Li Wenzhu | Read "The Biography of Ren Zhengfei"

Written by Li Wenzhu

Ren

I've always been curious about Ren Zhengfei, a mysterious figure. With the increase in his appearance rate in recent years, I became more and more surprised by this 43-year-old entrepreneur who was born in the military and started his business, so I went to the bookstore and bought a copy of "The Biography of Ren Zhengfei" written by Sun Like, although this book was published 6 years ago, but after reading it, I still have a more systematic understanding of Ren Zhengfei's life and deeds, especially his business career, and I also want to share my feelings with my friends.

Huawei Communications Technology Co., Ltd. led by Ren Zhengfei has grown from a large international enterprise with hundreds of thousands of employees and nearly 10 million yuan in taxes since its establishment in 1987 with only 6 people and 20,000 yuan to an international large enterprise with hundreds of thousands of employees and an annual tax payment of nearly 10 million yuan. Like the mainland's aerospace, quantum computing, infrastructure madness, smart cars and other industries, he has achieved a proud record of leading the world. Ren Zhengfei has many characteristics of a successful entrepreneur, such as he has the strategic vision of an outstanding entrepreneur and has accurate direction and positioning; has a wolf-like keen sense of smell, and has a good grasp of the timing of seizing the market to "attack"; Have the will of a tenacious soldier, good at overcoming difficulties and "fighting tough battles"; has the demeanor of a leader who keeps pace with the times, can adjust the strategic focus in a timely manner, etc., which is destined for Ren Zhengfei, an unusual figure, to be able to do an extraordinary career.

Ren Zhengfei led Huawei to be born in a "desperate situation", and "survival" is his unremitting pursuit. Ren Zhengfei was born in October 1944 in a poor and backward mountain village in Guizhou Province. In 1963, he was admitted to Chongqing Institute of Architecture and Engineering with his own efforts, completed all the compulsory courses and elective courses in the university, and also taught himself the knowledge related to information technology such as computer and automatic control, and read the "Selected Works of Mao Zedong". At the age of 34, he invented the mainland's first "air pressure balance," won the first prize of the army's technological innovation, attended the National Science Conference, and participated in the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at the age of 38. In 1982, when the disarmament was discontinued, Ren Zhengfei left the army, suffered setbacks in business, and had to find another way to make a living. After losing his job and wife, he began to "be old and young, and the family was crammed into a small house of more than ten square meters, living a life of stretched." In order to "survive", he teamed up with five friends he met in the business world to raise 20,000 yuan and create "Huawei". At that time, due to the shortage of funds and limited experience, they could only "fight guerrillas" and do whatever they made money. Later, Ren Zhengfei set his sights on the telephone exchange with great development potential, and finally achieved sales of 100 million yuan in less than a year through technological innovation and overcoming difficulties, and the number of employees increased to more than 100. His ups and downs just verify what Mencius said: "Heaven will descend on the people, and they must first suffer their minds, strain their muscles and bones, starve their bodies and skins, empty their bodies, empty their spirits, and act chaotically, so they will be tempted to endure and gain what they cannot." For more than 30 years, Ren Zhengfei has been thinking about "how to survive", and "survival" has become Huawei's firm belief and strong driving force. This sense of "survival" is actually a strong sense of responsibility and mission on the part of Huawei, which Ren Zhengfei said: "Let no one dare to bully us anymore." He asked Huawei that "every employee loves his motherland, and only by carrying the hope of the nation can he fight hard without regrets." "

