"Only when we seriously learn from these large companies will we make ourselves take fewer detours and pay less tuition." IBM summed it up at a direct cost of billions of dollars, and the pain they experienced is a precious asset for humanity. ”
In 1997, Huawei's annual sales were 4.1 billion, but Ren Zhengfei insisted on taking out 2 billion yuan to learn management from IBM.
This incident is very sensational in the industry, not only because of the sky-high tuition fees, but also because it is the first Chinese company to introduce advanced management experience from the West. At that time, Chinese companies mostly spent a lot of money to buy Western products, technology or other assets, and were willing to pay for the intangible wealth of knowledge, which was unique to Huawei.
In fact, IBM also wanted to expand the business of enterprise consultants after Huawei, but they later found that no company except Huawei was willing to spend such a large price on them.
Ren Zhengfei is really not going the ordinary way, and his thirst for knowledge and respect is one of the fundamental reasons why Huawei is Huawei.
1
Ren Zhengfei said, "IBM taught us to climb trees, and we climbed to the trees to pick apples."
In the 1990s, Huawei was in a stage of rapid development, and almost every day a large number of people poured into Huawei, and Huawei's office building was changed again and again, and finally it could only build its own company base.
Many bosses feel that the scale is a good thing, the more people under him, the better the face, but Ren Zhengfei is worried about this, "the scale of the enterprise will lose its competitiveness, expand the scale, can not be effectively managed, and face death, only to strengthen management and service, on this road of no return, there is a basis for survival." ”
It is precisely because of the insight into the essential contradictions, Ren Zhengfei looked around for management methods, he found domestic business management experts, but also invited Hong Kong, The United Kingdom consulting companies, and later led a team to the United States to investigate Hughes, IBM, Bell Labs and HP and other large enterprises.
In the end, when Ren Zhengfei found that IBM, which had just survived the crisis, its management change was very enlightening and instructive for Huawei, so he made up his mind to worship the teacher.
2
In fact, saying that it is 2 billion tuition fees, it is actually a 5-year service process, and after 5 years, Ren Zhengfei asked IBM to do organizational process transformation again, and the total cost should be about 4 billion, and the period before and after is about 10 years.
Ren Zhengfei is a bitter origin, when he went to school, a steamed bun can be nibbled for two days, and after founding Huawei, he also lived in a small house of tens of square meters all year round. Some Huawei employees recalled that Ren Zhengfei was usually very frugal, once he went overseas to investigate, the staff of the representative office climbed the mountain with him, he asked the employees to buy a little better hiking shoes, but he bought cheap ones himself. In his words he climbed this time, there was no need to buy too good.
It is said that such a personality should be very boring, for example, we often encounter the kind of boss who likes to bargain in business dealings, you quote a price in the past, they all like to stop you to give you a discount. If the price is cut down, they are very happy.
When negotiating with IBM, when the subordinates wanted to bargain, Ren Zhengfei stopped him, and his only requirement for IBM was to do a good job in this project.
Probably because Ren Zhengfei's frankness and courage have impressed IBM, they have also come up with a "good teaching" attitude, serious and responsible, even if Ren Zhengfei and other Huawei executives, they also dare to criticize in person. Ren Zhengfei was very satisfied with this and thought that the teacher this time was right.
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But not everyone thinks like Ren Zhengfei, at that time, Huawei also had a large number of people who were not used to and did not like IBM's management changes, and were very resistant to the ipD (product integration development) changes.
In this regard, Ren Zhengfei was furious, and he specially gave them a meeting, saying that he wanted to cut enough to wear American shoes, "What should I do if I don't learn well?" It is to kill the head, and my attitude is to kill and correct the Fa on the spot! ”
Most people are intimidated by the attitude of the boss, but some people don't think so, so they lose. Ren Zhengfei is also very sorry and unwilling in his heart, but there is no way, Huawei's management reform must be successful, otherwise Huawei will have no future.
Sun Yafang, former chairman of Huawei, later recalled that thanks to the strong promotion of Ren Zhengfei to ensure Huawei's internationalization capabilities, "he unswervingly implemented, the unsuitable people were transferred, and after fourteen years of implementation of such a huge management engineering change, it took fourteen years to have today's R&D level and end-to-end delivery level, cultivating the ability to serve global customers." ”
After 5 years of IPD reform, Ren Zhengfei wrote to IBM's CEOs asking them to help Huawei do IFS (Integrated Financial Transformation) for about 5 years, which is a 10-year long study and a sky-high tuition fee of 4 billion yuan, which is rare in business history.
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Although the tuition fee is high, Ren Zhengfei feels that it is worth it. Now Huawei has business in more than 170 countries and regions around the world, nearly 200,000 global employees, well-managed, can be said to be more advanced than most Western companies.
These are the foundations laid by learning from Western companies such as IBM.
We read martial arts novels, which say that martial arts secrets such as "Nine Yangs and Nine Yins" will cause bloody storms in the rivers and lakes, and for Ren Zhengfei, the advanced management experience of Western enterprises is as valuable as these martial arts secrets. Huawei can become a martial arts master after practicing cheats and has the capital to conquer the world.
The reason is so simple, knowledge is priceless, learning from other people's advanced experience can make yourself less detours, more efficient and stronger.
But unfortunately, to this day, there are still not too many entrepreneurs with ren zhengfei's attitude and thinking. After Huawei, the enterprises that are willing to take 4 billion tuition fees to learn from the teacher are still not (today we do not learn IBM, we say that we do not consider the price of the year, that is, now take out 4 billion to learn from Huawei, and how many business owners are willing to pay? It can be said that Ren Zhengfei is not replicable.