ABB: Leadership development is mainly based on internal courses

Since December last year, Malaysian Li Ruisheng has been the head of ABB North Asia and China Human Resources. Before that, he was President of ABB Hefei Transformer Co., Ltd. From the manager of the business unit to the head of the resource-supported department, Li Ruisheng's position change integrated ABB's strategic goals and his personal development needs.

Interactive topic: External or internal leadership training?

"China is the most important market outside of ABB's hometown. In order to effectively support the rapid development of the business here, ABB is very careful in its talent strategy. They hope to find people with experience in business to be responsible for human resources work, so as to promote human resources The work can better understand and match the needs of the business department." Li Ruisheng, who has served as a manager in various positions such as finance, sales, and marketing, is obviously a suitable candidate. "Actually, when I was working on 'One ABB', it was the first time for me to systematically understand what human resource management really is, and I found it very interesting. At that time, I wondered if I could become a manager of the human resources department one day, but it has become a reality now. Now." Li Ruisheng's subjective will also contributed to the success of the "transfer".

Since joining ABB in 1989, Li Ruisheng's "promotion" roadmap is quite characteristic of ABB. Starting as an accountant, he was later promoted to the CFO of ABB Malaysia, and later served as the head of ABB's M&A business in Singapore. During this period, Li Ruisheng was still developing in his "old business" - the financial field. From 1999 to 2012, Li Ruisheng served as the head of sales, marketing and logistics of ABB China, the project leader of ABB (OsA) and the president of ABB Hefei Transformer Co., Ltd., from a professional functional department to a comprehensive manager. This seemingly "intricate" resume also reflects ABB's multi-dimensional leadership development framework and philosophy.

Focused Ladder Training Structure

"Everyone is a leader" is ABB's leadership development philosophy. From basic employees to senior managers, ABB has summed up eight elements of leadership behavior: the first is result-oriented; the second is strategy-oriented; the third is to cultivate talents (this is a necessary ability for leaders as managers); The fourth is personal leadership; the fifth is change management; the sixth is cross-cultural collaboration (ABB requires every manager-level leader to maintain a high sensitivity to cross-culture and understand the necessary elements of cross-culture); the seventh is collaboration; The eighth is the understanding of the external environment and customers. For managers of different levels, the main body of the eight leadership requirements is the same, and the difference is the assessment standard. For example, the requirements for junior managers in strategic ability are relatively small.

After the big framework is set, it is to confirm the specific job standards. In order for the standards to have both an assessment function and a supervisory effect, a large number of detailed investigations and evaluations are required. "This is a technical task. It takes at least 3 hours for the evaluator to talk to an ordinary employee, and he also asks his superiors and peers, plus discussions, it takes at least 14 hours for an evaluation report. Therefore, The whole investment is huge." Li Ruisheng said, after all, each person must complete 20 assessments to be considered qualified. After such a 360-degree assessment, employees or managers will know what they lack and what abilities they should focus on developing.

"With job understanding and standards, we can provide customized leadership courses for people at different levels," said Li Ruisheng. There are more than 300 courses offered by ABB in China every year, and these courses include the leadership content that managers above the manager level need to learn.

To participate in ABB's internal leadership training courses, it is necessary to recommend a superior leader, and to list clear reasons for the recommendation. "Because these courses are proposed after years of our understanding of the competencies required by the position and the continuous summary of the evaluation results, we will select suitable people for training. If there are too many participants, it will affect the effectiveness of the courses. "Li Ruisheng said. In the course learning process, the interaction between "classmates" is also very important, because it is a good opportunity for them to form their own personal network to prepare for mutual cooperation in future work. Every year, ABB's Performance Appraisal (PDA) requires managers at every level to communicate with their subordinates, including the business goals, behavioral goals, and personal career development plans of the examinees. Among them, ABB will arrange cross-department managers to communicate with the employees who have high scores in the assessment and have great potential. "In this way, we can deepen our understanding of talents and ensure transparency at the same time," said Li Ruisheng. These individuals will learn one level at a time in accordance with ABB's leadership ladder.

In ABB's leadership development system, there are also some external training courses, but the essence is its internal courses, of which I MD (International Institute for Management Development Lausanne, short for International Institute for Management Development) is based on ABB is a course with real cases. Li Ruisheng said: "For example, we recently acquired a company. In the classroom, everyone can analyze the acquisition case, and then discuss the lessons learned and what to do in the future." For ABB employees, those who participated in external courses There are many opportunities, but to truly understand the company's own strategy and business behavior, it is still necessary to learn through internal leadership training.

Road to Growth: On-the-job learning + training + training

“ABB encourages 70% of its employees to learn on the job, 20% to help you through some mentors, and 10% to take classes. After summing up his own experience, Li Ruisheng believes that self-learning is more critical. No matter what position you are in, the best teacher is a colleague who works together.

Li Ruisheng entered ABB directly after graduating from the accounting major. Because of his strong learning ability, he quickly became the manager of a project, and within a year and a half, he became the manager of two subsidiaries. financial director. "I like to think about things," said Li Ruisheng, but because he was too young, he faced many high-level leaders, which also put him under more pressure. For example, because he is young, his views on things are inevitably short-sighted, and when his superiors or colleagues put forward some advanced ideas, Li Ruisheng often cannot understand them, so he does not dare to respond and discuss. Under this kind of pressure, he insisted on summarizing and thinking training every day, trying to make himself "grow up" quickly. When considering the problem, Li Ruisheng deliberately sketched the logical framework of the project. During this process, he found that although he may not know how to achieve the specific technology, he has a general idea and outline of the direction and steps to solve the problem, and then he goes to people in related fields to do it. "In this way, the management concept of people is formed." Li Ruisheng said.

"Having discussions with the people you work with will help us to have a long-term view." Li Ruisheng believes that capable colleagues at work are teachers who can learn. Now, he often asks his subordinates to describe what happened in the last 2-3 months in three slides. This requirement is actually to exercise their high-level generalization ability.

In Li Ruisheng's view, from employees to leaders leading the team, it is necessary to continuously expand their own capacity. "Being a manager involves a lot of things. If you don't have different experiences in different positions, it is difficult for you to digest everyone's opinions." Li Ruisheng's experience is to do more and see more. After completing a certain position in financial work, Li Ruisheng offered to do other work. As a result, he began to contact sales, marketing and other businesses. "After doing sales, I found that the world is really rich. I feel like I'm a little bit short. Can I have the opportunity to enrich it a little more?" In this way, Li Ruisheng has experience in different positions at ABB.

ABB's distinctive feature is its job rotation culture. At ABB, in addition to company-level arrangements and transfers, employees are also encouraged to apply. Through this mobility of talents, ABB places the trainees in a specific practical operating environment to exercise their leadership. "The changing of the guard does not necessarily mean going up. In many cases, it is also a horizontal communication, or even a step back. Because whenever we encounter a bottleneck, we need to take a step back and re-examine our own problems." Li Ruisheng said, Especially in the face of business transformation, not everyone can cope, so taking a step back is not a bad thing for career development.