An in-depth interpretation of Huawei's corporate culture

Source: Brother Male Said Management

Corporate culture is to "take from the management, serve the management", there is a famous saying that there are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand readers, and this principle is also used in the "corporate culture construction".

Many employees do not have a specific perception of corporate culture, and always feel that the vision, mission, and values are very far away from their daily work. The above is the current situation of the corporate culture of many companies, the construction of corporate culture is just a form and a surface, basically staying at the level of visual image and behavior system perception, and even sometimes the basic system is missing, and the gap between the "spiritual concept and perception" is even greater. Specific to each person in the enterprise, their understanding and needs of corporate culture are different, but the company with good corporate culture construction, you will find that the temperament of their employees is very similar, which is the result of the long-term influence of excellent enterprises in terms of "consistent goals, consistent actions, and consistent values".

After leaving Huawei, he has done consulting and training for many companies in different industries, and has worked for several companies known for their strong corporate culture control, and has a very profound experience of the different manifestations of corporate culture It makes you feel as if there are eyes staring at you and hands stuck around your neck as soon as you enter the company, and it's hard to appreciate this subtle feeling without being there.

The corporate culture of a company I once worked for was a strong control model, which not only stipulated the detailed dress requirements from head to toe, but also the details have reached the point of excellence, such as the standard length of employees' fingernails and hair, the style and color of men's belts, the color of socks and the metal logo on leather shoes, etc., from the standard placement of items on the office desktop to the screensaver screen of the computer desktop screen, and even the standardization of the orientation of the external logo of the drinking water bucket in the office. If there is a large-scale movement after each meeting, it is necessary to use the method of pulling the line to ensure that the horizontal view, vertical view, and oblique view are all in a straight line. These are not simply talking, the group has configured a strong cultural inspection and supervision department, at any time and from time to time to spot check the implementation of all standards, which is also a kind of corporate culture control model, the formation of a unified image standards, implementation standards, service standards and business standards, has also achieved great success in the industry.

This is the logic of different corporate culture settings corresponding to different enterprises, and the ways to achieve it may be very different, but the purpose is to ensure that the enterprise is moving forward quickly on the track preset by the boss. I'm ashamed to say that when I was in Huawei, I didn't think that the company's corporate culture was special, maybe I felt that all companies should be like this, and I really "don't know the true face of Lushan, only because I am in this mountain", even now, if you are interested in logging in to Huawei's homepage, it is not like many companies use obvious corporate culture to list Huawei's core values, low-key and pragmatic have always been the genes of Huawei and Huawei's people.

On Huawei's official homepage, there is only the following paragraph: Huawei has insisted on focusing on the main channel for 30 years, resisting all temptations, insisting on not taking shortcuts, rejecting opportunism, being down-to-earth, investing for a long time, and accumulating steadily, insisting on customer-centricity, striver-oriented, long-term hard work, and self-criticism.

What we usually hear a lot is the last four sentences: "Adhere to customer-centric, striver-oriented, long-term hard work, and insist on self-criticism", which is of course the core part of Huawei's corporate culture, but if you don't fully understand the previous keywords, it is inevitable that there will be big deviations in the process of learning and benchmarking Huawei's corporate culture. Over the years, Huawei has always adhered to independent R&D, resisted various external temptations in the process, made products and served customers in a down-to-earth manner, invested a large amount of profits in R&D to enhance its core competitiveness, and continuously optimized its internal management structure, all of which are the foundation of Huawei's corporate culture. Huawei also emphasizes that corporate culture can not be separated from the essence of the company's operation and business success, in 97 years, Huawei emphasized that "Huawei is a utilitarian group, everything is to achieve its goals, and the corporate culture is to achieve a goal, which is to have commercial value and benefits".

