Li Ningjin And Retire: Internal And External Difficulties In The Pformation Period Of Local Brand Enterprises

In June 30, 2010, Li Ning Co released the largest brand remolding campaign since the company was founded, aiming to solve the problem of Lining brand aging.

To this end, it even changed the brand that used 20 years, with a distinct founder mark, to show "determination to change".

In the following year, it should have been a deliberate and step-by-step pformation strategy, which failed to win the expected applause, but led to one bad news: first, there was a rebound and concussion in the channel, and two consecutive quarters of decline in orders. From the stock market performance, the stock price of the company experienced a two sharp downturn in just six months, first in the end of 2010, due to the decrease of dealer orders in the second quarter of 2011, Lining's market value shrank by 23%, and the market value evaporated nearly 4 billion 500 million Hong Kong dollars.

From June 30th last year, the performance shock and internal management problems of Lining China Sporting Goods Co., Ltd., which has been going on for a whole year last year, is an interesting business mirror. It reflects the internal and external problems that Chinese local brand enterprises will face in the first real sense of enterprise pformation: how to build an intrinsic growth engine after the natural growth of the market slows down? How can the company's pformation of public enterprises and their founder fade out of their daily management and management, and how to form a company culture that matches the new development stage?

The management problems that have been obscured by the rapid development have been highlighted after the concussion of performance. The psychological balance of the insiders has been broken. Doubts, impetuosity and injustice are pervaded in the interior. How can the challenged management reverse the unfavorable situation?

Although it has been developing for more than 20 years, brand building still stays at the primary stage.

Before rebuilding the brand, the most famous Brand Company in China did not have a systematic brand positioning and internalized it into organizational capabilities.

In the context of market competition and centralization of global consumption, can Lining solve the embarrassment of market position through a campaign of brand remolding for four years?

These problems will not be evaded by Chinese enterprises. First, China will usher in the succession of enterprises in the next ten years.

After the founder's fading out of daily management, can the company become evergreen? Secondly, from price competition to value competition, can the company's brand and business model stand the test? Finally, we must mention that the pformation case of Li Ning Co has the particularity of the individual -- the influence of the founder's personal character on organizational culture.

Li Ning Co is one of the first Chinese companies to try to family and downplay the founder's color.

Around 2000, Lining decided to go to family and set up a modern corporate governance system. Since then, founder Lining is almost "hidden" in the board of directors.

As a founder, Lining's personal values have been pplanted into the core values of Li Ning Co: Winning dreams, breaking through, and pursuing performance. His generous character makes him pay great attention to whether the company has created a good humanized environment for employees.

Most of Lining's employees know the core idea of the company, but at the same time, they also say that many times they will be at a loss as to what to do. For example, what is the core brand policy of the company, and what is the standard of employment?

For the current CEO of the company, too loose environment will lead to the lack of wolves in the organization's lack of change.

Jim, Collins and Jerry Paule mentioned in the book "evergreen": companies that are forward-looking can make their core concepts into systems and integrate into the organizational structure. These factors are not only based on universal ideals or culture.

Visionary companies also have practical mechanisms to preserve core ideas and stimulate progress.

In the process of Li Ning Co's weakening of the founder's color, it failed to turn the core concept into a concrete and specific organizational system and mechanism that could stimulate progress.

After the company enters the period of change, the issue of organizational culture will magnify the wavelength of change brought about by changes. Whether it is to adjust the core concept or strengthen pformation and improve the system is a problem that Lining can not avoid in pition.

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Is Lining "messy"?

A brand that many local consumers still resonate with, but is faced with the embarrassment of not willing to buy. A company that most employees refer to as a respectable and dream company can not stop the pace of employee leaving; a brand remolding campaign that should have been considered carefully and step-by-step, has led to high-level personnel turbulence and the decline of channel orders.

Lining, is it a mess?

"Wobbling", when asked about the most intolerable leadership behavior, Simon blurted out that this was the trouble in the previous work.

Three months ago, Simon was a manager in the marketing department of Li Ning Co, but he decided to take a break and change his job.

He has been in this company for more than four years. When he left, he had some regrets about his unfulfilled ambition. He once told some friends that Lining is China's most likely to become a world-class brand.

