Source | Tech Planet
Text | JIA Ningyu
It produced a post-80s chairman, but not a "second generation of Fang", but a thorough "outsider".
On October 28, 2022, Longfor Group issued an announcement that the 40-year-old Chen Xuping was promoted to chairman. The former chairman Wu Yajun stepped down as chairman due to age and health reasons, transferred to the company's strategic development consultant, vice chairman Shao Mingxiao was transferred from executive director to non-executive director, Wu and Shao retreated to the "second line" together, Shen Ying, general manager of Longhu Human Resources, was appointed as executive director, and women continued to play important roles in Longhu's management.
Chen Xuping joined Longhu after graduating from Tsinghua University, and in 14 years, he rose from a school student to the chairman. Longhu's handover is actually a microcosm of China's private companies entering the handover period, the private enterprise "Chuang Generation" began to establish the company thirty or forty years ago, step by step growing, and now the "Chuang Generation" is gradually aging, it is time to hand over.
In the real estate industry, many real estate "second generation" have come to the forefront, Yang Huiyan became the co-chairman of the board of directors of Country Garden, Wang Xiaosong was appointed as the chairman of Xincheng Holdings, and the "second generation" succession has become the mainstream, but the inheritance of family businesses has always been a worldwide problem. According to BusinessWeek, less than 40 percent of U.S. companies succeed in passing on to the second generation, and less than 13 percent to the third generation.
How to break the "succession anxiety" is a problem that the "creation generation" must face, and Wu Yajun has opened up a completely different inheritance path, that is, through "de-familyization" and internal training of "successors", to complete the company's handover, to achieve deep institutionalization of corporate governance, not by a certain person, a certain group of people, but with systematic talent training, constantly using young to cope with the new market environment, so as to maintain the evergreen industry.
De-"familialization"
At the beginning of the establishment of Longhu Group, Wu Yajun and Cai Kui started from the "Longhu Garden" project and gradually gained a foothold in the Chongqing market.
However, Wu Yajun has always been vigilant about the company's "familyization" and intends to promote Longhu's "familyization". She once said: "I hope that Longhu will truly become an institutionalized company, get rid of the characteristics of the entrepreneurial period, and create deep institutionalization." In Wu Yajun's view, the characteristics of deeply institutionalized organizations are not dependent on founders and elites, but further collectivized and professionalized.
In 2009, on the eve of Longfor Group's listing in Hong Kong, Cai Kui resigned as vice chairman of the company and other company positions, and family members of Wu Cai and Cai also withdrew from the company's management one after another, replaced by a group of professional managers, and the institutionalization of Longfor Group took a big step.
In the prospectus of Longfor Group, Chief Financial Officer Lin Juchang, Chief Human Resources Officer Fang Shengtao, General Manager of Operation Investment and Development Department Chen Kai, and General Manager of Customer and Corporate Brand Department Qin Lihong are all social elites who joined Longfor after 2004, they have worked experience in well-known companies such as Merrill Lynch and Procter & Gamble, and graduated from world-class universities such as Harvard, Tsinghua and Peking University.
It was in 2004 that Longfor Group launched the "Cadets" project, put forward the concept of elite recruitment, absorb outstanding graduates from domestic and foreign universities, reserve middle and senior management talents needed for future development, the selection conditions are extremely strict, "Cadets" are fresh graduates of world-class universities, early Wu Yajun will specially arrange time to interview each "Cadet", until now she will participate in the "Cadets" interview.
Taking "Shiguan Student" as the starting point, Longhu has gradually developed a mature talent training system such as marketing "Shiguan Student", "Shiguan Student 2.0", Bloom, Point General, and "Shi Trainee", and has also implemented the partnership system, so that young people can grow up with the company and share the company's development dividends, which has reserved a number of new forces for the development of Longhu and laid the foreshadowing for this management right handover.
Outside CEO
In addition to internal training of "officials and students", Longhu attaches great importance to the introduction of talents.
In 2005, Longfor Group planned to explore the Beijing market, wanted to recruit a general manager for the Beijing company, someone recommended Shao Mingxiao, Wu Yajun after the interview felt, "Shao Mingxiao has a rare entrepreneurial spirit, both macro thinking, business logic, and the pursuit of products, can go deep into the key details of the product, as well as good intuition, strong system thinking ability, decisive personality, is the right candidate." ”
Facts have proved that Wu Yajun has a vicious eye for people. In the position of general manager of the Beijing company, Shao Mingxiao led a team of only 16 people to change the sales of Beijing Longhu from zero to 10 billion yuan in five years, far exceeding the 6 billion yuan target he set when he took office.
