Legendary Ren Zhengfei: Who Is The Relay Baton Of HUAWEI?

It was passed to his son or to professional manager. Ren Zhengfei's "family affairs" became the focus of speculation.

In October 27th, a well-known financial newspaper published a report entitled "HUAWEI earthquake" and Ren Zhengfei 1 billion sent Sun Yafang away.

Reported that HUAWEI head Ren Zhengfei in order to allow his son to successfully take over, with a 1 billion yuan "breakup fee" to force the company chairman Sun Yafang.

The news is like a blockbuster that detonated the mainland financial sector.

Ren Zhengfei, who had always been low-key, had to stand up and clarify: "this is a big joke! HUAWEI is not my personal business, it will not take the family mode."

In November 8th, HUAWEI announced a photo of Sun Yafang's participation in the signing ceremony of Sino French economic and trade cooperation project, and further responded to rumors.

"Remember, knowledge is power! No one else learns now. You must learn, not follow the crowd."

Someone once commented on the lives of Chinese people: "if you want to make a phone call, you have to use the SPC Switch. If you want to send text messages, you have to use the base station and the telephone prepaid card; if you want to get online, you have to use the router.

And all of this is inseparable from Ren Zhengfei's HUAWEI.

This is not too much.

Headquartered in Shenzhen, HUAWEI, the main business is telecommunications equipment, covering mobile, broadband, telecom value-added services and terminals and other fields.

When the private technology company was founded in 1988, it had only 20 thousand yuan in start-up capital and 6 employees.

And 23 years later, its annual sales volume has reached 149 billion 100 million yuan. In the United States, Russia, India and other places, there are research institutes, and products are exported to more than 100 countries, providing services for 45 of the top 50 operators in the world, benefiting the global 1/3 population.

In 2009, HUAWEI became the second Chinese mainland private technology enterprise after the Lenovo Group successfully broke into the world's top 500.

What's interesting is that it is also the only company not listed.

As the founder and President of the company, Ren Zhengfei, 64, is definitely an alternative in the Chinese business circle.

He is low-key and mysterious. "It is much more difficult to interview him than to interview Li Jiacheng, the richest Chinese."

In 1944, Ren Zhengfei was born in a poor intellectual family in Zhenning County, Anshun City, Guizhou Province, under which there are 6 siblings.

He was lucky that his parents attached great importance to education.

Even during the three years of natural disasters, they squeezed money out of their teeth to let him read.

After the Cultural Revolution began, the father was put into a cowshed.

Ren Zhengfei, who has been admitted to the architectural engineering major of Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, ran home to take care of his father.

But his father said to him, "remember, knowledge is power! No one else is studying now. You must learn and not follow the crowd."

Ren Zhengfei followed his father's instructions and returned to Chongqing.

Since then, he accepted criticism and studied digital technology, computer science, automatic control, higher mathematics, logic, philosophy and foreign languages.

Later, he joined the army and became a soldier. He participated in a number of technical inventions of military communication system engineering.

In 1987, Ren Zhengfei pferred from the army.

Others think that he may have a good job in the state organs if he has a rank of rank cadres.

However, friends and relatives soon learned that he had borrowed 20 thousand yuan to form a company called "HUAWEI" in partnership with 5 friends.

At that time, the mainland market had just opened up, and many people were addicted to stocks.

Ren Zhengfei took out all the funds of the company, and developed a switchboard independently, selling it to a Hongkong company to earn the first pot of gold.

At this time, the situation faced by Ren Zhengfei is called "sinister" - Mainland telecom enterprises have launched a vicious competition for grabbing the market, and China's international telecom giants are plotting to crush all small and medium-sized enterprises.

How to make his company in an invincible position? Ren Zhengfei has a hard time worrying about it.

He soon discovered a "secret" - all telecommunications companies focused their attention on big cities.

Is there an opportunity in it? Mao Zedong's great invention inspired him: "the countryside encircled the city!" then, Ren Zhengfei quietly entered the "barren" countryside.

Facts prove that his "adventure" has been successful.

When many telecom companies fell down one after another in the process of killing each other, HUAWEI slowly grew stronger.

"Every department in HUAWEI must have a mess organization plan, which requires both aggressive wolves and good calculation."

By the end of the last century, HUAWEI had nearly 20 thousand employees.

But most of them are allocated to two departments of R & D and marketing, with very few managers.

Ren Zhengfei realized that if he did not pay enough attention to management, HUAWEI, which was already very large, would collapse in the process of expansion.

To this end, he made a special trip to the United States in 1997 to study and study.

In the famous Baer laboratory and IBM company, he saw what "real enterprise management" is.

After returning home, he spent tens of millions of yuan to hire IBM consultant to tailor a set of reform plan called "integrated product development" for HUAWEI, and rebuild HUAWEI in the financial, business management and R & D mechanism.

This reform plan emphasizes market and customer demand as the driving force of product development, emphasizing product quality, cost, manufacturability and servicability in product design.

More importantly, it regards product development as an investment management. It evaluates from a commercial point of view rather than a technical point at every stage of product development to ensure return on investment or minimize losses caused by investment failure.

In order to push ahead with the reform smoothly, Ren Zhengfei issued a severe "death order" at a cadre meeting: "within 5 years, what the advisors say will be followed by you, and you will not change it; after 5 years, you will use it and make partial changes; after 10 years, your structural reform will take place."

