Chapter 28 compete with all irrationality

Ren Zhengfei, an intellectual entrepreneur, is mainly manifested in his mechanical nature: competing with all irrationality, or in other words, he uses rationality as a yardstick to measure all kinds of things that a company needs.It is precisely because of this that sometimes when we look at Ren Zhengfei, we feel "impersonal". However, we must look a little deeper. Is there any reason?Generally speaking, Ren Zhengfei's words and deeds have a kind of rationality. Competing against all irrationality is the biggest attribute or core attribute of a competitive machine. It shows that Ren Zhengfei is very critical, which is a characteristic attribute that distinguishes him from other entrepreneurs.We can say that the characteristic attribute of Apple's Jobs is taste, the characteristic attribute of Buffett is value, and self-criticism is the characteristic attribute of Ren Zhengfei.If a person can strictly practice self-criticism, logically speaking, he will certainly dare to compete with everything.This competitive machine also has many other sub-attributes, subsidiary attributes, and extended attributes, such as: rationality, continuity, technological renewal, unmanned operation, screwiness, and process.In fact, Ren Zhengfei's machine nature is reflected in many aspects, not only including the above mentioned, he has all the attributes that machines have.

Machines are the core production tools of modern business society.Entrepreneur is a social role in the modern sense.With regard to the role of the entrepreneur, economist Schumpeter's point of view is very worthy of attention.Schumpeter was an advocate of corporate innovation. He believed that entrepreneurs played a heroic role in the modern economy through "creative destruction" and they were the source of profits.In his book The Theory of Economic Development published in 1912, he pointed out that entrepreneurs are "leaders of economic development" and innovators who can "realize the recombination of factors of production".In his theory, "entrepreneur, innovation and credit creation" is the core concept, and he regards the entrepreneur as the subject of innovation, whose function is to creatively disrupt the market equilibrium (he calls it "creative destruction").In my opinion, this is and will be the core issue of China's economic development.On the one hand, any breakthrough we have made in these areas in the past has brought rapid changes and development; on the other hand, it is precisely because of the lack of these areas that we still have a lot of potential when facing the future Digable—provided we can correctly recognize our problems.

Schumpeter highlighted the innovation of entrepreneurs, but he also believed that entrepreneurs are a very unstable state.He believes that a person becomes an entrepreneur by "realizing new combinations", "and this characteristic disappears as soon as he has established a business and started running it like everyone else."So being an entrepreneur is a fleeting state.By his definition, a person cannot remain an entrepreneur throughout his decades of activity unless he is constantly "realizing new combinations", that is, constantly innovating.In short, innovation is the only criterion by which entrepreneurs are judged.

What is commendable is that Ren Zhengfei's innovation is not a "flash in the pan", he is an entrepreneur in the modern sense.But what do we think of his creative destruction?According to Schumpeter, creative destruction should naturally be his daily job as an entrepreneur.But when we first walked into Huawei, it didn't feel disruptive. really? Recalling the first time I went to Huawei, when I stepped out of the elevator, a wind of creative destruction hit me, but at that time I was blind and couldn't see it, let alone see Ren Zhengfei's personality at a glance. creative destruction.Fortunately, we can still see his rationality, and reach such a situation: every person who enters Huawei, at the moment of entering, means that he will experience the most rare "social reality" in his life in this organization. experience".He will encounter a "river of rationality", on which he will drift endlessly, never resting, until he lands.Leaving Huawei is equivalent to going ashore. There may be a sense of stability, but the pleasure of drifting will also disappear.

In fact, we not only saw and participated in rationality, but we also saw Ren Zhengfei breaking the usual image of an entrepreneur—thinking about it now, this is Ren Zhengfei’s “creative destruction” that we first came into contact with. Ren Zhengfei broke the image of an entrepreneur as a businessman-to be honest, I was surprised to be able to write this sentence, which did not exist in the first place.After the first draft of this book was completed, I revised the draft many times. Every time I revised it to this point, I struggled extraordinarily. It seems that there is always a crux that prevents me from fully understanding Ren Zhengfei.After a lot of daze, this sentence finally came out.Only then did I realize that I had broken through a crux of entrepreneurial cognition.

The truth is, no matter how we look at him, or in whatever way we look at him—including whenever we look at him, whether in the 1990s or into the 21st century—listen to his speeches, read his articles, and participate in his low-key , Feeling his various business practices, we can all feel that Ren Zhengfei is always like an entrepreneur who "suddenly enters a new business field". It seems that the business world he lives in is two different worlds from the business world we usually know.It should be said that this feeling is very fresh.In China, even the best businessmen make us feel that way.Ren Zhengfei doesn't feel like a businessman at all.I realized that not all businessmen can be called entrepreneurs, even if this businessman is very powerful and famous.But we generally don’t look at it this way, and the entrepreneurs we usually talk about don’t make this kind of distinction.It is this indiscrimination that makes us sometimes unclear when thinking about problems.

For example, we usually feel that our country's entrepreneurial spirit is weak and there is little innovation, but this is not consistent with some facts we know: in the era of reform and opening up, there are actually many self-made bosses in our country who are doing very well and making enterprises well. It is very big, and has created many businesses that did not exist before, and accumulated a lot of wealth.But we obviously feel that there is a problem here, that is, those bosses and rich people have nothing to say and are worth studying seriously.What's even more frightening is that this problem can only be vaguely felt, but it is difficult to express it clearly.After thinking about it, I found that the problem may be that we confuse bosses, entrepreneurs, and businessmen, wealth, value, and success, and equate investment, speculation, and luck.In a word, our vocabulary is too small, and our text logic is not strong enough.Realizing this problem not only did not make me happy, but depressed me.How should this be done?How should this book be written down!