In the past year, he kept silent about this view, "only in this mountain."

Last June 30th, Li Ning Co launched the largest brand redevelopment campaign in company history.

Simon is somewhat puzzled. A brand remolding campaign that should have been carefully considered and step-by-step was launched. Why did it lead to high-level personnel turbulence within a year? The company's unstable mind and the declining orders of the channel? He thought the departure of the former CMO Fang Shiwei was also expected. After all, he was the CO ordinator of the brand remolding campaign and could not blame it.

Ah Dick also felt that the company was ill. He pondered and broke the disease into "lack of a clear standard of value judgment". Vague standards appeared both in product development and personnel appointment and removal.

Ah Dick, a highly experienced employee of Li Ning Co's product department, has spent seven years in Lining's itch, but decided to leave Lining when he felt no pain.

The shoe product manager of the company has changed a lot in the past five or six years. He thinks he is "old" and should go out to see a fresh theory of product development.

I heard that the former chairman talked about himself. Roy was surprised that he was a manager in charge of channel sales by Li Ning Co. He resigned after the Spring Festival this year.

Roy also entered Li Ning Co in 2007, responsible for some channel management business innovation.

In his impression, during the four years of the Li Ning Co, he never had a separate communication with Chairman Lining.

From a friend's office, he heard that the former chairman talked about the business he had been in charge of and talked about him. Some of his veterans wanted to go out again.

Simon and Dick have similar views.

They all remember that in January 27th, at the end of the annual meeting of the Lining group, Lining, the chairman of the board, said with great enthusiasm, "in three years, we have a new Lining," but they all chose not to wait.

For the next life, they want to make changes happen.

Rekindling fire

Let the change happen, plated from "Make the change", is a new slogan of Li Ning Co. It was released in June 30th last year and officially replaced the phrase "everything is possible" which was put forward in 2002.

Indeed, anything is possible.

Think of this long planned conference, there are so many accidents: one night before the conference, CEO Zhang Zhiyong, who temporarily observed the dress rehearsal, found that the clothes of the staff were not suitable for the theme, so he became a "shopping guide". With the staff, he locked the door into the only exhibition shop in the Lining Park and re selected the clothes. On the day of the launch, the organizers of the event were stunned to find a sign of "90 Lining" on the outside of the hall, which was originally temporarily promoted by CMO Fang Shiwei. On the 30 day, a considerable number of Lining people were not sure whether the Chinese version of "Make the Change" was "changing everything" or "letting change happen" or other words related to "change". None of the insiders had planned.

Everything is concealed under the more angular Lining brand.

Outsiders throw curiosity into the Li Ning Co's changing story and the brand aging problem of the company, and the reshaped brand DNA.

Few people noticed that Guo Jianxin, the company's COO, did not attend the conference to explain how the supply chain from product to channel would support the realization of brand remolding, let alone the details of the new plation of Slogan.

Dave, who works with Simon in the market system, has gone to the end of the brand redevelopment campaign. "Outsiders look at it and feel very busy. Only we know how many problems we have."

In fact, Lining's brand remodeling in 2010 is not a temporary ad campaign. It is a company pformation campaign that has been planned for four years. Its goal is to become the first local sports brand and the internationalization after 2013, and become a truly world-class brand.

The discussion around remodeling began in May 2007.

After being surpassed by Nike and Adidas in 2003 and 2004, although the Li Ning Co has maintained rapid growth, thanks to the natural growth of the market, the company has already realized the embarrassment of Lining's brand positioning.

The high-end market is entrenched with Nike and Adidas, and a large number of Jinjiang companies are gathered in the low-end market.

20 years ago, Japanese management expert and father of the strategy Kenichi Ohmae put forward the concept of "M society". The main idea is that under the trend of globalization, the middle class will move up or upward into the upper class, or fall down to the bottom. The society will change from the middle class to the middle and small M type.

According to this social structure, the capacity of the middle end market will shrink.

In addition, in the book "what customers want to buy" published by Boston consulting company, it also reveals the trend that consumers in the middle end market tend to get better consumption and lower consumption.