The above four keywords to understand Huawei's corporate culture are the basic logic that we should understand before benchmarking and learning Huawei's corporate culture, and then we will make some different interpretations of the origin of Huawei's corporate culture from the perspective of enterprise management. From the four key words, look at Huawei's corporate culture and business characteristics

Keyword 1: low-key and pragmatic: When I first joined Huawei, it was rumored within the company that Huawei had three "stupid", and there was no official certification for which three stupid ones, and I vaguely remember that it was related to our work card, such as "go out with a work card", "work overtime without swiping the card", "show the card when you eat", because at that time, in order to facilitate the daily life of employees and the reception of the company's customers, Huawei signed a service agreement for Huawei employees with many scenic spots, hotels, and restaurants in Shenzhen. Nine folds, so many new employees just arrived at the company, do not pay attention to look at the administrative service window listed on the list of hotels that have signed the agreement, often to a restaurant to eat on the first show the work card to ask the boss to discount no, many bosses are asked at a loss, and there are some endless side of the brothers after the weekend overtime, the work card is not taken care of to put up, wear it on the chest and go shopping, these seem to become the company's internal after-dinner conversation, these brothers are often used to "native" title, I used to be theseOne of the "natives". My supervisor once told me that in Huawei, it is to do things in a down-to-earth manner, and there is nothing worth showing off when a Huawei person is outside, and in the competitive situation at that time, Huawei's clear internal market competition orientation is to maintain the leading edge of the second echelon of communication suppliers, call competitors "friends", and do not allow blind competition for "XX product first" At that time, Ren Zhengfei refused all media exposure, and did not allow the company's employees to accept external interviews at will, etc., coupled with Huawei's information is strictly passed on by employees, Huawei has always maintained a mysterious veil to the outside. The cautious business strategy and simple work habits of Huawei people have formed an internal pragmatic and low-key atmosphere, which has influenced many Huawei employees, and even maintained such a mentality in front of relatives and friends when they go home for the Chinese New Year. In recent years, with the expansion of the influence of Huawei's terminal BG and Huawei's need to clarify some misunderstandings in the face of the world, Huawei has gradually been exposed to the media, but the low-key and pragmatic genes have been passed down to this day, and Huawei's human temperament is a very important performance.

Keyword 2: Grayscale (openness, compromise and grayscale) I think the core of these three words is grayscale, which is the supreme management philosophy and the part of Huawei's culture that has a great influence on me personally. Ren Zhengfei once pointed out: "The important quality of a leader is direction and rhythm. His level is the right grayscale. A clear direction is generated in chaos, standing out from gray, and the direction changes with time and space, and it often becomes unclear, not white or black, either/or. Reasonable grasp of the appropriate gray scale is to let the various factors that affect the development of harmony, in a period of time, this harmonious process is called compromise, and the result of this harmony is called gray scale". Grayscale is not unprincipled tolerance and "tai chi", it is not unprincipled compromise and compromise, and it is not mud. The cultivation of grayscale is the cultivation of the mind.

I summarize the following four points

1) To recognize and employ people with grayscale is to abandon the black-and-white, love-hate way of thinking, use people's strengths, use people's suitability, do not easily draw conclusions and make conclusions, and consider a person from the perspective of long-term development;

2) Grasp the main contradictions in the development of the organization, and even turn the internal contradictions into the driving force for the team to move forward, and correctly view the various contradictions and conflicts encountered in the process of organizational development.

3) To use grayscale to train and select cadres, executives must have a mind and pattern, such as dealing with subordinates who make mistakes, raising their fists in a "clear" place, gently appeasing them in private, neither beating them to death with a stick, nor allowing indulgence, taking a clear stand on things, and being tolerant and compromising with others;

4) Grasp the management rhythm with grayscale, as an executive, keep an eye on three key points: direction, rhythm and per capita efficiency;

When I was at Huawei, I had a violent conflict with my supervisor at the time, and I even complained to the cadres with my real name, which is a common management problem in many companies. In the end, I was promoted and transferred from my current department to a new area to take charge of a new department, my leader continued to hold his current position, the company did not make a conclusive response to the complaint, and the rest of the department did not know the specific details. Many years after this incident, I think this way of dealing with it is also the most appropriate one, two people obviously can no longer work together, both parties are responsible, both sides are also the backbone of the company, dealing with me means unfair, dealing with my leadership will affect the long-term management of the follow-up department, which is actually a loss to the company, transferring me is actually a "grayscale" way of dealing with it, and it may also be the method that has the least impact on the company.