Huawei, led by Ren Zhengfei, has grown through learning. Being good at learning is one of the most valuable lessons for Huawei's rapid growth. Especially in the case of lack of technology and experience, and problems cannot be solved, it is a shortcut to learn from advanced enterprises in the same industry in western developed countries. Ren Zhengfei attaches great importance to learning from the innovative spirit of the Americans, the down-to-earth Japanese and the meticulous professionalism of the Germans. "Huawei grew from a small company, it was developed in China, and external resources are not as abundant as in the United States," he said. Therefore, it is necessary to borrow the external brain with the help of the experience and methods of the United States. He not only went to the United States many times to inspect major industrial and technological cities, but also cooperated extensively with advanced enterprises in the United States. After visiting the United States again and again, Ren Zhengfei realized that "if we want to change the fate of the average life expectancy of China's private enterprises of less than three years, we must learn from the West with an open mind." "If we want to ensure that Huawei can continue to "survive" in the future, we need to learn from Western companies that have been alive for a long time. In terms of management experience, Huawei mainly learned from a company founded in 1924 in the United States, and in terms of corporate compensation and performance management, it mainly benefited from another company established in the United States in 1943. Huawei's learning from the West is not a copy, but a combination of Huawei's reality, which is quite similar to Mao Zedong's practice of "integrating Marxism-Leninism with the practice of the Chinese revolution". By learning from the West, they have found a "development path that is in line with Huawei's rhythm" and paved the way for Huawei's development as a multinational group. Ren Zhengfei believes that "there is nothing dishonorable about asking for help, and it is dishonorable to do bad things, and asking for help is the best form of participating in group struggle." Ren Zhengfei also attaches great importance to "self-criticism", that is, to find his own problems and find ways to solve them, which is also a clever way for Huawei to continue to grow and progress.

Huawei, led by Ren Zhengfei, has grown stronger in the competition. As the world's most high-end products, communication products not only update technology very quickly, but also the competition is extremely fierce and cruel. Huawei's ability to win time and time again in domestic and foreign market competition is based on its strength, that is, Huawei's high-quality talents, products and services. Ren Zhengfei attaches great importance to the construction of talent team. He said: "The only thing Huawei can rely on is people, of course, it refers to people who are hardworking, selfless, self-disciplined, and skilled. "He attaches great importance to the selection of people, boldly employs people, and is sincere to people. In order to be a network talent, he not only recruits elites from prestigious universities at home and abroad with high salaries, but also occasionally follows the example of the United States to "poach" people from other companies with preferential treatment, and Huawei has established a huge science and technology development team with more than 200,000 people. They also promoted and reused talents who had made significant contributions to the public, and Li Yinan, who was a young man, was a typical example. Li Yinan joined Huawei in 1992 at the age of 22, and served as the deputy general manager of Huawei's Central Research Department for more than half a year. Ren Zhengfei regards the quality of Huawei's products as his life, and "zero defects" has become an ironclad law within Huawei. In 2015 alone, Huawei spent 60 billion yuan as R&D expenses, with an investment ratio of more than 15%, more than four times that of Apple in the same year. Huawei takes "zero tolerance" for unsafe products, in 2015, during a transportation, due to a truck tire fire, resulting in the mobile phone in the container was baked by high temperatures, although the test found that more than 98% of the mobile phones are fine, Ren Zhengfei still reluctantly ordered the batch of mobile phones worth more than 20 million yuan to be crushed into pieces. Huawei is even better in terms of service quality. Ren Zhengfei adheres to the concept of "customers are bigger than the sky", and he affectionately said to employees: "The only person in the world who gives Huawei money is customers. Customers are the only reason for our survival. It is precisely because they truly regard customers as "God" that they overcome all difficulties and serve customers wholeheartedly, and finally win many customers at home and abroad.

