Chapter 28 The truth of my writing "The Truth about Huawei"

In a blink of an eye, it has been nearly two years since "The Truth about Huawei" was published. During this period, many friends asked me why I made such a book. I have never had a chance to explain it well. Now, under the order of Mr. Wu Xiaobo, I will review the background of the book . In the beginning, it was Huawei's unique way of existence that attracted us, such as high salary, corporate culture, and unusually low-key that made people feel mysterious. At this time, I paid attention to Huawei purely out of curiosity.But after I got a deeper understanding of it, I found that this company was worth studying, so I began to explore the internal law of its development and growth, hoping to help the growth of Chinese companies.At that time, there were not many books on the management case studies of Chinese local enterprises, especially private high-tech enterprises, and most of the bookstores were filled with foreign cases such as "Matsushita Konosuke".Discovering and summarizing the growth experience of Chinese private high-tech enterprises has become my original intention to start this work.Of course, as a company that is developing rapidly and is still in the growth stage, it is not surprising that there are some shortcomings or even disadvantages. Discovering and summarizing the deep-seated reasons for these disadvantages, and exploring solutions, whether it is for Huawei's growth or other companies are also very necessary.

Now it seems that whether it is intentional or unintentional, it is still correct to choose Huawei.First, today, only Huawei and ZTE in the "Great China" have the best development momentum, which to a certain extent represents the development level and direction of China's telecom equipment manufacturers; Optimistic private enterprises, and non-listed companies.In a certain sense, studying Huawei is studying China's private enterprises and China's national high-tech industry. In short, I chose Huawei because of its special nature. Of course, as a company that is developing rapidly and is still in the growth stage, it is not surprising that there are some shortcomings or even disadvantages. Discovering and summarizing the deep-seated reasons for these disadvantages, and exploring solutions, whether it is for Huawei's growth or other companies are also very necessary.

Therefore, in the process of interviewing and writing "The Truth about Huawei", we were cautious, lest we inadvertently hurt Huawei. After all, it is not easy to achieve such an achievement in just over 10 years.Huawei not only belongs to the 20,000 Huawei people, but also belongs to China and the world.As I said in the postscript of the book: The fundamental purpose of writing this book is to pay attention to the fate of China's largest private high-tech enterprise, to deeply dissect the development process of private high-tech companies, and to analyze the most controversial enterprises and enterprises in China. Carry out humanistic care at home.

As a person in the media, I have the convenience of contacting and interviewing Huawei people, although this convenience is not so convenient in actual operation.The professional sensitivity of the reporter makes the author feel that Huawei is an extremely valuable enterprise case worthy of careful study.However, Huawei has always kept a low profile and even deliberately stayed away from the media, resulting in very few media reports on Huawei, and there is no book that fully describes Huawei's development process, which inspires the author to track and inquire about Huawei. We may not be more professional and profound than economists, but the professional characteristics of journalists determine that journalists may be more suitable for writing investigative articles and books.

The difficulties encountered in the writing process mainly come from the interview process.Since Huawei has always kept a low profile, Ren Zhengfei generally does not accept interviews from any media reporters. There is a strict confidentiality system internally, and employees have signed confidentiality agreements with Huawei.Therefore, even Huawei people who have been away from Huawei for many years generally remain silent in the face of inquiries about Huawei, and current Huawei people are even less willing to cooperate with reporters in interviews.It is difficult to find interviewees, and after you find them, it is difficult for them to fully trust you, conduct interviews smoothly, and understand the core content. This is the biggest problem in the interview process.

In addition to normal channels, the author also used some extraordinary means during the interview, and even took some risks.When interviewing several former Huawei executives, the author always volunteered to invite them to dinner, and even paid for their parking fees.All of these former high-level executives of Huawei, who are bosses and worth a lot of money, certainly don't care about the meals provided by the author, but they are so moved by the author's sincerity that they can talk with the author for several hours.Once, a boss and the author first talked in Shenzhen Wuzhou Hotel, from day to night, and then transferred to the author's office to continue.It is with this sincerity and perseverance that never give up that the author broke through many former Huawei executives.Secondly, getting to Huawei's headquarters is also a big problem. There are strict security measures at the gate of Huawei, and ordinary people cannot approach it at all.The author took advantage of the reporter's convenience and followed provincial and municipal leaders to visit many times.Later, I used some excuses to go alone, and I took a certain risk at that time.