Keyword 3: This is not only the refinement of the corporate culture, but also the essence of Huawei's business strategy, which also verifies that the corporate culture is derived from the basic logic of the business success model. To sum it up in a few words, it is "to focus on their own strengths, give full play to the ability of the organization, and release the subjective initiative and creativity of employees on the main channel, so as to produce greater benefits". There is a very important business logic in this: what kind of market opportunity is the most suitable for you, the most suitable for you to exert force, business success = good products + effective customer resources + reasonable operation, but many times most companies for their own judgment is blind optimism and self-confidence, in the above three conditions only meet one or two when they are in a hurry, can not resist the temptation of opportunities, disperse their limited resources to win in danger, gambler psychology may have a chance of success, but this is not the logic of the long-term stable development of the enterprise.

Huawei's early advocacy of the principle of pressure and competition strategy is based on the force out of a hole, Huawei was not a full product supplier in the field of communication equipment before, the difference between Huawei products is also very large, Huawei started from the switch, after more than 30 years of development has achieved the dominance of the communication industry, but the development progress and speed of different product lines are also quite different, Huawei's success lies in Ren Zhengfei's unique strategic vision, for the communication field of products and market layout capabilities are absolutely master-level. Taking wireless production as an example, from the following of 2G, to the local technical advantages of 3G, to the comprehensive transcendence of 4G and the absolute leadership of 5G, the huge role of force can be experienced everywhere.

At the same time, Huawei adheres to the principle of making a hole in the air. For example, Huawei's EMT manifesto states that all of Huawei's income from the top to all key levels can only come from Huawei's salaries, incentives, dividends, and other sources, and no other additional income is allowed (Huawei's Basic Law prohibits employees from trading stocks or profiting from related-party transactions). From the organizational and institutional aspects, it has blocked the behavior of individuals from the top level to the executive level seeking personal interests and hollowing out collective interests through the holes of related party transactions. On the other hand, many start-up companies in the early stage of development, do be able to preserve the original intention, up and down the same desire, with the development of the company, the established strategy began to waver, in the face of existing interests, the core executives began to disagree, and even serious internal corruption problems, the use of corporate supervision and system loopholes for their own interests, many companies are not on the way to the charge, but died in internal management chaos, in a sentence to describe is "get a good hand, play their own sparse". In the face of interests, it is difficult to guarantee that people's hearts will change. Some companies hire personnel from the public security system to set up a supervision and supervision system, which is also a last resort, and more importantly, it is necessary to check and fill in the gaps from the system and process, and affect the employees' temperament from the perspective of cultural atmosphere. Huawei's corporate culture management focuses on "human nature", and Ren Zhengfei's management style has also undergone a change from trust management to distrust management, which are the underlying management logic worth learning from small and medium-sized enterprises.

Keyword 4: Deep Shodan and Low Weir This is a concentrated embodiment of Huawei's business wisdom, which is very worthy of careful consideration by enterprise managers. "Shentaotan is to ensure that the investment in enhancing the core competitiveness and ensuring the investment in the future will not waver even in the financial crisis, and at the same time continue to tap the internal potential, reduce operating costs, and provide customers with more valuable services. Low weir is to control their greed for profits, keep their profits lower, give more profits to customers, do not sacrifice long-term goals because of short-term goals, and treat upstream suppliers well.

This model is very similar to the "altruistic" thinking in Inamori's management philosophy, but Huawei does not pursue profit maximization, believing that it is overdrawing the future and hurting its strategic position. After the financial crisis in 2008, the world's major operators are reducing their network construction budgets, major operators are mergers and acquisitions, global prices are transparent and profit barriers are constantly broken, coupled with the continuous decline of communication tariffs, which directly leads to a significant reduction in the demand for procurement equipment and network construction.

In order to maintain the balance of the business ecosystem, Huawei has begun to think about cost reduction from the perspective of operators while meeting customer needs In 2009, we began to vigorously promote the layout of 4G network and the research and development of technology, which is a very wise choice to deal with the industry crisis。

Another very important point is how to tap your internal potential and improve operational efficiency when the external environment deteriorates. The purpose of strategic investment and market expansion is to dilute the original cost and continue to control the cost, so that the market can truly produce benefits. Nowadays, many start-up companies only pay attention to grabbing turf, and ignore taking root and flowering, many short-lived Internet start-ups are basically this kind of problem, savage growth, feel that their products are excellent, ignore internal management and business value realization, no matter how good the business model can not last.

