Recently, Great Wall Motor's announcement of a personnel change has attracted widespread attention in the industry.
According to this announcement, Wang Fengying will no longer serve as the executive director and vice chairman of Great Wall Motor, and elect Zhao Guoqing, executive director and deputy general manager, as vice chairman of Great Wall Motor.
In fact, in January this year, Wang Fengying, a professional manager who has been fighting for Great Wall Motors for more than 30 years, has issued a resignation to the company, asking to step down as an executive director, vice chairman and member of the strategy and sustainable development committee of the company, but will continue to serve as the general manager of the company.
Two months later, Great Wall Motors successfully completed the "replacement of old and new", and it also made people look forward to how Zhao Guoqing, a young executive, will assist Wei Jianjun to lead the company to impact this year's million target.
According to the equity incentive plan previously released by Great Wall Motors, in 2021, it will go up to a higher level in terms of sales and profits, which are "not less than 1.9 million vehicles" and "not less than 8.9 billion yuan".
However, in the face of various sudden "black swan" events encountered by the automotive industry this year, it will undoubtedly be more difficult for Great Wall Motors to achieve the above goals.
Unlike Wang Fengying, who has been well known to the outside world, Zhao Guoqing is a Great Wall Motor executive who has only been more active in front of the stage in the past two or three years. He is best known as chairman of Beam Motors, a joint venture between Great Wall and BMW.
Now, as Zhao Guoqing succeeds Wang Fengying as the "second in command" of Great Wall Motors, not only does the outside world focus more on the young executive, but also makes people look forward to what changes he will bring to the Great Wall.
(1) Why Zhao Guoqing?
According to public information, Zhao Guoqing, 44, is a relatively young executive inside Great Wall Motors. But in fact, he is also an "old man" of Great Wall Motors, and has been joining Great Wall for 22 years.
Looking back at Zhao Guoqing's work history at Great Wall Motors, from human resources to being responsible for organizing the promotion of lean production groups, to serving as the deputy general manager of Great Wall Motor Co., Ltd. in June 2010, it can be said that Zhao Guoqing has proved his working ability in the first ten years of joining Great Wall.
In the next 10 years, Zhao Guoqing's most dazzling achievement is undoubtedly the successful promotion of the joint venture with BMW.
Although we do not know the specific process of the Great Wall and BMW at that time, it is certain that the negotiation that began in 2016 will not be easy. Because at that time, no matter in terms of their respective volume and revenue, there was obviously a lot of gap between the Great Wall and BMW.
In the end, he was able to become a partner of BMW, proved his own value, and believed that Zhao Guoqing contributed a lot of efforts and wisdom in it.
Zhao Guoqing once used two words "trust" and "recognition" to summarize the two-year-long "love" process, at the beginning the Great Wall hoped to account for a large share ratio, and finally determined the 50% share ratio after negotiation.
In fact, although Zhao Guoqing's academic qualifications are not so dazzling, many years of immersion in back-office management positions, compared with Wang Fengying's permanent sales line, obviously have a different overall view and strategic thinking.
After becoming the chairman of Beam Auto, Zhao Guoqing once said in a public speech in 2018: "Many people in the industry say that Great Wall Motors is not open enough. I don't think it's accurate enough, it should be not open enough. ”
In Zhao Guoqing's view, at that time, the vertically integrated Great Wall Motors, while pursuing the maximization of interests, many places were very closed, which was the problem that the Great Wall was solving.
To this end, Zhao Guoqing advocates horizontal cooperation and adopts the method of competition and cooperation to promote the development of the company. For example, completely divest the parts business and let them independently carry out market-oriented forecasts; for example, break the original supporting procurement model and introduce foreign partners.
"Don't just put on wolf skins, you must dance with wolves." Zhao Guoqing has always stressed.
Also formally this new perspective on cooperation and openness, Zhao Guoqing is undoubtedly one of the key figures to promote the internal reform of Great Wall Motors. It is believed that Wei Jianjun reused Zhao Guoqing at this time, which also reflects the change of this strategy behind it.
(2) Debut or in beam car
As the "number one" of beam cars, Great Wall Motors believes that It is also hoped that Zhao Guoqing can open up a new development path for Great Wall in the post-joint venture era.
According to previous reports, Beam Auto is likely to make an appearance this year, and Zhao Guoqing, after becoming the vice chairman of Great Wall Motors, can not only further consolidate BMW's confidence, but also explore more development possibilities for this joint venture project.
As we all know, Beam Automotive is not a joint venture in the traditional sense, but a joint venture company with R&D and production in China and its products facing the global market.
Therefore, in the process of cooperation with BMW, Zhao Guoqing's previous work experience accumulated in the fields of localization production, supporting and management over the years can undoubtedly play a more important role.
In addition, in the process of Great Wall Motor's transformation into a global technology travel company, Wei Jianjun must also have an executive with better performance in management ability, talent training and global vision to assist him. Zhao Guoqing's nearly 20 years of work background in Great Wall Motors is obviously more suitable.
(3) Kung Fu shooting
From Great Wall Motors' promotion of Zhao Guoqing this time, we can actually get a better glimpse of Great Wall Motors' eclectic employment ideas today.
Especially in the current once-in-a-century change in the automotive industry, Great Wall Motors knows that in the future, in addition to the strength of the system, there should also be an emphasis on talent training.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that Kung Fu Automobile saw that in this announcement, Wang Fengying's reason for resignation was "due to work needs", rather than other reasons such as personal and family. To this end, we may expect this woman with rich marketing experience to start a new round of entrepreneurship.