In short, consumers are willing to choose products that are more important than their own location, such as mobile phones, leather bags, clothing, and those products that are not very important to them.

The combination of the two trends has accelerated the demise of the middle end brand, and Lining is in such a position.

In 2007, Li Ning Co hired Ziba to investigate the current situation of Lining brand. The conclusion is that the aging of the brand is serious, the age of the buying group is too large, and the core consumer group is 35-45 years old.

Zhang Zhiyong said, broadly speaking, the consumption group of sports products is between 15-45 years old.

The results of the survey mean that in the next 5 years, the consumption of sports products will be greatly reduced by the old core consumer groups. For Lining, the problem is: how to follow up the growth?

The brand "Lining", founded by former Olympic champion Lining, has an unusual emotional significance for the Chinese sports equipment market and a generation of Chinese.

Looking back at the consumption culture of Chinese clothing before and after the founding of Lining, China entered the initial stage of brand consumption in the early 90s of last century.

People do not deliberately distinguish the dressing requirements of different occasions. Therefore, Lining and YOUNGOR, Shanshan, tiger and other western style brands are put together, and are regarded as the pronoun of Chinese famous brands.

The spillover effect of the personal brand of the prince of gymnastics brings Lining the first high-speed development, and more importantly, the brand has even become a collective memory of a generation.

Born in the Chinese market, the stage of brand consumption awareness has decided that since the early days of its founding, Lining's first group of major consumers is not a group represented by young people, but a core group of consumers who are beginning to have brand awareness and have a certain purchasing power in the society.

Generally speaking, a sports brand that advocates sports spirit is always targeting young people between 15 and 25 years old.

In the meantime, foreign companies who are well versed in the brand approach have gradually enriched the concept of brand consumption of Chinese consumers.

Since 2000, Nike and Adidas have gradually increased their investment in the Chinese market. They have been dreaming of dreams in China with all kinds of advertisements interpreted by the stars of the world's top sports and fashion circles. They have fascinated young people.

Lining is gradually regarded as a brand that is not young enough.

As early as 2004, when Lining was interviewed by Guanghua Management Case Center of Peking University, Lining's brand aging topic was introduced into the discussion of Guanghua MBA course.

But in the following years, the natural growth of the domestic demand market concealed the brand positioning.

For a fast-growing company, this is not enough to turn into a problem.

"There are some problems with Lining. The highlight of 2008 is the Olympic torch relay, and the turnover surpassed Adidas in 2009."

Lining, a former employee, said this to this magazine.

After Ziba's research results come out, there is a broad consensus within the Li Ning Co to make changes and reshape them.

According to Zhang Zhiyong's statement, "the upward trend of the middle end consumers is becoming more and more obvious. We must keep pace with the consumers.

Of course, it's easier to walk down, but if we want to become world-class brands, we can only go up. "

However, the story after that has turned sharply into a path of consensus.

A year later, the company CMO Fang Shiwei and COO Guo Jianxin resigned one after another.

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Two "three links jump"

Around the Lining brand research, Ziba lasted nearly two years, through the Olympic year.

2008 is the new year of the sports industry. Lining has a FireWire plan around the Olympic Games.

Lining was not an official sponsor of the Olympic Games, but in the year it was beautiful. Simon remembers that Lining was outstanding in many indicators such as brand awareness, reputation and sales.

After the Olympic Games, the brand remodeling was put on the agenda again. The company COO Guo Jianxin held a full mobilization meeting, and all the employees above the manager level attended the video.

At the meeting, Guo Jianxin explained the original intention and goal of brand remolding, and told participants that after a month, the task would be decomposed into specific individuals in specific departments.

Ah Dick is one of the participants. Now he wants to come. He still finds some paradoxes. After a month, the task has not arrived on schedule, and Guo Jianxin has not held any relevant meetings.

The product department participated in some conferences related to brand remolding, but in fact, brand remolding did not bring Li Ning Co's innovation in product planning and development. "What we do is to label new products."

Some of them could not understand why some major decisions were so hasty and careless, for example, the determination of new trademarks.

Lining's change of mark is the most important part of the reshaping campaign.

The original trademark is the pformation of L, which has a deep Founder brand.