After calming down, I think it's better to go back to Ren Zhengfei.Ren Zhengfei's machine nature is a new "paradigm" brought by Ren Zhengfei to Chinese enterprises. This paradigm tells us that businessmen and entrepreneurs are different. There have been businessmen since ancient times. The businessman I admire the most is Fan Li. He became rich three times in his life and reached the point of becoming the richest in the world.Moreover, he not only assisted Gou Jian, king of Yue, to dominate the world, but also retreated bravely, sailed the sea with Xizi, and smiled proudly in the world and the political arena, which is particularly enviable.

However, businessmen alone cannot solve the crux of China's economy, which is the problem of rationality.It is at this point that businessmen and entrepreneurs show an essential difference.We don't see "creativity" and "destructiveness" in businessmen, but entrepreneurs firmly believe that "no innovation is a dead end".What we call Ren Zhengfei's destructiveness is reflected here. He broke the traditional image of a businessman. He is not a person who is kind to others, but a competitor with everything.To be kind to everything (of course this kind of good is not that good) is the greatest attribute of a businessman's animal nature, and to compete with everything is the greatest attribute of Ren Zhengfei's machine nature.

The nine points that reflect that Ren Zhengfei is an entrepreneur rather than a businessman are as follows: Number one, always work hard and never let up.In this regard, Huawei is a rare company.Those who can't keep up with the pace of the company can never simply lie on the "credit book" and simply enjoy the benefits. Second, establish Huawei's own assessment and human resource evaluation system to protect employees from outside interference.Huawei sometimes looks like a company that does not belong to this era, more like a peach blossom garden.It is useless for the outside world to criticize Huawei, because Huawei can inspire the people it should inspire.This is a strong support for Huawei's self-contained and self-sourced development.

Third, the obsession with core technology. Fourth, firmness in goals and persistence in small improvements.All links can and must be revised, improved, and benefited from; all relationships, after straightening out, should become factors that enhance one's own competitiveness. Fifth, self-renewal and self-criticism.Huawei's continuous and rapid growth is related to Ren Zhengfei's continuous self-renewal.This entrepreneurial machine is constantly upgrading its technology. Although he is older than most Huawei employees, he seems to be able to keep up with the times. Sixth, persistence.An entrepreneur certainly has his learning period. Of course he can fall, and he can get up again after falling; he can also fail, and let failure become the mother of future success.However, at a certain time, he must continue to show off.The competition is so fierce, if you don't continue to show off your power, you won't be able to generate enough potential energy and kinetic energy, and it will be difficult to achieve far higher results than usual. What changed after Jobs returned to Apple?I don't think he even led the development of cool products, but he made it possible for Apple to maintain a consistent level of innovation and design for the first time.Before his return, Apple was never short of cool, shockingly good products, but there was a great lack of continuity.The most common situation is that every time a new product is launched, it will arouse favorable comments from users, and the sales performance will increase rapidly, but it will not take long before the product sales will decline and the stock price will fall. It's like riding a roller coaster.But now it is different. Apple has become able to steadily launch its own series of products, one after another, and develop vigorously until today, until its market value surpassed that of Microsoft, becoming the largest technology company. Huawei under the leadership of Ren Zhengfei is also a communication company that has accumulated more and more success through continuous efforts. Seventh, support the team and combat bureaucracy. Eighth, screw sex.Screw sex can also be called paving stone sex.Because Ren Zhengfei is a machine, everything else is likely to be a screw.Except for entrepreneurs, all employees are screws.One day, it is very likely that Ren Zhengfei will also become a screw, and that will be when the entrepreneur machine completely becomes an enterprise machine or Huawei completely becomes an enterprise machine.That day may be the happiest day for Ren Zhengfei. Finally, he can also become a screw that never rusts. Most screws are rusty and need to be replaced, which is the inevitable fate of being a rusty screw.And the machine after replacing the screw is still a machine. Ninth, unmanned operation.Ren Zhengfei has a deep-rooted idea. He believes that a really good business operation should be like the water of the Yangtze River, which goes back and forth and can be governed by doing nothing.Therefore, he showed great importance to organizational construction, process and system.He always used Li Bing and his son's construction of Dujiangyan as an example.He believes in natural leaders, and more in institutions, so in his eyes, the best leaders and great men are those who systematically solve a certain institutional problem.Like Li Bing and his son, he admires them very much. All in all, as a competitive machine, Ren Zhengfei competes with everything, and competes with everything with great joy.This kind of competition has its own special charm, and its concept is completely different from the inherent competition in our minds and the knowledge competition we understand through reading.As an ideal entrepreneur and a knowledgeable entrepreneur, Ren Zhengfei inspired a new concept of competition.It is this unique and novel understanding of competition and the accompanying practices that make Huawei stand out, and it also proves the sharpness and wisdom of Ren Zhengfei's concept of competition.Under such circumstances, Ren Zhengfei can still keep a low profile consistently, which is his ability as a competitive machine.