Author: Song Jiating
There are talented people in the car market, each leading the way for three or five years.
At the beginning of the new year, the independent "one brother" dispute around Geely Automobile and Great Wall Motors revealed the answer in the sales released by the two car companies on the same day.
From the data point of view, Geely Automobile narrowly beat Great Wall Motor with a total sales volume of 1.328 million units, but failed to complete the target of 1.41 million units set at the beginning of the year; Great Wall Motor's annual sales volume was 1.28 million units, exceeding the expected annual sales target of 1.21 million units. From the perspective of growth rate, Geely Automobile only achieved a growth rate of 1%, and Great Wall Motors surpassed Geely with a growth rate of up to 15.24%.
Regardless of who the boss of the new year is, in fact, from 2017, when Geely Automobile sold 1.248 million units, it surpassed the sales of Great Wall Motors and sat in the top seat of its own brand passenger cars, people seem to forget that the Great Wall was in this seat as early as Geely in 2012.
In the years that followed, both of them were racing upwards with a strong momentum. In the meantime, including the launch of high-end brands WEY and Lynk & Co on the front and back feet, the layout of electric vehicles, big travel, a new round of going to sea, and as of now, Geely Automobile has exceeded one million sales for five consecutive years, and the Great Wall has exceeded one million sales for six consecutive years.
Even, both are quite "difficult brothers and difficult brothers" in the trough period. For example, in 2014, the sales volume declined at the same time, in 2017 and 2018, its Lynk & Co and WEY shined at the same time, and in 2020, the sales of new energy vehicles were as bleak as the two, and the new energy vehicles in the past year broke through the 100,000 mark at the same time.
In the capital market, as of the close of trading on January 7, 2022, Geely Automobile (00175. HK) total market capitalization of HK$194.8 billion, Great Wall Motor (0233. HK) has a total market capitalization of HK$229 billion, with the former falling slightly and the latter slightly rising.
As you can see, the competition between the two is so glued – and no one else can intervene. Because, whether it is Geely or the Great Wall, they still have one foot in the field of fuel vehicles, and one foot has just stepped into the field of new energy vehicles. BYD, on the other hand, is already a fugitive in the field of fuel vehicles and a new king of the new energy vehicle track.
It is foreseeable that in the next few years when fuel vehicles and electric vehicles will develop in parallel, Geely's struggle with the Great Wall will continue. With the improvement of the layout of electric vehicles and large travel tracks, new hot spots of struggle will also follow.
Before the victory or defeat is divided, let's see what chips each has to fight for a protracted battle.
Leader Style: Li Shufu Yuanrong VS Wei Jianjun Geng Zhi
It is not only the car companies themselves that are compared, the founders of the two independent brands "One Brother" - Li Shufu and Wei Jianjun, are also regular customers of well-known rich lists such as Forbes and Hurun, and have been the richest people in large and small places. So because the annual list is too "passive and high-profile", in an interview in 2020, Li Shufu publicly said that "the rich list is boring.".
However, if you think that Li Shufu has always been very low-key, you are very wrong. This is a man who used to be called a "car maniac."
In fact, since officially entering the automobile industry in 1997, Li Shufu's 20-year-long car-making industry has been full of Don Quixote-style adventures, which are characterized by daring to think, dare to do and dare to say. At the beginning of Geely's car manufacturing, it was poor and white, and there was no "quasi-birth certificate", but Li Shufu dared to say the famous saying that "the car is four wheels plus a sofa", and all by "hand" imitated the "old three" of Geely automobile, taking the first step.
In 2002, Li Shufu, who had just obtained a "birth permit", released a bold statement that he was going to buy Volvo, which was not only questioned by the outside world at that time, but also dared by Geely's own people. But behind the high profile is his precise vision.
Taking the acquisition of Volvo as an example, he had already seen the North American auto market tend to saturate, and Ford would sell off non-core brand assets in the future. It is precisely because of this vision that Geely seized the opportunity to acquire Volvo seven years later.
The integration process of Volvo after the completion of the acquisition reflects the mellow side of Li Shufu. In the face of the contradictions of different countries and different cultures, Li Shufu chose the management method of "Woren Zhiwo", indicating that "Geely is Geely, Volvo is Volvo", and in the following years, the two finally realized the integration of technology and launched the CMA platform and the Lynk & Co brand, which made the acquisition of foreign brands by Chinese car companies achieve the first perfect integration and become a successful model for cross-border acquisitions.
The same wisdom is reflected in another big brand acquisition: the acquisition of Proton In 2017, the whole process from acquisition to integration, is also perfect.
There is no shortage of excellent car companies in the Chinese market, why is it Geely under Li Shufu? In the view of Li Daokui, dean of the Institute of Chinese Economic Thought and Practice at Tsinghua University, one of the reasons is the management model of Zhejiang businessmen. "Willing", "harmonious", "win-win", "low-key". Just as Li Shufu's office hangs a pair of handwritten words: each is beautiful, the beauty of beauty, the beauty of the united, the world is the same.
If you compare Li Shufu's harmony, Wei Jianjun should be regarded as a "straight man of steel".