By interviewing a large number of Huawei people and more than 20 media friends at home and abroad, experts and scholars who study private enterprises.The development of Huawei gradually became clear to me. Through the complicated events in the development of Huawei, the regularity hidden behind the appearance was gradually unearthed.The so-called "truth" mainly refers to these things that are not widely understood by the public and have been misunderstood.I try my best to tell the public a true and objective Huawei through a panoramic description of Huawei. Of course, limited to the level at the time, "The Truth about Huawei" only described a small part of Huawei's internal laws, and more valuable things still need to be further explored.

So, there is my second book about Huawei - "Huawei's Management Wisdom".By this time, a relatively clear concept emerged—it turned out that I was exploring the growth trajectory of Chinese business thinkers. Huawei is successful because of Ren Zhengfei, and Ren Zhengfei is outstanding because of his ideas.China has never lacked politicians and entrepreneurs, but it has never lacked real business thinkers—in contemporary China, Ren Zhengfei should be regarded as one. The biggest difference between business thinkers and entrepreneurs is that the former has discovered some general business laws in specific business operations and formed a relatively complete set of business management theories; the latter may still be limited to specific business operations. , there is no theoretical breakthrough, or some fragmented experience, but it is difficult to systematize and theorize.Correspondingly, the former drives and controls the operation of the enterprise through its own business ideas; the latter still restricts the behavior of the enterprise through the money and capital it controls.We are pleased to see that Ren Zhengfei has formed his own set of management ideas in various fields of enterprise management on the basis of drawing lessons from the management experience of international advanced enterprises.

The competition among enterprises in the future is not a competition of scale, old and new, or speed, but a competition between advanced and backward, advanced and backward concepts, advanced and backward execution, advanced and backward management... Backwardness is permanent, while advancement is temporary and relative. In addition to some extremely accidental factors, such as luck, we have to admit that most successful people have internal reasons for their success.Inquiring into these factors of success, although it cannot directly make learners achieve success, at least it can avoid many avoidable mistakes and take another big step towards success.

After "The Truth about Huawei" was published, reporters from Hong Kong's "Asia Weekly" and the British "Financial Times" asked me the same question: What can other entrepreneurs learn from "The Truth about Huawei" to save their companies from crisis, or to achieve excellence in their businesses? method?I told them clearly: no.Because every company has different problems, it is not feasible to hope to copy the successful experience of others.However, the experience of successful people can be used for reference, which is why there are so many business schools around the world. Both "The Truth about Huawei" and "Huawei's Management Wisdom" try to find solutions to the development problems faced by Chinese private enterprises by analyzing Huawei, a typical enterprise.But this kind of goal is obviously extremely extravagant, because the key to finding a real solution to the problem lies in the entrepreneur himself, and everything else is an auxiliary tool.I hope that "Huawei's Management Wisdom" and "Huawei Truth" will help entrepreneurs who are at a loss find inspiration to solve problems. If so, the purpose of writing will be achieved.

A reporter once asked, how far do you think Huawei can go?This is one of the issues that I try my best to discuss clearly. In fact, although Huawei has various problems, Huawei is still very good on the whole, and it deserves to be regarded as the top among Chinese companies, especially domestic private companies.Huawei, which has an "endless culture" (Ren Zhengfei's words), has a strong ability to regenerate, and even if it is damaged, it will be repaired quickly after appropriate adjustments.Therefore, I have no doubts about Huawei's ability to go global and become a truly international company.If Huawei collapses, there will be no hope for the entire Chinese enterprise, and if the entire Chinese enterprise has no hope, the entire China will have no hope. It should be pointed out that the pace of Huawei's true internationalization and whether the pace is prosperous depends largely on its sublation of its past. I position myself to focus on, record, and study the growth of Chinese local companies and local business thinkers, and to write Chinese history from an economic perspective. Huawei is one of the companies I focus on. At present, the research I have done on Huawei is too little and too superficial. This will be one of the tasks I will continue in the future. I sincerely welcome more criticisms and pointers from seniors. 1 See page 6 of "The Hidden Champion" (Chinese version), written by Herman Simon, translated by Deng Di, Economic Daily Press, first edition in May 2005 2 There are a few exceptions among the enterprises found later, such as individual joint ventures and state-owned enterprises.