In the late discussion of brand remodeling, some people in the management suggested that a strong change signal should be issued by changing the label. The other layer did not specify the meaning of the brand name, which was to weaken the relationship between the brand and the founders. The reason is that the young people after 90 have no emotional sympathy for the gymnastic king who has already had two temples.

When the motion was passed to Lining himself, the prince still supported the motion even though he had some subtle changes in his mind.

Ziba and another trademark information company Lang Tao became the bidder.

In the process of screening new Logo, different opinions are formed.

The radical group believes that the Li Ningxin logo should be thoroughly gone to Lining, and the Logo submitted can not see the shadow of the past. Some old employees believe that even if the bid is changed, it should be perfected on the basis of the old standard.

Zhang Zhiyong said he was a strong supporter of the latter plan.

There are only three members of the new Logo final Committee: Chairman Lining, CEO Zhang Zhiyong and CMO Fang Shiwei.

It is obvious that only Lining and Zhang Zhiyong have passed the new marking ability.

There were three proposals for the process of selecting the new trademark. The two proposals failed to pass. They were not too overturned, not accepted by the founders. It was a legal hidden danger that all parties passed but registered as a global trademark.

It is said that the last item appearing in the press conference was designed by a designer from the Li Ning Co footwear department of the United States for a day.

In a dialogue with this magazine, Zhang Zhiyong denied this statement: "from this program, to the final signature confirmation, it took about more than 20 days, not to mention others."

Another example is the confirmation of the form of the conference.

Known as the most important annual conference of Lining, 1 months before its opening, it is not yet clear whether it is led by the government departments or by the brand public relations department.

Some people recalled that after the Spring Festival of 2010, the company did not even decide whether to hold a press conference until CFO pointed out that the evaluation of intangible assets should be clearly communicated with investors and other stakeholders.

At the end of 2009, Fang Shiwei was appointed as the CO ordinator of brand remodeling. He was promoted to CMO.

Inside the Li Ning Co, Fang Shiwei is quite conspicuous.

From entering the company in 2007 to the end of 2009, he realized "triple jump" in his duties.

This caused some dissatisfaction among the employees.

"I really didn't want to understand why he would jump three times.

We don't know much about the value orientation of the company.

Simon acknowledges that Taiwanese people are more mature in methodology, skills and creativity in the field of brand advertising, but he still can not understand the speed of increasing the proportion of Taiwan employees after Fang Shiwei dominates the market system.

In the product department, ah Dick did not feel that employees from different cultural backgrounds would have a lot of conflict, but the internal turnover rate impressed him deeply.

Take the shoe product department as an example, in five years, the department heads changed four jobs, and the product manager almost changed.

"Frequent changes in the responsible person will lead to a lack of consistency and consistency in product design strategies."

The product development process of Li Ning Co is basically: planning, design, development and production.

In the planning stage, Lining is also willing to invest in market research, but in actual operation, most of the market research, design and development are different positions, and the employees' personal will is dominant, lacking planning and coordination.

In 2009, the product department set up the CPO (chief product officer) post, and was the product leader Xu Maochun (Morris).

Morris has become another "triple jump" executive in the Li Ning Co.

A Dick believes that it is necessary to strengthen the planning of products, but how to make the new positions play a role is the key.

While promoting two new executives, Li Ning Co set up a new functional department under the position of CMO -- BI (brand Initiative, brand strategy planning department).

The establishment of BI can be regarded as an adjustment of organizational structure aiming at high altitude.

The establishment of the BI Department aims at solving the problems of brand and product planning mentioned above. In short, the BI department should control the life cycle of the brand throughout the whole process. It should integrate the brand strategy, sports marketing strategy and product strategy of the company. In Zhang Zhiyong's words, the BI Department should draw a complete brand map.

(see the next article for example.

Because of brand, sports marketing and product planning, BI Department has a cross sectoral and matrix coordination function on its birthday.

At the beginning of the establishment of the Department, there were five major business categories: basketball, running, women, sports, urban light sports, and then added badminton.

"I was longing for the establishment of the BI department."

Ah Dick said that it needs talents with brand system thinking or strategic design thinking. On the other hand, its natural cross functional communication attribute will inevitably require the incumbents to have considerable familiarity with Li Ning Co.