Interpret the core values of Huawei's corporate culture

Adhere to customer-centric, striver-oriented, long-term hard work, adhere to self-criticism. The above four sentences resounded throughout the world, everyone is very familiar with them, and we will start from our own personal experience and give you a different interpretation from another perspective. Adhere to customer-centricity

Huawei's institutionalized, process-based, and platform-based operation is perfect, and it is a model in the industry, and it is the focus of many companies' benchmarking and learning, but when there is a conflict or deviation between customer interests and solidified processes, how should we choose?

The background of this case was before the construction of Huawei's LTC process, and it was also a very critical battle in Huawei's "Sheng" wireless campaign. A wireless operator in a large South American country, in order to solve the network construction cost once and for all, When Huawei was bidding for this huge project, the technology required for the South American wireless frequency band was not yet mature, and many base station products had not yet been fully developed, and they were in the trial operation stage of the production line, and their stability needed to be further verified and optimized, and the production capacity needed to be further improved to reach the level of mass production.

Due to the need for confidentiality of project operation, it is inconvenient for the frontline to transfer relevant information to the R&D and supply chain system when the project is unclear. Procurement plan and integrated model) control system (this plan control system will be detailed in the following chapters), the front line needs to report the required product quantity back to the company in advance to make relevant material arrangements (the headquarters will do a variety of material requirements plan for rolling forward for 18 months every month according to the forecast of the front line), and for this new product that has not been fully released, the advance procurement of materials is very rigorous according to the process (because the product is unstable, and the purchased materials will be at risk of scrapping).

After a few months of bidding and fighting, the order was snatched back, the news reached the back end, everyone was mixed, according to the R&D and supply process, this project made all the mistakes that could be "made", the first line promised the customer in advance that the immature products that were still at the end of the research and development, the order was obtained, whether to be customer-centric or to comply with the norms of the internal process, the answer is very obvious. Problems with internal processes are solved through work contact sheets, and the front line is willing to bear all the consequences of the realization of this requirement. At that time, Huawei had an internal "work contact form" model, and all requirements that violated the company's normal processes were adapted in this way, which can be regarded as grayscale management in the process specification system. The relocation project of the century was the company's absolute top strategic project at that time, and the level of contact for the supply guarantee of the entire project was quite high, and the problem of process was naturally solved.

Although the problem of the process has been solved, the actual product development progress and mass production are still huge difficulties, even if the procurement efforts to get the materials back, the whole product to complete the supply is still inseparable from the complete process and the stability of product performance. The company urgently set up a high-level assurance team, and began to operate at a high speed around the customer-centric. Although it is inevitable that they will complain to each other in the process, everyone has the same goal, that is, to complete this seemingly impossible task and win this crucial battle for Huawei's wireless products to enter the Latin American market。 I had just joined Huawei at that time, and I was fortunate to participate in this project, and I was deeply shocked during the whole process, what kind of team this is, driving full power like crazy, and the realistic version made me realize the true meaning of "winning is to raise a glass to celebrate, and defeating is to save each other".

"Customer-centric" has a very important key point of internal management, which is worth thinking about and optimizing for enterprises: 1. Customer-centric is not a simple matter of the sales department, do we have a mechanism to ensure that each system can work together, understand each other, and fill the position in a timely manner, and customer-centric should be a systematic and whole-process operation;

2. "Customer-centric" is not simply an echo of the slogan, which also requires the company's continuous investment and guarantee in relevant resources.