In 2011, Wu Yajun announced his resignation as CEO, and Shao Mingxiao became his successor, and he was promoted to CEO after only six years of working in Longfor Group, which shows that the institutionalization of Longfor has achieved initial results at that time.
At that time, Wu Yajun mentioned that after stepping down as CEO, she and Shao Mingxiao have a clear division of labor, and she will focus on the formulation and decision-making of the company's medium- and long-term strategies, lead the board of directors, and pay more attention to medium- and long-term planning, investment and financing; Shao Mingxiao leads the core management team, improves the management system and implements the strategy.
After Shao Mingxiao became CEO, he proposed strategies such as "space as a service", "holding business", and "TOD first", and during his tenure as CEO, Longfor Group's contract sales increased from 38.3 billion yuan to 290 billion yuan, and its performance increased by more than 7 times. Longfor Group ranks among the world's top 500 companies and has become one of the leaders in the real estate industry.
Throughout the history of the development of excellent private enterprises, most of the private founders have played an absolutely critical and far-reaching role, but the development constraints often occur in the stage of corporate governance. In the most glorious period, Wu Yajun chose to take a step back and cooperate with the foreign CEO to lead Longhu to a bigger stage.
With Shao Mingxiao as a role model, more young Longhu people see a new height in their careers, and Shao Mingxiao continues to promote in-depth institutionalization in the company and cultivate the strength of "officials and students".
Officer Student House
Chen Xuping is a typical representative of the "official student" system.
Longfor has tailored a 24-month early development plan for "senior students", aiming to promote the formation of the internal hematopoietic mechanism of Longhu, encourage senior students to take root in the business in the first two years, improve their professional capabilities, and open up the overall vision across the channel to create future-oriented business leaders. According to the "official student" training plan, "official student" can complete the transformation from campus person to workplace person in 0-6 months, block "a small face" in 1-2 years, string a "string" in 4-5 years, and become a "wrist" in 7-8 years, and truly move towards senior management positions. Therefore, the continuous emergence of outstanding officials and students like Chen Xuping is not accidental.
In 2016, after joining Longhu for 8 years, Chen Xuping became the general manager of the Chengdu company. During his tenure, Chengdu Longhu's real estate development sales increased from RMB5.3 billion in 2016 to RMB18.023 billion in 2020. Moreover, as a sample of multi-channel collaborative landing under the "space as a service" strategy, Chengdu Longhu has achieved the rapid development of commercial, guanyu, pension and other businesses, forming a situation in which multi-channel goes hand in hand.
Chen Xuping's achievements have led him to further promotion, and in July 2021, he was appointed COO of Longfor Group and General Manager of Real Estate Waterway. Six months later, Chen Xuping became the CEO of Longfor Group.
Wu Yajun praised Chen Xuping: "Chen Xuping has a strong sense of direction, and his identification with Longhu culture, entrepreneurial spirit, business logic, organizational ability, and then the ability to control the large system are all outstanding."
In the past six months as CEO, the real estate market environment has changed dramatically, but under the leadership of Chen Xuping, Longhu has continued to maintain stability and delivered a bright interim performance report. At the August results meeting, Wu Yajun did not hide her satisfaction with Chen Xuping's achievements, believing that her performance in the CEO position in the past six months exceeded her expectations.
Now, Chen Xuping has grown from a "senior student" to chairman and CEO, Wu Yajun faded out of the company's management, and Longhu will be completely handed over to professional managers to take care of it, which is the result of Wu Yajun's practice of "de-family" for many years, and the mature talent training and talent management system also make Wu Yajun feel at ease that he can hand over the company to young people.
According to the official data of Longfor Group, after years of accumulation and precipitation, young cadres such as post-80s senior officials (Shiguansheng 2.0) have moved from the front line of business to the regional and group management team, up to now, Shiguansheng (including Shiguansheng 2.0) has nearly 200 people in Longhu's middle managers, accounting for 20% of the senior management team.
According to people close to Longhu, Wu Yajun mentioned in a recent internal meeting that in 2019, she took the management team to visit Midea digitalization, chatted a lot with Midea's founder He Xiangjian and chairman Fang Hongbo, felt that their trust relationship was very good, appreciated He Xiangjian's temperament in handing over the company to professional managers, and secretly made up her mind, "We must lead Longhu to also achieve this handover and make the company's foundation evergreen!" ”。
Today, she did.