Page 14 - MS Perspectives 2014 YIR

"Corporate Culture is the 'Nuclear Bomb' of Huawei"

Dr. Eric Flamholtz
President & Founder, Management Systems

The title of this article ("Corporate Culture is the 'Nuclear Bomb' of Huawei"1) is a
statement by Ren Zhengfei, Founder and Deputy Chairman of the Board, of Huawei
Technologies Co. Ltd (known more simply as "Huawei"). It is quoted from a
presentation made by a representative of Huawei (its Deputy party Secretary) to a
group including me that visited one the company's' campuses in Shenzhen, China
on Sunday, July 20th2.

Background

During a recent trip to Asia where I visited Hong Kong, Hanoi (Vietnam) and
Shenzhen (China), I had the opportunity to visit Huawei in order to learn about its
culture and then facilitate a session examining the implications for group of 25
CEOs of Chinese Hospitals. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. is a Chinese multinational
(or in their own words "global") networking and telecommunications equipment and
services company headquartered in Shenzhen, China. As described in their
marketing at one of their Shenzhen campuses, "Huawei is a leading global "ICT"
solutions provider" (see picture). ICT stands for "information communications
technology".

The visit to Huawei was part of a two day program offered by the Shanghai
Institute of Advanced Finance. This program was sponsored by Johnson & Johnson.
The overall theme of the program was "crossing boundaries." The core idea was to
stretch the thinking of the hospital CEOs by exposing them to new ideas. It might
seem a bit strange to examine the implications of Huawei's culture for hospitals, but
it was fully consistent with the program's concept and design, which was to cross
'boundaries' including intellectual and organizational boundaries, and in turn,
stretch the hospital CEOs thinking.

My role is this program was to expose the CEOs to our framework for Building
Sustainably Successful organizations™. The program consisted of our culture and
culture management on day 1 and then to visit Huawei the morning of day 2, learn
about its culture, and then facilitate a discussion of the implications of the Huawei
culture for the hospitals.

During a half day visit to Huawei, we did a tour of one of the company's campuses,
which included housing for a number of employees and one of its Research and

1 Ren Zhengfei, Founder and Deputy Chairman of the Board, Huawei.
2 This is part 1 of a 2 part series on Huawei and its corporate culture. Part 2 will appear in the August
issue of MS News and Perspectives. Part 2 is being deferred in part because of length, so that I have
a chance to digest what I learned, and also so I can distill its lessons and implications for other CEOs
and companies.

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