With the courage of Ren Zhengfei, HUAWEI quickly embarked on the road of modernization and internationalization.

HUAWEI employees also know that Ren Zhengfei loves to tell stories.

He was especially fond of the allusion of "wolves and combo attacks".

This is called the "embarrassing combination".

Ren Zhengfei believes that HUAWEI's culture is "wolf culture". "The developing enterprise is a wolf, with a keen sense of smell, a spirit of selfless care and a sense of group struggle.

With these 3 characteristics, enterprises can continue to expand.

He also stressed that it is not enough to have wolves. "Every department in HUAWEI must have a plan for a mess. It should be both offensive and smart."

Ren Zhengfei's "awkward combination" promoted HUAWEI to have courage, wisdom and execution.

In November 2007, Ren Zhengfei came up with a strange idea. He asked the employees who had worked for 8 years to submit a resignation application to the company. After they reached a consensus on voluntary resignation, they would compete for the job and sign a new labor contract with the company. Their jobs were basically unchanged, their salaries increased slightly, and they enjoyed one to two weeks' vacation.

This is HUAWEI's famous reform of "first quit and then compete".

At that time, 99.9% of the employees were re employed, including Ren Zhengfei himself.

His strategy was once approved as "confronting the new labor law".

But the fact also proves that this measure has enhanced the competitiveness of HUAWEI employees.

Ren Zhengfei is also good at sketched "bright prospects".

He once told HUAWEI's employees: "what's the biggest problem for HUAWEI in the future? Money is not enough to know how to spend it.

When you buy a house, the living room and bedroom can be smaller, but the balcony must be larger, because it is often necessary to bask in the money, otherwise it will become moldy! "{page_break}

"From the day when HUAWEI was founded, the route established was to appoint people to be wise, not to cronyism."

Ren Zhengfei also planned a "prospect" for himself.

According to sources, he once said within the company that HUAWEI could retire completely when its annual sales income reached $40 billion.

According to statistics, in 2010, HUAWEI's annual sales target was 36 billion US dollars (about 240 billion yuan).

In recent years, its annual sales revenue growth rate has remained at around 20%.

It is estimated that within one or two years, Ren Zhengfei's "great limit" will come.

According to the reporter, the 102nd rule of HUAWEI's internal regulations, HUAWEI basic law, states: "HUAWEI's successors are leaders who naturally come from the staff and cadres at all levels in the collective struggle."

According to this regulation, the current requirements are in line with the requirements.

Recently, there are rumors about Ren Zhengfei's son's succession.

One way of saying is that since 2007, Ren Zhengfei has been talking about the promotion of Ren Ping at the company's top meeting, causing dissatisfaction among other management members.

At a high-level meeting in October this year, Ren Zhengfei said he wanted to introduce Ren Ping to management and was strongly opposed again.

Another way of saying is: in order to remove the dissidents and let his son succeed in succession, Ren Zhengfei cleaned most of the elders, and then handed over the financial power to his younger sister and daughter.

However, some people believe that Ren Zhengfei did not intend to get his son to take over. This is the charge for his competitors.

For all kinds of rumors and speculation, in November 3rd, Ren Zhengfei responded for the first time: "nearly 70 thousand of HUAWEI's employees...

They will collectively decide the fate of the company. How can a person decide how to do this? From the day it was founded, HUAWEI established the route to appoint talents instead of cronyism! "He also listed the data that HUAWEI is currently dominated by a committee of 61457 workers, who have 98.58% of their holdings and own only 1.42% of the shares.

"If Deng Xiaoping comes to the company to apply, can we use it?"

Although Ren Zhengfei has always said that he has less than 2% of the shares, everyone knows that he is the real controller of the telecom giant. HUAWEI is not listed, and no major shareholder and investor can restrain his every move.

From this point of view, the outside world should not be surprised if Ren Zhengfei chooses who to be a successor.

So, what kind of successor will Ren Zhengfei choose?

Data show that in the next 5 to 10 years, China will have 300 000 private enterprises facing succession problems, while 90% of the owners of enterprises want their children to take over.

Yin Mingshan, chairman of Chongqing Lifan Group, once said, "I know that if I give my class to family members, my business will die slowly, and if I rush to professional managers, my business will soon die.

Between slow death and fast death, I choose the former.

Obviously, if Ren Zhengfei holds the same view, HUAWEI's next helmsman will still be "surnamed Ren".

However, some domestic private enterprises that successfully circumvent "family inheritance" may become a sample of Ren Zhengfei's reference.

He Xiangjian, chairman of the US group, once wanted to pass the company to his son and spent 8 years training.

But in the end, he still handed over the professional management company to Fang Hongbo, a professional manager.

Liu Chuanzhi, the boss of Lenovo Group, is more free and easy. His successor is Yang Yuanqing, the CEO of the group, and Guo Wei, Lenovo's president of Digital China. Even nobody knows who his children are.

In those days, Ren Zhengfei once asked the staff of HUAWEI human resources department an imaginative question: "if Deng Xiaoping comes to the company to apply for it, can we use it?" now, the successor problem also tests his imagination.

How big a business can be depends on the realm and pursuit of entrepreneurs and their ability to innovate and pcend themselves.

How far HUAWEI can go depends on Ren Zhengfei's courage.