Like Don Quixote, he has been fighting the bureaucracy with a broken horse and a broken sword.

Huawei has been at the forefront of the year, from the Meng Wanzhou incident to the US Department of Commerce banning US companies from providing products to Huawei, to the recent 251 storm.

Huawei has basically withstood the impact from the United States. in addition to Huawei's strong technology reserves, capital and supply chain capacity, Ren Zhengfei's strategic vision is particularly critical. Huawei spends 10% of its research and development of its own core technology every year. a variety of chips, including the Kirin series. Ran Tao, the former head of global recruitment for Huawei, said in an exclusive interview with 36Kr Holdings that since 2012, Ren Zhengfei has been thinking about what to do if the United States does not supply Huawei with products, so he has been developing Hongmeng since then.

For 251, the matter is still full of doubts, and the whole truth cannot be seen, but in any case, the frenzied support of the domestic public for Huawei since the beginning of this year has greatly reversed the collective condemnation, which confirms Ren Zhengfei's foresight. Huawei, whose sales of mobile phones have soared in China this year, may have the power of populism, but are now being swallowed up by public opinion in an unexpected way. As early as when the domestic public enthusiastically supported Huawei, Ren Zhengfei publicly stated in many interviews: do not take advantage of public opinion. He said: "do not fan the wind of populism." "populism cannot be used, it is harmful to the country. "

Why can Ren Zhengfei always make such a judgment?

Ran Tao believes that this is related to two reasons:

First, it has something to do with the fact that he started his business in his 40s. Instead of graduating from a famous school or a private enterprise, he directly took the investor's money to start a business, but was fired by a state-owned enterprise at the middle age of 44 and took on a debt of 2 million yuan, starting from scratch. Life has experienced the most painful things, middle-aged entrepreneurship gathered a lot of understanding of human nature, understanding of the crisis, and 20-something entrepreneurial is not the same, so he will see further.

Second, he deals with a lot of dignitaries and celebrities in the world, but never in public. For example, he often talks to Bill Gates and the British Prime Minister, so this year he said that he often goes to No. 10 Downing Street. Against these backgrounds, he has a better understanding of the trend of world politics and economy and how to plan for the future.

Ren Zhengfei considers himself an ideological leader, and he is full of this vigilant consideration at all stages of starting a business.

Ran Tao gave an interesting comment on Ren Zhengfei: "I think, especially in the later period of Huawei, he is more like a Quixote figure." In fact, he is using his own sobriety to fight the company's bureaucracy all the time. Like Quixote, he has been fighting the bureaucracy with a broken horse and a broken sword. "

Early last year, Huawei published a book called Entropy reduction, whose core is to explore how to maintain Huawei's long-term vitality. Ren Zhengfei made a preface to it. Ran Tao believes that:"this is one of Ren Zhengfei's ideas over the past 10 years, that is, how to make people not so easy to succeed, not so impulsive, not so arrogant and happy, but become calm, aware of the problem, and then be able to do things in a low profile.Therefore, President Ren said that he was very grateful to Trump for this US crackdown. He believes from the bottom of his heart that Huawei's biggest crisis is not a blow from the United States, but the complacency of its team. "

As one of the most successful companies in China today, what does Huawei need to improve in terms of management? Ran Tao believes that the scale of Huawei is already very large. after more than 20 years of institutional construction, the company's organization is relatively solid, and many things have become step by step, so attracting outstanding talents will be a difficulty. "The 29-year-old general, the 35-year-old marshal, will not show up now."and this is what Ren Zhengfei is worried about.Ren Zhengfei is thinking about how to blow up the pyramid of human resources and how to break the rules and promote outstanding talents to make talented people in their 20s stand out.

The sober head of the founder alone is not enough to make Huawei an enterprise with annual revenue of 700 billion yuan, and it also needs strong limbs to implement, which requires sound management and talent selection.

In his new book, "Huawei Grayscale Management," ran Tao said that Huawei pays attention to grayscale in the selection and use of personnel, takes a clear-cut stand on things, and is tolerant and compromised to people.

