Meng Wanzhou is the rotating chairman of Huawei, and there are several major events in front of her

Source: Time Weekly Author: Yang Lingling

On March 28, the Times reporter learned that the fourth shareholding employee representative meeting of the labor union of Huawei Investment Holdings Co., Ltd. held a meeting at the Huawei base in Bantian on March 27~28.

Huawei's board of directors has designated Vice Chairman Xu Zhijun, Ken Hu, and Meng Wanzhou as rotating chairmen, of which Meng Wanzhou will be on duty from April 1 ~ September 30, 2023.

Source: Huawei official website

Meng Wanzhou has been with Huawei for 30 years, but she is still the youngest of Huawei's current rotating chairmen. After taking up the duty, she needs to face several major things, including how the terminal business will continue to survive under pressure, whether the automotive business that is in the investment period can further approach profitability, and how the ITC business that produces food will continue to increase production and revenue.

Rotation management philosophy

Currently, Huawei has three vice chairmen who rotate as chairmen, each of whom rotates for half a year. This set of rotation management mechanism is also the mechanism adopted by the world-class enterprises IBM and General Motors for a long time.

The rotating chairman is the top leader of the company during his term of office, leading the company's board of directors and executive board.

As the first entrepreneur in China's private enterprises to adopt the rotating chairman system, Ren Zhengfei once pointed out that the rotation system is more focused on the company's strategy, focusing on system construction, and further delegating the power of daily business decisions to BGs (business groups) and regions to promote the rational progress of expansion. This is better than a system in which the success of the company is tied to one person and the defeat is also one person.

There is an image analogy from industry insiders: In Huawei's board layout, the rotating chairman is the commander-in-chief and chief of staff who command the centralized and coordinated operations of several major corps. Spiritual leaders retain only directorships, relying on the soft power of prestige to steer and lead. This arrangement is painstaking.

In the eyes of former Huawei employees, Ren Zhengfei's superiority is reflected in the fact that he commands a strong management team, and these people can translate his philosophical theories into policies and penetrate them into employees.

Lay dormant for 30 years

Meng Wanzhou, who will soon become the rotating chairman, has been working at Huawei for 30 years.

In 1993, 20-year-old Meng Wanzhou joined Huawei, and she recalled in an internal article entitled "Accepting a Hundred Rivers, Allowing Greatness" that in the first few years of working at Huawei, she undertook the work of switchboard transfer and document printing, which was trivial and hard, "One of the first three secretaries of the company." ”

This work lasted for four years, and it was not until 1997, when Meng Wanzhou entered Huazhong University of Science and Technology to study for a master's degree in accounting, and returned to Huawei's finance department a year and a half later, that she really began her career at Huawei.

Meng Wanzhou has served as the company's international accounting director, the chief financial officer of Huawei Hong Kong, and the president of the accounting management department. But Meng Wanzhou lay dormant at Huawei for 20 years, and it was not until 2013 that she walked in the spotlight as Ren Zhengfei's daughter and Huawei's CFO.

In April 2022, Huawei announced that Meng Wanzhou, Vice Chairman and CFO of Huawei, was appointed as the rotating chairman. Now, after one year, Meng Wanzhou has finally ushered in the duty.

Can you do a good job on duty?

In front of Meng Wanzhou is a big chess game of management.

Data shows that Huawei achieved sales revenue of 636.9 billion yuan in 2022, and in comparison, Huawei achieved sales revenue of 636.8 billion yuan in 2021. In other words, Huawei will increase revenue by 100 million yuan in 2022.

In the automotive business, in 2022, the AITO brand cooperated between Huawei and Cialis released three models, the M5, M7, and M5 EV, with a cumulative delivery volume of more than 76,000 units, adding further variables to the competitive landscape of the industry.

However, the annual sales volume of 76,000 vehicles is not enough to support Huawei's profit target. Wang Yanmin, president of Huawei's Smart Car Business Department, previously said in an interview with Times reporters: "1 million vehicles is a milestone, as a new energy brand, we must work with partners to achieve scale as much as possible, only scale will bring more efficiency improvements." ”

It is reported that in 2023, Huawei will begin to adjust the rhythm and further "combine vertically and horizontally". After Cialis, Huawei is also cooperating with Chery and Jianghuai to build smart cars. Whether the automotive business can achieve profitability as soon as possible has become one of the tests of life and death.

Source: Photo by a reporter from Time Weekly

As for the terminal business, the inability to sell 5G mobile phones due to external factors and the inability to carry self-developed Kirin chips is Huawei's pain point. Recently, market news said that Huawei may consider splitting the terminal business, and may reduce investment in the mobile phone business this year, and split some business research and development teams to Honor, which was quickly denied by Huawei.

At the same time, Huawei held a spring new product launch conference to break rumors. At the press conference, Huawei launched a number of new products such as the flagship P60 series, the folding screen Mate X3, and the smart watch WATCH Ultimate that supports Beidou satellite communication.

"Huawei will return to the normal update track of releasing the P series in the first half of the year and the Mate series in the second half of the year." He Gang, chief operating officer of Huawei Terminal BG, revealed in a media exchange after the meeting that as for market sales, it is still necessary to wait for consumers to vote with their feet.

TOB's carrier business and enterprise business have been Huawei's core "grain production areas" in recent years, and how to continue to maintain a fighting state and rush forward is also a topic that the rotating chairman on duty must consider.