Shopping malls are like battlefields, and market competition not only relies on excellent strength, but also pays attention to strategy and tactics like fighting a war. In the market competition, he generally adopted the strategy of first easy and then difficult, from small to large, and "the countryside surrounds the city", which is in line with Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" said that "the difficult things in the world must be done in the easy; The world's major events must be done in detail". In the development of the market, he insisted on giving priority to domestic and foreign enterprises, local enterprises before foreign enterprises in China, and underdeveloped areas before developed areas abroad. In terms of tactics, we attach great importance to each competitor, identify the "soft underbelly" of the other party, give full play to our own advantages, concentrate our strengths, and defeat each with the superior against the inferior. At home, in view of the opponent's weaknesses such as not paying attention to technological updates and slow market response, Huawei concentrated its superior forces to fight a war of annihilation, and quickly defeated competitors such as local enterprises such as Julong, Datang, and ZTE, and drove out foreign companies such as Shanghai Bell, Nortel Networks of Canada, and Lucent of the United States to seize the market in China. In the European and American markets, Huawei has also quickly opened up the situation with advanced technology, high-quality services and preferential prices. At present, Huawei has established its own branches and R&D institutions in 180 countries and regions around the world. In addition, it is necessary to have wisdom in market competition, especially in international market competition. This is the lesson learned by Huawei in the "lawsuit of the century" lawsuit with the American giant Cisco. That is, if an enterprise wants to go to the world, it must not only fight with the world powers, talk about strategy and tactics, but also have the wisdom needed to deal with lawsuits, especially in international lawsuits, unite all the forces that can be united, establish the most extensive united front, learn to use legal means and media public opinion tools, learn to fight legal warfare and public opinion warfare, so as to win more support and safeguard their legitimate rights and interests. Huawei is not afraid of strong enemies, has the courage to participate in market competition, strengthens its strengths and complements its weaknesses in the competition, improves the quality of its team in the competition, and moves forward in the competition.

Huawei, led by Ren Zhengfei, has risen amid the crackdown. Huawei's transformation from a small workshop with only a few employees to an international enterprise with hundreds of thousands of people has always been facing tremendous internal and external pressure, and the more the enterprise does it, the more pressure it will increase. Therefore, Ren Zhengfei has always maintained a strong sense of distress and has always regarded "survival" as Huawei's most important program. Ren Zhengfei has always warned Huawei employees: "In this rapidly changing information society, only the fittest can survive. "Huawei's "survival" in difficult times is a call for everyone to work hard; "Living" when things are going well is to warn everyone to guard against arrogance and rashness; "Survival" when you are successful is to motivate everyone to climb the peak. Huawei's history of more than 30 years is a history of struggle that was born, grew up, and rose in adversity. After they developed two telephone exchanges and achieved unexpected gains, Ren Zhengfei was not carried away by the "first victory", but was prepared for danger in times of peace, aiming at the development trend of the communication industry, and immediately invested all manpower and financial resources in the research and development of 10,000 switches, and the successful research and development of 10,000 switches not only won the domestic market for Huawei, but also laid the foundation for Huawei to go to the world. After defeating domestic and foreign competitors in China, Huawei began to use international standards to rectify Huawei's internal human resources and financial management in order to enter the international market in a timely manner, so that R&D and marketing can be taken into account from beginning to end, and enterprise development and management standards can be synchronized, so as to continuously improve Huawei's core competitiveness in the international market. The strong sense of "survival" has created Ren Zheng's advanced strategic vision, which is the biggest advantage of an excellent entrepreneur to be invincible. "If you are backward, you will be beaten, and if you are advanced, you will be suppressed." This is the law of the jungle that we have not been able to get rid of. It is precisely because of precautions and preparation that Huawei has broken through the encirclement of US sanctions and been reborn. As early as 20 years ago, Zhengfei had a prediction and layout for Huawei's development to a certain stage that it would be suppressed by the United States, and in the past 10 years, it has increased research and development efforts to guard against US sanctions, and 3 years ago, after the United States used global power to impose all-round sanctions on Huawei, Huawei has been working at full speed, facing difficulties, fighting more and more bravely, becoming stronger and stronger, and after several years of hard work, it finally survived, turned the crisis into safety, and succeeded in counterattacking. As Huawei said in its New Year's speech: "The company's operation has basically returned to normal", that is to say, the problems caused by the US sanctions have been solved, and now Huawei has sales of nearly one trillion yuan and hundreds of billions of yuan in taxes. As Ni Guangnan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and an expert in making chips, said: "Huawei deserves to be the greatest company in China at present." "