This is a challenge for many people.

But soon he was disappointed. The BI Department dropped five senior directors, leading five major categories.

He was somewhat puzzled by the company's talent selection criteria.

After the establishment of the BI department, Lining clothing business has launched a product line called surfing girl, aiming at the niche market of women surfing.

The proposal was put forward by a British designer who thought it was consistent with Lining's pursuit of "Youth" and "individuality" after remolding.

"Other people inside have objected, because surfing has not yet formed a climate in China, which is not enough to become a business."

Dick is surprised that the product is finally on the market. "I don't know what the BI department is doing at this time."

The five airborne high salary senior director, together with two C level executives who realized "triple jump", all happened in the period of company reform, and finally broke the psychological balance of insiders.

The company used its founder to fade out of company management and promoted the diligent old staff to serve as CEO to pass on its determination to establish a modern corporate governance mechanism. The story of incumbent CEO encourages the less advanced: here, work hard, you will get a fair return.

However, the change took place, and the air in the organization began to be filled with suspicion, impetuosity, complaints and injustice.

Choice of business

"Complaining is like pouring water into your shoes."

This sentence is quoted by Zhang Zhiyong in micro-blog, the company's own company.

Recently, he began to update his internal micro-blog diligently, and even talked about his retention.

"I am sure someone will ask me if I will leave. Why not communicate more directly and actively?" he thinks that it is one of the ways to deal with current difficulties by passing on his feelings and opinions and dispelling some of the puzzles and agitation.

He knows that employees are confused, but they do not know where the confusion is.

For example, in the process of preparing for BI, he thinks that the employment standard is very clear: first, if super sales, in other words, must have excellent communication skills, be able to communicate with all departments within the company without hindrance; secondly, have a systematic brand planning strategy capability, and have a taste for brand strategy, sports marketing strategy and product strategy; finally, there must be a sense of business.

But in the specific practice, the standard must be discounted.

Zhang Zhiyong's ultimate choice is biased towards people who have certain communication skills and have accumulated experience in sports marketing.

The strategic ability of sports marketing is a weakness of Li Ning Co in Zhang Zhiyong's view.

In the newly identified brand development goal, it is urgent to make up for it.

The case of surfer girl is used to illustrate how important the brand map is to Lining's future. "BI is to design a brand filter to ensure that the process of creative pformation can not run too far."

Zhang Zhiyong's so-called filter, that is, set the value and behavior standards, Lining called ABC rules (attention, his brand and customers).

But Zhang Zhiyong also admitted that in the past year, the role played by the BI Department has not yet reached the original intention of setting up the Department. "The development of shoe products takes about 16-18 months, and the clothing is faster. It takes about 12 months." taking into account the time set up by BI, Zhang Zhiyong stressed that organizational change is not achieved overnight and requires more patience.

But external partners will not have the same patience.

In all consumer goods business, channels are naturally profit driven.

The reaction of the channel to Lining's pformation was soon reflected in the quarterly order.

Orders for the second quarter and the third quarter of 2011 showed a downward trend.

On the one hand, during the period of brand remolding, Lining made corresponding adjustment of the organizational structure of the channel. The sales area covering the whole country was divided into three regions: the north and the East.

On the basis of regional adjustment, Lining also started to optimize the channels. Some of the distributors who had fewer stores and smaller business areas were merged by higher dealers, which inevitably caused some distributors to have a psychological conflict.

"The way to optimize the channel is right. We have been doing it all the time, but Lining is a little radical."

Zhang Tao, senior vice president of Anta, commented.

On the other hand, the fashion industry consulting company, compared with blue international CEO Li Kailuo, analyzes the conflict between Lining channel and brand remolding from another point of view: "some old channels have formed a kind of inertia. They have a great understanding of the original consumers. In order to prevent the loss of their customers, it is generally difficult for them to choose the advanced style, especially after the great adjustment of Lining's positioning."

Zhang Zhiyong believes that the change of macroeconomic environment has already been pmitted to the upper reaches of sports industry. In the industry, we must rethink the choice of business mode.

