fully translated into capacity on the ground. The Chopstick Friends have sought ways to explain and to fill this gap — and found in Vietnam’s own culture the perfect metaphor: the chopsticks.

The Chopstick Way

The Learning Organisation to fill the Strategy-Execution Gap

One chopstick is fragile. Two create balance. A bundle tied together is unbreakable. This simple, deeply Vietnamese image captures what organizations — and societies — must achieve: alignment of vision and execution, of people and systems, of short-term gains and long-term resilience.

Over the past 10 years, the Chopstick Friends have studied how organizations learn — in Vietnam and beyond. From

these hundreds of cases, we distilled a practical formula:

Simplified — keep to the core values, strip away noise and chaos, avoid importing complexity that overwhelms.
Aligned — ensure every part, like organs in a healthy body, moves in harmony toward a shared goal.
Right — not only “do things right,” but “do the right things” in the right way.

This framework has guided our journey to understand how organizations grow, sustain, and close the strategy–execution gap.

Why James Rhee?

But when we encountered James Rhee and his philosophy — “Kindness + a little math” — we realized something profound: in the rush to calculate, to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, we had almost forgotten the most essential element of all — Kindness.

Thanks to James, we came to a quiet but powerful realization: for years we have carried out countless kind gestures, actions, and projects—because kindness is deeply woven into being Vietnamese, and indeed into being human.

We have seen it firsthand: in the 2000-worker human fence, formed overnight from just a May Day text message by a visionary HR and trade union leader, standing shoulder to shoulder to protect a factory from being burned during industrial unrest. We saw it when businesses chose compassion over profit during Covid-19—sharing losses and hardships so that hundreds of jobs could be preserved, and keeping a resort open to provide a safe place for thousands of guests while others went into lockdown.

And we see it in education, where we learn in ways no book teaches us—by creating simplified, practical bridges so that parents, school managers, and teachers speak the same language, aligning around what truly matters: helping students grow, not chasing polished trophies or international rankings.

These are acts of kindness in action. Yet, for reasons we cannot fully name, we hesitated to call it by its true name.

Until James reminded us, giving us the courage to truly call it by its name: Kindness, recognizing it as the essential fourth element in our formula.

James Rhee helps us recall that beneath every system, every structure, and every strategy lies the human quality that makes them meaningful. His voice brings us back to the simplest, yet hardest-to-practice principle: to build organizations and societies where kindness is not an afterthought, but the foundation.

This is why we want him here — to remind Vietnam, and ourselves, that true innovation in learning and governance is not only about being smart, but about being kind.

A Dialogue That Matters

On September 20 in Hanoi, the event “The Chopsticks Friends: An Evening of Thoughtful Dialogue with James Rhee” will open up a new path of thinking.

The Chopstick Mindset reminds us that systems and people must move together. Like chopsticks, one alone achieves nothing; only in pairs do they serve their purpose.

The Red Helicopter – The Kindness × Math Formula. James Rhee, bestselling author of The Red Helicopter, offers a radical reminder: lasting transformation happens when kindness and structured data reinforce each other.

From real-world lessons— the famous strategy - execution gaps in for-profit businesses, non-profit schools, in leaner local governments - emerges a central question: If learning organizations embody Simplified – Aligned – Right – Kind, can they generate a kind of compound interest in human and social capital—where learning multiplies knowledge, trust, resilience, and prosperity? Could this shift reshape not only organizations, but entire communities, industries, and even cities?

That is why the Chopstick Friends want to hear from James Rhee.

Because in a world defined by VUCA and TUNA, the challenge is not just navigating complexity. It is co-creating a future where learning communities, industries, cities, and nations grow stronger—by compounding not only skills, but kindness.

The September 20 event will be a rare occasion for leaders, scholars, and entrepreneurs to engage in dialogue and seek answers together. Register here