3. "Customer-centric" emphasizes the reciprocity of rewards and punishments, not only to reward the meritorious heroes, but also to forget the people who pave the way;

4. "Customer-centric" should also pay attention not to destroy the authority of the system and process at will, and use the perspective of "grayscale" to view the balance between the two at some stages;

5. Customer-centric, pay attention to results, value credit, if there is only process and hard work, it is worthless;

Customer-centric is not only perceptual, but also rational, not only to have the process, but also to have the result; the company should respect customers in the early stage of development, even if it is the first in the industry, it is more in awe of customers. With the customer center to constantly review and have a sense of crisis, Huawei has used the "Malaysia Electric Incident" (Telekom Malaysia has directly sent an email to Huawei's senior management to complain about Huawei's service guarantee) in the internal review, and there will always be a special topic of this case in the discussion of the advanced research class, customer-centric, awareness is more important than method, especially not only the senior management or account manager is customer-centric, all employees need to tighten the customer-centric awareness.

In addition to internal management improvement and mechanism construction, the ways and methods of external customer docking are also very important: 1. Contact customers more, especially in the company's management decision-making personnel, less pursuit of "sense of form" and "pomp" of the conference, retreat, more sit down with customers to discuss and solve practical problems, office meetings, more to the customer's business site to understand the customer's pain points; 2, do not think that customers are "stupid" than us, do not play with customers to play with concepts, less lofty "trends", "vision", 3. Pay attention to your own calm and objective, less closed and inertial, more open and change, less hot-headed new products/new solutions that go public during the hype period, less blind optimism of "leaders" and "no man's land", more in-depth learning, independent thinking and caution and awe of uncertainty, and more in-depth analysis of opponents;

Struggler-oriented, long-term hard work: striver is a personal choice

In 2008, Ren Zheng informally put forward the black core values of "customer-centric, striver-oriented, and long-term hard work". In 2010, Huawei was pushed to the forefront by the media, and major media focused on the hot issue of requiring employees to sign the "Striver Agreement" implemented by Huawei, and some media headlines used "outrageous" to describe some of the content of the Striver Agreement, and many personnel relations experts also stood up to accuse Huawei of challenging labor laws.

It's lively on the outside, but it's calm on the inside. I remember that at that time, I organized everyone to write it in batches, and each department should have held relevant meetings before. I also had a sense of ceremony, first of all, I had to apply to become a striver, my application draft was handwritten at the time, and it was written for a long time, and then I was told to have a unified opening sentence, and finally rewrote it as required, at that time I had just returned from overseas, although I was very concerned about "the so-called waiver of annual leave, paternity leave, and non-directive overtime" I was a little worried, but in the spirit of believing that the company would not let Lei Feng suffer, I did not hesitate when I signed, and later it turned out that the annual leave and paternity leave were not affected (Huawei has to work on the last Saturday of every month, there are 12 days in a year, and at the end of the year, it can be converted into the second year's annual leave, or you can apply for double overtime pay), and "voluntarily give up" in the application form Unless there is really a project need, I haven't heard of any of our colleagues' paternity leave being forcibly canceled, as for non-mandatory overtime, in fact, Huawei has an internal overtime culture, and everyone is used to it, so they don't think this is a big problem.

At that time, we didn't pay much attention to the outside world's accusation that Huawei was infringing on the rights and interests of workers, but we were worried about what would happen if the company didn't approve our application? In today's terms, "poverty limits our imagination", and the labor arbitration agency will not give us stocks or bonuses.

Huawei's internal definition of struggle is: "Struggle, any small activity that creates value for customers, and efforts to enrich and improve oneself in the labor process, are all called struggle, otherwise, no matter how hard and tired it is, it is not called struggle."

At Huawei, we advocate and emphasize hard work in thinking. The arduous struggle in the mind is diligent in using the brain, and the arduous struggle in the body is only the diligent hands and feet. Use your brain to think more about how to break through customers, how to lead product technology, there is no value for customers, and overtime increases the company's administrative costs. Temporary struggle is easy to do, but long-term hard struggle is a kind of spiritual cultivation. Huawei's R&D advocates that "the bench should be cold for ten years", which is the reason, I have experienced two overseas assignments, which is also the company's business needs, and obeying the company's job transfer in Huawei is the best example of practicing long-term hard work. In those difficult regions such as Niger, Mali, Chad and other countries, there are also customers who need to connect; at the sound of an order, 2000 Huawei R&D personnel can leave their warm homes and go to the front line to become sales personnel to regain new personal value for the company; the Nepal earthquake, the tsunami in Japan, and the epidemic in Wuhan are everywhere Huawei people maintain customer equipment; as high as the Himalayas and as far as the ice-covered Antarctic continent, as long as there are customers who need communication construction, you can find Huawei people. Huawei people don't know how to be afraid, they are also ordinary people, what makes them so dedicated, the root of which is Huawei's "striver-oriented" corporate culture. Here we would like to emphasize the word "this". Human nature is always to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, and striver-oriented means a clear orientation and resource guarantee for the company's incentives.

