Introduction:By contrast, we can see two of the most important qualities of a first-class leader: one is to be prepared for danger in times of peace, and the other is to be successful. Be prepared for danger in times of peace, bringing about the continuous evolution of enterprise business; Success brings the handsome talents of the enterprise like a cloud, and the good will be like a tide, which in turn brings the full flowering of diversified business.
Road Words |Author Stone Business Review |Produced
Recently, two major companies' annual meetings** have been widely circulated on the Internet. One is Tencent Holdings, a Chinese Internet giant, and the other is Gree Group, a well-known home appliance company in China. The helmsmen of the two companies, Ma Huateng and Dong Mingzhu, both gave speeches at the annual meeting, but the content of their speeches was clearly different.
Among them, Ma Huateng only talked about a few achievements such as ** account and enterprise WeChat in his speech, but pointed out many business problems and management problems in Tencent. For example, the online game business is at a loss in the face of new competitors such as miHoYo, the PCG (Platform and Content Business Group) business is particularly difficult, the CSIG (Cloud and Computing Industry Business Group) business is under pressure on profitability, the administrative supervision of the financial technology business, and the repeated fraud of employees in procurement.
In his speech, Dong Mingzhu talked about the achievements of Gree Electric Appliances. Claiming that this is the best performance in the history of Gree's development, and comparing it with its performance before becoming chairman of Gree in 2012, to prove the success of his leadership of Gree Electric. However, this comparison is obviously unreasonable, because after 2012, China's urbanization and real estate industry developed greatly, and the entire Chinese home appliance industry grew rapidly. The water is big and the fish is big, and Gree Electric is just following the macro trend.
The perspective that can better reflect the real business quality of Gree Electric Appliances should be to look at its development comparison with core competitors such as Midea and Haier. Before 2012, the performance of Gree Electric was significantly better than that of Haier and Midea, and 10 years later, regardless of revenue, profit and market value, Gree has lagged behind these two old rivals. Taking the data of the most recent trading day as an example, the market capitalization of Midea Group is 41241.5 billion, the market value of Haier Smart Home is 21415.1 billion, all more than Gree Electric in 19743.7 billion RMB.
Tencent, China's most successful company, has been on high alert by its founder, Pony Ma. He once said, "We feel trembling every day because there are many giants in front of us who have fallen and their bodies are still warm." Many times, maybe we didn't do anything wrong simply because we were old. We need to constantly understand the needs of young users. Our innovations are rooted in the needs of our users. Gree Electric is in the stage of being overtaken by core rivals, but Dong Mingzhu always emphasizes the achievements of the enterprise. The difference in the mindset of the leaders determines the different strategic patterns of the two companies to a certain extent.
Because Ma Huateng is always full of crisis awareness, he has always maintained a keen sense of subtle changes in the industry, which has allowed him to lead Tencent not only successfully through the three cycles of PC Internet, mobile Internet and industrial Internet, but also in the fields of games, literature, tools and cloud services in addition to the main business of communication and social networking.
Dong Mingzhu is always immersed in the existing achievements of the enterprise and disdains any competitors in the industry, which makes him gradually lose a deep understanding of the future trend of the industry, which in turn leads to Gree Electric Appliances has been unable to get rid of its dependence on the main business of air conditioning, and has been unable to develop a new growth curve. On the other hand, the other two giant enterprises in the same industry, Midea Group not only has a full bloom in almost all small household appliances such as air conditioning, ice washing, kitchen and bathroom and small household appliances, but also has a deep precipitation in the business fields such as industrial robots; Haier Group has not only built a global high-end brand matrix composed of Haier, Casarte, GEA, Toshiba, Fisher & Paykel, Candy and Aqua in the field of home appliances and the world's first smart home scene brand Three-winged Bird, which enjoys a high reputation in the world, but also built the world's leading industrial Internet platform Kaos Cosmoplat and the big health industry ecology Yingkang Life. Among them, Haier Biotech, which is under the ecology of the big health industry, is also listed in the capital market, with a market value of nearly 10 billion yuan.