He agrees that consumption is becoming the two main trend of becoming better and lower. This will lead to the differentiation of market into price sensitive basic market and brand driven value market.

The corresponding business models are retailers' brands (such as Decathlon) and high-end sports brands (such as Nike). These two modes have different core competitiveness requirements, and Lining's choice is the latter.

This means that beyond the function, the product must realize the emotional premium.

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Brand repositioning is imperative.

In the perception of external observers, Lining brand always seems to swing between professional sports and sports fashion.

At the beginning of Lining's establishment, he wanted to become a professional sports brand, but the guidance of the market made Lining's sportswear more popular.

In 2002, under the call of "anything is possible", Lining began to return to professionalization.

2004. In 2005, the Kappa of sports and fashion was rapidly rising. This led to Lining's introduction of Le Shuyu as the general manager of the brand in 2006.

Over the next few years, Lining also tried to operate different markets with multiple brands, with little effect.

Zhang Zhiyong attributed the swings and changes of Lining's advertising creativity and product design style to Lining's development, and there was no real brand sorting and DNA confirmation.

"When you have a business to do, you will not go deep into it."

On the other hand, professional sports and sports fashions are not so clear or irreconcilable.

The mass consumers' brand awareness of Nike and Adi will tend to be "professional, fashionable and cool". Only a strong brand can use unique sports resources to make personality deduction, thereby strengthening brand memory and consumer preference.

Zhang Zhiyong calls it the question of creative pformation.

In the process of Lining's brand remolding, there are deviations and confusion in the pformation of creativity, which is more typical than "post-90s Lining".

This is a slogan that triggering discussions, controversies and confusion in the process of reshaping.

At the stage of reinvention, the marketing department took a long time to find suitable advertising ideas to express the new personality of Lining brand. Finally, a young man filmed "Lining, you don't know the post-90s" video, because it expressed the mentality of 90's not understood and eager to communicate, and was "salvaged" in many creative works.

In an internal discussion, the advertising staff tried to express Lining's openness to the post-90s, but intends to reconnect and change.

Another implication is that the Li Ning Co was founded in 1989 and is a post-90s company.

No doubt, after the new advertisement is broadcast, most people's understanding has become: Lining is abandoning the 70 and later 80's consumption crowd.

"The core of making a brand is real and meaningful". Zhang Zhiyong admitted that Lining had a problem of "not expressing his ideas" in the pformation of creativity, and he defined it as the executive force.

Executive power is fundamentally an issue of organization, involving organizational culture and authorization system.

Objectively speaking, in view of the fierce competition in the industry, Lining is a wolf wolf culture company. Because of his generous character, Lining, the founder, is more concerned about creating a relaxed environment for his employees.

"He is not a businessman. If he is asked to see the problem from a commercial perspective, it is against his nature."

Zhang Zhiyong said that he had often communicated with Lining recently. He made a point that "the leader is not good", that is, the manager can not be "too good" to his subordinates, and too good will be dispersed. There must be some pressure.

"A relaxed environment does not mean" excessive ".

"Not good" means resistance.

Zhang Zhiyong's deep involvement in the channel reform initiated in 2009 may be aimed at increasing pressure, but some channel people have some slight words, and they have made relevant associations between CEO's involvement and COO's departure.

Just as loosely does not mean immoderate, will "bad" lead to resentment? Does Li Ninghua's more concern for company affairs lead to subtle changes of organization? Whether Zhang Zhiyong or Li Ning Co or Lining himself, the core challenge of change lies in how to grasp the right and wrong measures, not too radical and not too conservative.

Recently, an advertisement which has been widely spread and creative in micro-blog is perhaps the best portrayal of the company. In the form of animation, advertising shows a group of sperm suffering from various difficulties in the process of pushing forward. Among them, the most tenacious ones have crossed the barrier with graceful gymnastic movements. The final victory has changed to Lining's Logo and a line on the screen: "I was the fastest and strongest one twenty years ago, so today I have no reason to give up."

(should be interviewed, Simon, Dave, Dick, Roy are pseudonyms).

Those who lead the army are not good.

Dialogue Lining CEO Zhang Zhiyong, China Sporting Goods Co., Ltd.