Only by eating and drinking well can we have combat effectiveness – the more difficult the area, the better the environment

My first stop overseas was Egypt, at that time, the overseas staff canteen had not yet achieved "communism", what does it mean, that is, every time I go to the canteen to eat, I need to pay for it, although our overseas subsidy part is a meal supplement, who does not want to save two more money, and it is a little expensive to go to the canteen to eat, so at that time, everyone was free to combine, and went to the supermarket after work to shop and cook together.

Since the beginning of 2008, the company has officially implemented the free supply mechanism of the canteen around the world, and the quality and quantity of local seafood, mutton, fruits, juices, domestic food, with all possible conditions to ensure the logistics life of overseas employees, no one goes to the supermarket to buy things to cook, the kitchen of the dormitory has been completely abandoned, but the office overtime figure has increased. Overtime workers in the headquarters can also go to the canteen to get free supper, and if they work too late, they can also take home by special car, or they can stay in the company's own hotel.

Huawei's employees have complete commercial insurance, the maximum compensation can be about one million, there are various subsidies overseas, my 07 overseas allowance is 9000 per month after tax (home allowance), in addition, according to the country's situation, there is a hardship allowance (ranging from 0 to 50 US dollars a day), countries with wars will have war subsidies (almost ranging from 70 US dollars to 300 US dollars), military families can get 15 US dollars per day/ In addition to personal travel, the company basically contracted all the worries of employees, and there are regular shuttle buses to and from supermarkets and dormitories every weekend, and overseas employees are living at three o'clock every day, and the rhythm of dormitory-office-canteen, eating and living together and working together, has cultivated a deep revolutionary friendship. Promotions, salary increases, and allotments are tilted toward hardship areas and combat units

Under the absolute value of the same sales, Iraq is higher than the year-end bonus coefficient of other countries, there are more opportunities for overseas promotion and allotment of shares than at home, and the meritorious men who insisted on sticking to the front line during the civil strife in Syria were directly promoted to three levels in a row, etc., and the strivers are the outstanding contributions and values, and there are many cases in this regard that are not listed one by one. Enterprises should pay attention to the following points when learning Huawei's striver mechanism:

1. The incentive and welfare security system does what it can. Although communications was a high-profit industry in previous years, it also has a rigorous design logic and industry characteristics of compensation and benefits.

2. Core employees and core positions must be willing to invest, feelings can not be eaten, what to advocate should be so that employees can really feel. Some companies only emphasize struggle and do not give timely incentives, and this situation of only letting the horses run and not giving the horses grazing is impossible to last;

3. When enterprises open the striver identification mode, they must pay attention to whether employees highly identify with the company. Huawei's internal striver agreement is relatively smooth because the performance appraisal system, welfare guarantee incentive system, employee engagement and recognition of the company are very mature in all aspects, and it is not suitable for small and medium-sized enterprises to completely copy them. A company has management, there are experts, there are many staff layers, in the management can not be one-size-fits-all, should give employees the opportunity to choose, 9 to 5 as long as the quality of work can be guaranteed is also allowed, you struggle to work overtime to get bonuses is also deserved. If you don't want to go abroad at Huawei, then you can give up the opportunity to get a salary increase and promotion in the future, and doing your job well is also a kind of value and contribution. 5. In the case of poor business management, the core senior management of the enterprise must first reflect on the management and product strategy, if the hope is pinned on the "selfless struggle" of the grassroots employees, this may become the last "straw" that crushes the enterprise.