According to ran Tao, Ren Zhengfei likes Li Yunlong in "shining Sword" very much and encourages employees to learn from him within Huawei in order to inspire middle and grass-roots cadres to dare to work hard and dare to shine their swords. He once said: "Principal officials at all levels should be selected from among the main combat personnel in the main combat units, and the selection of Huawei cadres should be based on Li Yunlong and Zhao Gang. Li Yunlong's advantages and disadvantages are very clear, very good at war, but often make mistakes, which is a manifestation of grayscale in Huawei management.

Ren Zhengfei also advocated internally to learn from Li Hongzhang and learn from his mind, pattern and responsibilities. According to ran Tao, "is Li Hongzhang willing to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki?" I don't want to, but in times of national disaster, someone has to face it and solve it. "it's just that Li Hongzhang is quite controversial and has not spread it to the outside world. Ran Tao said: "for cadres who move from the middle to the upper level and who can take on the successors of enterprises in the future, they actually need to have this kind of mind, pattern, and responsibility. "

In fact, in enterprise management, the difference between Li Yunlong and Li Hongzhang is the difference between a general and a marshal. Ran Tao gave an example. When Huawei began to carry out district reform in 2008, Ren Zhengfei said, what is the difference between a district president as a marshal, a marshal and a general? The general is brave to win, the marshal knows to retreat, to be patient, and to give up. If a person does not know how to give up, he cannot become a commander-in-chief. The general is brave, and the marshal should know how to give up after balance.

In addition to recruiting outstanding talents, Huawei will also use money in exchange for growth time in management. According to ran Tao, Huawei spent 30 billion of its consulting fees in 20 years to learn from other people's advanced management methods around the world and build Huawei into a process organization.

Secondly, as a huge enterprise, Huawei also needs to establish a good strategic implementation system to ensure the accuracy of guidance. Huawei uses a business leadership model when learning strategic tools. In the formulation of strategy, we should start from the market research to see clearly where the whole opportunity of the market is, and we can't work behind closed doors. Secondly, look at the strategic intention, what the company wants to do, there are really many market opportunities, to make a choice and give up, so the strategy must make a choice and give up. Third, it depends on your own advantages, the market is a good opportunity, so you have to answer a question, where is your unique competitiveness?

In the implementation of the strategic direction, on the one hand, Huawei should focus on things other than communications. "you see, real estate makes more money, finance makes more money, Huawei does not do it, just honestly do the thing of communications, take it to the extreme. In fact, some competitors even go directly to buy operators abroad, but Huawei never touches them. "

On the other hand, we need to be patient with the implementation of the strategic direction. Ran Tao cited a case in which CBG led by Yu Chengdong made its own brand in 2012 and no longer worked as a contract manufacturer for operators. It was not until 2014 that Mate 7 began to sell well. These products were not successful in the first two years, but Huawei resisted tremendous pressure and persisted. "as a matter of fact, who can stick to this strategy for two years? some bosses may give you two months in a row, but Huawei has been able to give you so much patience to let Yu Chengdong try and make a mistake for two or three years, and finally blazed a path. "

After the strategy is clear, we also need to carry out business design, design the success elements around the strategic goal, list an interrelated key task, specific to each level of the organization, and set up employee performance. decompose a large strategic goal to everyone, the whole process will be very complicated. Ran Tao said that Huawei takes a long time to do this every year, and it can take 4 months in 12 months, but once it is decided, it will be carried out efficiently for 8 months, and the final effect is actually very good.

In order to inspire employees to execute efficiently, there are different incentive ways for employees at different levels. A basic principle is to share the money well and not to make a big pot of rice. Ran Tao said: "Huawei has spent more than 20 years in management constantly adjusting the distribution system, so what is the core point?" That is, we must let those who do well get 10 times more money than those who do not do well, and even those who do not do well, I will not give money to them. This seems to be against human nature, because people are not willing to face conflict, but in order to succeed, it is to build a good team, in order to achieve good performance, these people must be different from others. "

For senior cadres, the incentive of money has not been very effective, they are often financially free, easy to lack momentum. Ran Tao described in "Huawei Gray Management" that Huawei's approach is to make senior cadres have a sense of mission and have the value of contributing to the world industry. Ren Zhengfei kept a low profile in front of the media before this year's crisis, leaving these opportunities to the heads of business units to build their sense of industry mission. For example, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, acts as the mobile spokesperson for Huawei as a whole.