In 2014, great wall motor Haval H8 due to the main reducer problem twice postponed the listing, the stock price was almost cut off, but Wei Jianjun admitted that after the lack of experience in car manufacturing, insisted on not rushing to list new cars in order to boost the stock price, "I never cared about our stock price, I only cared about how our products did." For our stock price, if you think it will rise, you buy, if you think it doesn't work, you sell, if you don't buy, you don't force it."
This directness and strength of his is not only reflected in the management of outsiders, but also in the management of his own people. In 2018, it was reported that due to poor performance in 2017, chairman Wei Jianjun and president Wang Fengying fined themselves an annual salary of 3 million yuan and an annual salary of 2 million yuan respectively.
However, the strong Wei Jianjun also has a "thick and thin" side. "Renqi Media" learned from Insiders of the Great Wall that Wei Jianjun has been extremely sensitive to young people and trendy things in the past two years, and he once drove from Baoding to Shijiazhuang with a driver to see why "an Internet red tea brand is so popular with young people."
In July 2020, Wei Jianjun launched a profound life and death speculation entitled "Can Great Wall Motors Survive Next Year" and put forward the feeling that "there is no way out, only to see the way out". At least it seems that this is not the same as his previous personality.
There is no doubt that Li Shufu and Wei Jianjun, one from "car madman" to cautious words and deeds, one from publicity personality to calm speculation, behind it reflect the different states of mind of the founders at different stages of development of the enterprise.
Corporate Culture: "Happy Management" VS "Title De-Aggregation"
Different founder styles create different corporate cultures. Fortune magazine has pointed out that the fundamental reason why the Fortune 500 companies have won over other companies is that these companies are good at injecting vitality into their corporate culture. Under the different regions and styles of one south and one north, Geely and the Great Wall also reflect the distinct founder style.
Geely's corporate culture, can reflect Li Shufu's love of adventure, romantic personality characteristics, its core concept is "happy life, auspicious accompaniment", with the development of the company, corporate culture is constantly optimized, but this has never changed. Specifically, what is often quoted by the industry is Li Shufu's "problem culture", "meta-power project" and "happy business system".
"Problem culture" is the early corporate culture of Geely Automobile, its prototype comes from the manufacturing department, in 2007 Geely first put forward employee innovation proposals and problem solving tickets to reduce unnecessary waste in production and improve employee work efficiency.
Two years later, when General Motors declared bankruptcy, Li Shufu, who was deeply shocked, after careful consideration, put forward the problem culture of "finding problems is a good thing, solving problems is a big thing, avoiding problems is a stupid thing, and no problem is a bad thing" within Geely, encouraging employees to find problems, solve problems, and provide them with such a company atmosphere.
On this basis, the "meta-power project" to solve the problem of employee communication channels was formed. What is meta-power engineering? ——Employees are the real masters of the enterprise, is the formation of the core force of the combat effectiveness of the enterprise, hurt the hearts of employees, is to hurt the vitality of the enterprise, the core of the meta-power project is to straighten out the qi of employees, unite the hearts of employees, give play to the initiative and creativity of employees, mobilize the enthusiasm of employees, and turn what employees think into the development momentum of the enterprise and the market competitiveness of the enterprise.
On the basis of "improvement proposal" and "meta-power", a chance was influenced by Theo Inamori's business philosophy, and Li Shufu put forward the concept of "happy management body", the core of which is to form a business chain and value-added chain from top to bottom to create a community of interests.
Compared with Geely's "Happy Life, Geely Companion", behind the slogan of "a little progress every day" of Great Wall Motors is a strong sense of contrast - Great Wall Motors under the governance of Wei Jianjun, who is a military man, reflects a strong militarized management style.
According to public reports, new Employees of the Great Wall will undergo a month-long military training from the beginning of their employment, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, and there will be no rest on weekends. The Great Wall's headquarters gate is even installed with a speedometer to measure the pace of employees when entering the factory, and if it does not meet the standard of "5 seconds and 7 steps", it will be fined 500 yuan.
Great Wall Motors, a very planned management method, has been criticized by the outside world and even internally. On the one hand, because of its high degree of unity of corporate goals, the great wall has accelerated its rapid development; on the other hand, the high-pressure working environment caused by militarized management has also brought great pressure to ordinary employees. There have been reports that in the early years, Great Wall employees were punished after being filmed and recorded for hiding in the bathroom to play games.
After more than a decade of "iron blood culture" laying the market position of pickup trucks and SUVs, Great Wall Motors began to change its organizational culture. In November 2020, on the basis of extensive cultural research by employees, suppliers, dealers and other employees within the company and collecting more than 20,000 suggestions, Great Wall Motors officially announced a new corporate culture of 21 words, in addition to the corporate spirit of "making a little progress every day", it launched a new mission vision - "Green Wisdom Tide Play Hi World", and a new core value - "Honesty and Trust, Innovation and Sharing".
However, the most noteworthy thing should be that from 2020 onwards, Great Wall Motors will begin to implement the title of "de-generalization" internally, encouraging employees to combine role/position attributes to take flower names - do not underestimate this, which is almost equivalent to a big step for Great Wall Motors. Although it may be a learner of the soft culture of Internet companies such as Alibaba, to some extent it also means that under the cold shell of Great Wall Motors' iron man, it has begun to consciously integrate some soft background colors.
In the process of evolution, the common denominator of the two car companies is that they truly recognize the importance of "people" and begin to practice "people-oriented" in depth. (To be continued)