Insist on self-criticism

Kazuo Inamori's core management philosophy has a very high standard of reflection, including many "altruistic" details, such as "whether it is unpleasant", "whether there are selfish words and deeds", "whether there is a cowardly behavior", etc., such reflection is a kind of cultivation of the mind, has risen to the grand world view of "what is right as a human being", and Huawei's self-criticism is still very different from it in terms of form and connotation.

Huawei's self-criticism has a long historical tradition and is a very important corrective mechanism for Huawei's internal management. Twenty years ago, Huawei made it clear that "the purpose of our self-criticism is not to concentrate on self-cultivation or to carry out a revolution in the depths of the soul, but to constantly seek out a broader external target for service or a more meaningful goal to strive for." Because how noble your inner world is, and how detached your personal cultivation realm is, others can't see it, and of course, it can't be measured and assessed. The only thing we can see is whether your attitude and behavior in the external environment are conducive to the establishment of a reasonable operating order and law for the company, whether it is conducive to removing all obstacles that cannot promote the advanced culture, and whether it is conducive to the improvement of the company's overall core competitiveness.

From the above understanding of "self-criticism" by different enterprises, it can be seen that the starting point of Huawei's self-criticism is to start from the perspective of improving the company's operation and actual efficiency, and requires all Huawei employees to reflect and improve from the aspects of ideology, behavior, and organizational efficiency, which is the core logic of learning Huawei's "self-criticism". Self-criticism is the magic weapon for Huawei's business to make breakthroughs, and this successful business experience has become the core mechanism of corporate culture construction, which in turn continues to influence the development and thinking of business in the new era.

The unity of "form" and "spirit" of Huawei's self-criticism: After years of operation, Huawei has formed a variety of solidified forms and rich outputs of self-criticism in various forms and effective forms.

Huawei's famous "Great Resignation of the Marketing Department" event in the history of Huawei, can be described as a feat of a strong man breaking his wrist, because of the failure of the bidding for an important project, the marketing department has experienced about a month of training activities, and reached the climax of the training in the report of the collective resignation of the marketing department. Before the start of the event, all the cadres of the marketing department, from the president of the market to the directors of each office, without exception, submitted two reports to the company, one is the report on the job, which mainly reviews the work of 95 years and proposes the work plan for the next year, and the other is the report of resignation. In the two reports, the company approved one of them according to the actual performance of the individual, the development potential and the company's market development needs. This is a "rectification" activity for the business system from top to bottom, and the old employees are often full of tears when they tell this story, which is the unity of form and spirit used for self-criticism.

In 2000, Huawei made a special award ceremony for the fourth anniversary of the collective resignation of the marketing department, and Mr. Ren made an important speech with the theme of "Phoenix spreads its wings and creates brilliance again", affirming the positive effect of the great resignation of the marketing department four years ago. It is also a closed-loop management of self-criticism in time and events.

We can look at the form of self-criticism done by many companies, a few words of self-review without pain, and there is no action plan for how to improve in the future, and there is no continuous evaluation.

If the above story takes place in the 90s, it seems that it is very far away from the present, then the 2013 Zero Takeoff Award is a testament to the inheritance of Huawei's excellent genes.

At the 2013 marketing conference, there was a special recognition - the "Take-off from Zero Award". The senior management team that did not meet the market target in 2012 (2012 was also one of the few years in Huawei's history that did not meet the set annual target) fulfilled the promise of "zero bonus for team leaders if the bottom-line target was not met". At that time, it involved Huawei's two new business segments: terminals and enterprise networks, many core management teams, including Yu Chengdong, the owner of Huawei's mobile phone that everyone is now more familiar with, and it is the consistent style of Huawei's senior cadres to be ashamed and brave, Mr. Yu put a satellite on the performance commitment that year, but it took him less than 5 years to complete the gorgeous rebirth of Huawei's mobile phone, which is a complete closed loop of Huawei's self-criticism effect.

There are many forms of self-criticism in Huawei, and one of the more famous ones recently is the criticism of Mr. Ren in the Huawei Human Resources 2.0 seminar, which is a very objective "criticism" after detailed discussion Mr. Ren accepts the company's organizational suggestions with a very open and inclusive attitude, which is also a very important guarantee for Huawei's self-criticism to run in the long run.