21CBR: since June 30th last year, Lining's brand has been remolded for a whole year. How do you evaluate the gains and losses at this stage?

Zhang Zhiyong: I think a few problems are highlighted. The key problem is the pformation of creativity.

The Lining brand appeal that you talked about has always been vague and swaying in the past few years. For the first reason, it may be that there is no positioning and strategic reasons. Why do we have to make brand positioning now? There is no rule, no regulation, and we will go east for a while, and then go west.

Second, the reasons for implementation.

The implementation of good or bad mainly depends on two aspects of control, one is the ability of creative pformation, for example, one element in our DNA is Chinese experience.

How to turn the Chinese experience into patterns and colors? It's purely a creative process and requires process control. We call it filters, and what we do is controlled by filters. At least we should not run too far.

In addition, the ability of "integrated marketing" must be implemented in products, retail and advertising, otherwise consumers will not be able to see the information or the information they see is inconsistent with what we want to convey.

The newly established BI department at the end of 21CBR:2009

Zhang Zhiyong: Why did we set up BI? We made the "913 strategy" in 2009. We have decided to set up this part to make the brand map.

The brand must be positioned and there must be an integration after positioning.

21CBR: when it comes to organizational structure and talent matching, I would like to talk about a specific question. As the core Department of Li Ning Co, the head of shoe product department will replace four people in five years. Do you think this is normal?

Zhang Zhiyong: not normal.

21CBR: why is that so?

Zhang Zhiyong: I want to start with the background. I do not say what is right or wrong, because there is no meaning. Everyone stands at different angles.

The reasons for personnel changes have been categorized in general: first, the biggest change in the organization of a company is the change in the responsibilities of a department.

Secondly, the functions of departments remain unchanged, but only one of them has changed.

There are two kinds of changes: one is rotation, usually four or five years to consider turning him to work. This can prevent people from losing their enthusiasm. From a financial point of view, rotation will bring about 15% of human resource saving. Rotation will not be a pit of radish, and two is job pfer, that is, the ability to rematch.

The last remaining change is to report changes in the organization, where there is cultural challenge.

The matrix organization must be carried out in the end, and we are still improving.

That is to say, this is a great challenge to the organizational culture of Chinese people, and everyone should learn to professionalism.

21CBR: Lining turned to modern enterprise management earlier. Is professionalization still a problem for Li Ning Co?

Zhang Zhiyong: This is the state of the whole society, rather impetuous.

Recently, I told Lining, I have some ideas to encourage myself. The first person to call it a big thing is not annoyed. If you want to do something big, don't bother. You can't do anything if you are annoyed.

Second people who are called trivial things are not lazy, that is to say, they can not relax after doing little things.

The third one is what I think is to strengthen in our organization, if the soldiers are not good, they are the ones who lead the army.

We encourage employees to have a good environment, but we must establish a restrictive layer.

I used to have a pressure to give employees a relaxed environment. This is what Li Ning Co has been insisting on, but you find that some phenomena can not be seen.

A relaxed environment does not mean that you are immoderate, it can damage the culture of the company.

21CBR: in the past few years, the internal environment of Li Ning Co has been relatively loose, resulting in a lack of wolf quality.

Zhang Zhiyong: Yes.

I think in essence, this is a corporate culture problem.

People usually think that the culture of a company is a leader's business.

You asked me, what is the trouble of non founder CEO at this point in time? This is also a problem I have been thinking about.

The question you want to ask is, if a large shareholder is separated from the decision maker, what is the difference between this decision and the organizational decisions of two combinations?

The difference is that everyone's values affect decisions, and everyone's values are different.

So I talked to Lining: tell me, what is the bottom line of your request for me? He said, "don't sit in this position, use power to seek private gain."

That's what he hated for so many years.

For any organization, there is a bottom line. If we cross the bottom line, we will have an impact on the organization. From a commercial point of view, it may cause harm to the organization, that is, I may say that there is enough room for individuals, from another point of view, it is unfair to the organization.

Some things frankly, cultural conflict, as long as we do not touch the bottom line, there is no right or wrong.

21CBR: from a business perspective, what is the bottom line of an organization?

Zhang Zhiyong: as I said just now, I encourage what I have to say now. We must speak out the most basic points.