At the annual meeting of Tencent and Gree Electric Appliances, there is another detail that the author pays considerable attention to, that is, many other core executives appeared at the annual meeting of Tencent, such as Tencent co-founder Xu Chenye, Tencent President Martin Lau, Tencent PCG Business Group Head Ren Yuxin and Tencent WeChat Business Group Head Zhang Xiaolong, all delivered speeches and performed programs together at the annual meeting, they are obviously a more harmonious and united collective.
And Gree's annual meeting is more like Dong Mingzhu's one-man show. Except for a performative speech, no other key executives were seen. This can be seen that Dong Mingzhu is alone in the core team of Gree, covering the sky with one hand.
These details at the company's annual meeting are also a microcosm of the leadership differences between Ma Huateng and Dong Mingzhu. The author has been paying attention to Ma Huateng for a long time and found that he has a characteristic that many entrepreneurs do not have, that is, he has always maintained a low-key and humble attitude, and no matter how many achievements he has in the enterprise, he will always attribute the achievements to the team, rather than to the individual. For example, the company's management achievements are attributed to Martin Lau; Tencent Games' achievements are attributed to Ren Yuxin; WeChat's achievements are attributed to Zhang Xiaolong.
Contrary to Ma Huateng, Dong Mingzhu is the other extreme, who is always accustomed to taking all the achievements of the enterprise as his own. In the acknowledgments of this annual meeting, he did not mention the former head of Gree Electric Appliances and the recognized founder of Gree in the industry, and Zhu Jianghong, the first meritorious person. Earlier, it had repeatedly belittled the company's exploits in some public appearances. Dong Mingzhu is a subordinate of Zhu Jianghong, and after his retirement in 2012, Dong Mingzhu took over as the chairman of Gree Electric.
In the nearly 12 years since he took over as the chairman of Gree Electric Appliances, Dong Mingzhu did not cultivate a first-class person like Zhu Jianghong cultivated himself, but has been the chairman and CEO for a long time. Huang Hui and other senior management team members who were once thought to be the possibility of Dong Mingzhu also left one after another, resulting in Gree Electric Appliances further forming a situation in which Dong Mingzhu was dominant, lacking substantial checks and balances of power.
Diversity has always been the number one problem in the global business community, and few companies succeed. In its study of successful diversified companies, Stone Business Review found that one of the most critical characteristics of these companies is the number of talented people, not only the heads of the core businesses of the enterprises are handsome people with both ability and political integrity, but also many of the senior employees who have left the company have obtained the "No. 1" position in other companies.
This is because everyone has their own knowledge blind spots, and the ability of the top leader of the enterprise can only do 1-2 businesses well at most, and it is difficult for them to have differentiated cognition in more business areas. And there is fierce competition in every business area, and to stand out from the crowd, business leaders need to have the knowledge and capabilities that competitor leaders do not have. Therefore, in order to successfully achieve diversification, the first prerequisite is to cultivate multiple "No. 1" candidates who can lead each diversified business to compete and win. The cultivation of these business "No. 1" positions requires the enterprise to have a leader with a large enough mind and pattern, who can not only help the business leaders clarify the strategy and provide resources at critical moments, but also give these business leaders full respect, trust and authorization, especially not to compete with these business leaders.
In addition to Ma Huateng is a leader who does not compete with employees for performance, Ren Zhengfei is also a typical one. For example, Huawei's success in the consumer terminal business in recent years is inseparable from Ren Zhengfei's strategic support and adequate supply of various resources, but the achievements of the consumer terminal business have basically fallen to Yu Chengdong, and people do not feel any sense of Ren Zhengfei's presence in this business. It is precisely this characteristic of Ren Zhengfei that has brought about Huawei's comprehensive flowering in carrier, enterprise, cloud computing, and consumer services.
Through the above series of comparisons, we can see two of the most important qualities of a first-class leader: one is to be prepared for danger in times of peace, and the other is to be successful. Be prepared for danger in times of peace, bringing about the continuous evolution of enterprise business; Success has brought a gathering of handsome talents to the enterprise, and the good will be like a tide, which in turn will bring about the full flowering of diversified business.
The above two characteristics can also give important inspiration to many other entrepreneurs in China. On the one hand, we should remain humble, boast less about our achievements, and reflect more on problems; On the other hand, if there are problems, they will attribute themselves to themselves, and if they have achievements, they will attributed to the team. When an entrepreneur can do both, he or she will be able to lead the company to extraordinary success.