Huawei's internal self-criticism activities include the Voice Community, the Democratic Life Association, the Self-Discipline Declaration of Management Cadres, and the Management Optimization Report, which are reflected in the management results through self-criticism, which form many management outlines with Huawei's "characteristics", such as the early discussion of Huawei's top ten internal frictions, Huawei's eight requirements for cadres, and Huawei's sixteen military regulations

So how can enterprises learn from benchmarking, I think they need to do the following:

1. Self-criticism must achieve a high degree of unity between form and result: self-criticism is not only the cognition of personal attitude and consciousness, but also the improvement of the corresponding results through practical actions. Huawei's R&D system has done an "anti-naïve" conference, and has also given R&D dead materials as prizes to relevant personnel to reflect on the logic of product development. Self-criticism not only discovers problems, but also requires closed-loop management to solve problems, and Huawei's internal "Management Optimization Report" has done a particularly good job in this regard.

2. The implementation of self-criticism must have a mechanism and organizational guarantee

The self-criticism of many companies seems to be more like a temporary activity, lacking stability and mechanism guarantee, and more staying in oral expression, and self-criticism must have a traction and restraint mechanism to ensure the landing. In addition, Huawei's democratic life will be widely used in the company, from the frequency of meetings, venue selection, organizational guarantees, meeting agendas, The post-meeting follow-up has a complete organizational requirements and cost budget guarantee, and the democratic life will be planned by the HR business plan and the closed-loop tracking of the issues raised at the meeting, and the core of the meeting is to force subordinates to criticize the leader and give suggestions in person.

Huawei has a self-criticism committee and an ethics compliance committee, whose core responsibilities are self-criticism system construction, self-criticism activities, and supervision and guidance.

Huawei's self-criticism also makes full use of the advantages of its internal public opinion platform in terms of organizational support. "Huawei People", "Management Optimization News", and the Voice of the Heart community, many high-level self-critics will directly publicize and initiate more discussions in these internal magazines, and the more they argue, the clearer the reasoning, the more the opinions of employees at all levels will be solicited in the internal forums before the official introduction, and the Voice of the Heart community will also try its best to achieve internal transparency and freedom of speech, such as the internal post "R&D brothers are sorry, I did my best" at the end of 2019, which attracted everyone's attention For such an article, the President's Office also forwarded the article to all employees by email and spoke highly of it. The Voice of the Heart Community is the Roman Forum, where everyone can fully express different opinions, that is, discuss things, based on facts and evidence, not conjecture and conjecture, and also pay attention to protecting the privacy of the respondent who has nothing to do with the company's business.

3. Leaders set an example as an important guarantee for the long-term effectiveness of self-criticism

When I was working for a unicorn company, I thought that the fastest growth period for the company was when the boss took us to do deep self-criticism. In order to ensure that the decision-making on important issues is maintained in the process of the meeting, we have established a mechanism for the core decision-makers to hold a small meeting before the formal meeting. The occasion of this small meeting is informal, generally in a tavern in the evening, the core decision-making level of the meeting will be for the current company's operation and management problems, take turns to criticize the boss in person, drink, criticize the boss is the core process of this small meeting, which will also point out some unprofessional practices of the boss in front of the company, the effect of this small meeting is very good, the boss is very humble to accept a lot of everyone's opinions, the consensus of the small meeting will be reflected in the next day's regular management meeting, the company's senior management in the case of unified understanding and elimination of estrangement, the development of the company has created a miracle in the industry。

Self-criticism should be top-down, and if the leader copes with the situation, how can you expect the people below to seriously reflect and put into practical corrective action. The construction of self-criticism is a systematic project, which is not only the cultivation of the mind, but also relies on the mechanism and system to pull and restrict, and the core purpose is to correct the deviation in time to ensure the steady development of the business and the company's operation.

Huawei's corporate culture is a collection of multiple elements, and it is not just about "sticking to customer-centricity, striver-oriented, long-term hard work, and insisting on self-criticism", but also to understand the business logic and business wisdom contained in it, which is the foundation of Huawei's culture, and this part is the source of in-depth discussion.