We need to understand employees, what they are complaining about, and what opportunities we have to give them to complain.

I also complain, but I know what situations I will complain about, for example, I may say something to Lining, but I will never complain to my subordinates. Because this complaint hurts him, I will never complain to others. Your complaint to the outside world is to damage the whole brand, which is the bottom line.

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Why did it not happen?

The reason for watching Li Ning Co is simple: the pain that the company is experiencing is the experience of many Chinese companies.

However, this pain is "acute pain" to Li Ning Co and "dull pain" for most companies.

A year ago, Li Ningxin's brand slogan "let change happen" revealed a great anxiety.

Although many changes have taken place in the company in the past 20 years, a change of "substantive leap" has not occurred.

Lining, now the "Prince of gymnastics" with two temples, appears to symbolize the status of the company. It is still "Prince" in the market, not called "King", and is a slightly aging prince, which makes people wonder if it has a day to become king.

From its founding to 2001, the Lining brand has soared to fame and become a famous brand.

The immaturity of consumers and inadequate market competition have given the brand huge market space.

But after 10 years of rapid expansion, Lining himself's "first impetus" has gradually drained away.

Lining soberly began to look for the "second driving force", or internal growth engine.

Capital operation and the establishment of a modern enterprise system, Lining's biggest move is to give a connotation of "Nothing" is brand "Impossible".

But this brand slogan with obvious follow suit, imitation color and repeated plation and interpretation has not touched the value excitement of any group of people from the beginning.

Brand is not persuasion, it is not slow to explain, its function is in an unspoken and unthinking way, in an instant burst out of the emotional and value shock.

Although "everything is possible" can not produce such a shock wave, the habitual purchase of the original consumer can still maintain a considerable sales volume.

However, the problem can not disappear because of the delay, and it will only aggravate by procrastination.

The vague connotation of the brand is not only a problem for consumers, but also for the management team of an enterprise, and even a bigger problem.

A strong brand is supported by Inner Brand.

The so-called "internal brand" is a strong and broad consensus of the company's mission and positioning for its products.

Without such a consensus, a brand can only be a business of brand consultants and advertising companies.

Drucker said there is always a huge risk behind the enormous commercial success.

If a growth enterprise does not experience the "decisive leap" that makes business leaders feel fear, it is impossible to achieve the great pformation of "sparrows becoming Phoenix".

The founders did not abandon the courage and boldness of "the burden of inheritance", and senior executives' short-term concerns and the scruples and obsession of the mainstream customers of the company were the invisible rope of binding substantive changes.

The failure rate of corporate pformation is very high. On the one hand, external resistance and internal inertia are enormous. On the other hand, it is because of the weakness of leaders' human nature that people often have real sense of crisis only when the crisis is really coming, and have the courage to change the status quo regardless of all costs.

So, how can a leader find "True North", which refers to any azimuth reference in any case? The compass can not tell you which way to go, its function is to remind you not to change your direction randomly, telling you not to choose a path that is easier to walk but deviates from your established direction even when facing huge obstacles.

Otherwise, you will probably find yourself walking around for a long time.

Market positioning and business models are attracting more and more attention, and there is great potential for alternative strategies.

But the real leader is obviously not a business model and market positioning expert, but a strategist.

Strategists are the first to have strategic courage, courage and determination, followed by a person who knows where to go.

The path of management has never been clear in advance. In the era of uncertainty, the path can only be carried out and presented gradually.

This not only means the end of strategy, but also means that strategy is more important. It can only avoid the strategic courage, courage and determination of the leader in avoiding the opportunism and opportunism of the enterprise.

Jim Collins called the leader with the temperament of a strategist "Visionary".

His characteristic is not to see clearly the way of the future, but to maintain a vision (Vision) in all kinds of temptations and threats, a kind of unswervingly belief and courage.

Without such an "invariable thing" as the cornerstone, any random change can be plunged into the "Doom Loop" of change. The worse it changes, the worse it will change.

The little tricks of "try it out" emerge in an endless stream, but the change across the chasm and decisive leap never happens.

We look forward to the Li Ning Co going out of the shadow of "everything possible" and realizing "let change happen".