The One Behind It All Chapter 101

For example, in September 2000, all the company's R&D personnel held a meeting of 10,000 people at the Shenzhen Stadium. The theme of the meeting was to reduce R&D costs and combat "dumb stuff." Hong Tianfeng, the president of R&D at the time, invited Aiden to give a report on the theme of "Why Self-Criticism" at the conference. At this time, Aiden had lost his former passion and vitality. Not only had there been several inexplicable interruptions, but many words had been repeated many times. When the meeting ended, many old employees started talking. This was so unlike Mr. Ren back then.

It is conceivable that from a small agency company to a dominant company in the manufacturing of communication equipment, all the pressure brought together in this process took a huge toll on Aiden's body. Huawei's achievements can almost be said to have come at the expense of his own health. Therefore, although Aiden still had many articles and speeches that triggered huge reactions in the industry after 2000, the frequency of such speeches has been greatly reduced over the years, and this situation became even more obvious after 2003. On the one hand, this change is related to Aiden's personal physical condition, but more importantly, with the development of Internet technology and the integration of 3C, the "visibility" of the future market is getting lower and lower.

For Huawei, long-term reliance on Aiden's personal strategic decision-making mechanism has made Huawei's executives develop a very strong mentality of dependence. The most important thing in cultivating senior corporate talents is to continuously complete strategic decisions independently through practical training. This has been proven by countless outstanding companies such as GE and IBM. Huawei's senior leaders have been accustomed to passive execution for a long time and generally lack the ability to think strategically. This creates a vicious cycle: because subordinates are unable to make good decisions, Aiden needs to constantly make various decisions, sometimes even Issues such as how many sets of clothes to distribute to new employees also need to be consulted before he can decide. And since he had to make his own decisions on everything, he was mired in a sea of affairs and unable to extricate himself, unable to spare more time to think about various strategic issues. An executive recruited by Huawei from a large foreign company once commented that Aiden works many times harder than foreign CEOs.

Another fatal problem caused by one person's strategy is the lack of transparency in Huawei's strategic decision-making. Since many senior leaders themselves do not know why their boss issued such an order, their subordinates are immersed in their work in confusion, whether they are IBM consultants promoting integrated product development or BT (British Telecom) experts doing supplier certification. They all pointed out in unison that Huawei lacks a top-down and bottom-up two-way communication mechanism, and the boss's intentions will be completely distorted after several layers of transmission.

People outside the telecommunications circle may be unfamiliar with the name "Aiden", but among foreign telecommunications giants such as Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia, and Motorola, this man shocks and impresses them.