Book Summary | The Huawei Way – Lessons from an International Tech Giant on Driving Growth by focusing on Never Ending Innovation

The Huawei Way – Lessons from an International Tech Giant on Driving Growth by focusing on Never Ending Innovation

Author : Yang Shalong

This book is about Huawei and CEO – Ren Zhengfei, low key entrepreneur operating on a global scale to create a world class organisation using Innovation and learning using core technologies of the information industry. This is a classic case of how within two decades, Huawei was able to innovate new technologies using sustained study of global organisations and constantly innovating with respect to both management and technologies. Huawei has conquered the multinationals through leadership, work culture and innovation as its core resulting as “patent champion” with huge number of international patents. This has become a model of new style of enterprise to lead global change.

The book is divided into 3 parts – Founding the company, Change and Going international. Each chapter has a lessons on personal involvement of Ren in leading the change and captured failures that have overcome. In nutshell, founding the company takes through the hard times and frugality with examples of entrepreneur skills.  change is about dreaming big and building systems in the organisation and Going international is about cultural and managing international footprints.   

Founding the Company: This highlights the tough time due to poverty began the frugal and selfless attitude. This leads to willingness to disperse wealth to others, his courage in delegating authority and selfless nature. One can notice that life’s setbacks often count as blessings rather than as curse. The more prosperous you are, the more you can advance science and technology. The more advanced your science and technology, the more you can focus on education and produce generation of talent and the more talent you produce the more your economy prospers.

Universalizing Customer Relations:

• Focus on all levels of customer hierarchy, not to differentiate between large and small customers, not to think of positions of these customers as low or high. Provide same importance to all levels and set up excellent relationship at each level at each stage of the process from product promotion to tendering bids to ultimately signing the contract.
• Pay periodic visits to any older experts who contributed in anyways. Invite them to head office for events. Always maintain a feeling of gratitude for the help that customers gave us in the past. This not only builds reputation around, but also build positive influence around the world.
• Protect customers’ investment. Make customer succeed. Making customers succeed is the same as making ourselves succeed.

Soul of Independent R&D: Innovation may be hard, but it is the only path to make if an enterprise hopes to survive. In addition to just survival it is the path of success.  

• The key is to apply concentrated force in just the right place, so that a tiny sharp point focuses the pressure using technological breakthroughs using limited resources. This means concentrating human resources, material strength and financial strength on one key point in order to achieve breakthrough. Concentrated pressure to achieve breakthrough technology.
• Technology is not worth anything until it is sold. Research is indeed a kind of gambling. If you are not in the game, however, if you don’t dare to be in the game. You’re left behind. And that definitely dooms you to failure.
• In a knowledge economy age, the methods by which a company survives and grows have also changed in fundamental ways. In the past, one relied on doing things accurately. Now, it is more important to do the right things. In the post people thought that innovations were taking a risk. Now, if you don’t innovate, you are taking a major risk.
• It is better to work quietly than to talk too much.

Culture: Resources can always dry up. Only culture lives on.

• Creating of Cot Culture – when they are tired, they lay down in the office to take short rest. In victory, we raise a toast to one another, in defeat, we fight to the death to save one another. When the going gets tough, it is the brave who win the day.
• Wolf culture – Cultural transformations, from a wolflike culture to an “everybody rowing in unison culture, to a culture that is customer centric and one that gives primary consideration to those who fight.
• Crises, reductions, and even bankruptcy will inevitably come, crises are not what mature a company, they are what kill a company.  Heroes are those who can sum-up the lessons of failure, and they move toward victory.
• Any nation on earth, and any organization, will see its life come to an end if it does not metabolize the old and replace it with the new, if we cling to the past, we will send the company to its very grave
• We are in an age when the IT industry is changing dramatically, an age that moves at 10 times the previous pace. The only thing that doesn’t change is this world is change itself. If we are just a little too hesitant, we fall behind by a thousand. If we are complacent and conservative, reject criticism, then we fall behind by more than a thousand. Should we move towards failure and death just for “face”> or should we face, cast off mistakes, and turn overserves in the right direction? The necessary condition for surpassing is ridding ourselves of mistakes in time. To get rid of all mistakes, we must courageous enough to criticize ourselves.
• Self-criticism is good way to further an individual progress. Self-criticism is not castigation but rather self-confidence. Only the strong can do it. Self-criticism is a kind of weapon as well as a kind of spirit. Ability to correct mistakes grow stronger, the muscle of the organisation become healthier.  The healthier the organization became, the better it was at doing self-criticism.
• Internal start-ups.
• System of Employee forums for employees – for appraisals. Their primary function is to resolve disputes, relating to performance evaluations.
• System of Counselor or Guidance – The aim is to make sure they acclimate to the company as fast as possible to understand its organization atmosphere and principles of fairness and justice, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that they can be as creative and dynamic as possible.

Change Management:

• Spiritual Program – to bring consensus among all employees, by dividing market into three parts – Giving to Country in due, and thereby unifying thinking, actions and fighting goals.
• Only if you dare to dream of doing things can you begin to do them; only if you dream of creating revolutionary change can you ever get good at it; only in the mist of such revolutionary change can new opportunity arise.
• The brave one wins the fight on a narrow road. 
• The market has no time to wait for us to grow up. It is not our mother. It has no patience and no mercy. There is exit for us if we retreat or even if we fall behind.
• Change Management through Integrated Product Development (IPD), Integrated supply chain (ISC), CMMI, IPMT, Integrated Financial Systems, Customer Relation Management

Motivation:

• Each person’s success in fact comes from the selfless contributions of his family. The original driving force of our lives, out work, our endeavours, comes from our mothers, who made us warm winter clothing, from our silent fathers and elder brothers and from that young lady who may be once have loved you and from whom you are now separated…
• Future battles among companies will be battles over patents.
• Competition among enterprises these days is no simply a matter of one enterprise going up against another. Instead, it involves one supply chain going up against another.  A companies supply chain is like the entire chain of an ecosystem. It has all of the lives on board the ship, including customers, partners, suppliers and manufacturers. A company can only expect to survive overtime if it also looks after the interests of the customers and its partners, and if it pursues win-win solutions for all.
• There are no eternal enemies and there are no eternal friends. There are only eternal interests.

Compromise and shades of grey: No river on earth is straight. All have curves. They represent the compromise between river and earth. Such compromises are what allow the waters of a river to reach ocean

Conclusion:

From last one year, Huawei is news for varied reasons, from Canada to United States. The Trade war and high end technology solution of Huawei is giving tough fight to Multinational companies, threatening their monopoly in technology. 

This book provides key insights on Huawei has built an culture that could produce superior product with future technology to lead the change for customers. …

A great book to read, where even failures are shared.

-