How far from good to great

"If a person has never heard of Skyworth and asked you what Skyworth does, how would you answer?""I said it was TV Machine!" Huang Hongsheng said with a big laugh. This is his "Hedgehog Concept".

Actually, diversity or specialization? In Huang Hongsheng's mind, this question may never stop circling.

The return of specialization to Skyworth has suffered from diversification. In 1999, influenced by Bill Gates' speech in China, Skyworth was moved by the bright prospects of home PCs and believed that it could make use of its years of accumulation in home consumption, so it officially announced its entry into the PC industry in early 2001. This foray only lasted more than a year and ended in failure. In 2002, Skyworth completely withdrew from the PC industry.

Huang Hongsheng concluded: "The entire production and R&D of PC is not the advantage of Chinese companies, nor is it the advantage of Skyworth. After a little more than a year, we found that this is not the competitiveness of Skyworth, so we decisively cut it off. We have created a diversified seedling. Facts have proved that our giving up is meaningful."

This slimming allowed Skyworth to truly return to the professional road for a period of time, focusing on the development of digital TV and related fields. Skyworth calls it "diversification of digital TV-related fields", which is actually a specialized choice. This kind of professional development has brought remarkable achievements to Skyworth. At present, 99% of Skyworth's income comes from TV-related business.

Diversification urge However, in Huang Hongsheng's body, the urge to diversify still exists. Perhaps because of previous failures, Skyworth entered the field of mobile phones and real estate very quietly. At the end of 2002, Skyworth Mobile Communication Technology Co., Ltd. was established, which became the research and development base for Skyworth to enter the field of communication. In Nanjing and Sanya, Skyworth also began to set foot in the real estate industry.

In Huang Hongsheng's opinion, Skyworth's development in the field of mobile phones is related to TV. "Now that the telephone network, the Internet and the digital TV network have been interconnected, the resulting application products will have both communication functions, TV entertainment functions, and PC functions. In the future, people will carry a TV with them, except for traveling and watching programs. , it is also possible to make calls and handle simple documents." Huang Hongsheng explained, "We are also thinking about the direction of deployment in the next ten years. The new strategy of the company is to move towards the direction of 3C integration, with TV as the main line, and expand related diversification. To consolidate Skyworth's competitiveness and market position in consumer electronics."

And Huang Hongsheng's confidence in making mobile phones comes from two aspects. First, compared to computers, the overall system concentration of mobile phones is much higher. easier to grasp. The second is that Skyworth has the foundation to understand consumers. He believes that the entry of home appliance companies into the mobile phone industry has a consumer foundation. The success of Samsung, TCL, Konka, etc. from home appliances to mobile phones also gave him confidence.

Huang Hongsheng is also optimistic about the current mobile phone license issue: "We believe that the license for mobile phones will become more and more blurred in the future. Because after 3C integration, a single chip contains communication functions and TV signal processing functions, so this It is impossible to tell whether the chip is a mobile phone chip or a TV chip, so I believe that the relevant state departments are studying new deployments." From this, it is not difficult to see Huang Hongsheng's determination to enter the mobile phone industry.

Speaking of his attempts in the real estate industry, Huang Hongsheng seemed a little evasive, giving a somewhat far-fetched reason, saying that he entered the real estate industry only to "build a modern digital experience center" and build a new experience for consumers. life model.

However, the development in Nanjing and Sanya is a project that participates in the renovation of the old city. At present, it seems that it is closer to the real estate development in the traditional sense. Huang Hongsheng finally had to admit, "This is an investment to gain some experience of capital-intensive operation," and hope that "the future capital operation can bring new growth points to Skyworth". At the end, he re-emphasized: "This is an experiment, and diversification has not really taken action yet, but is just preparing. So it is still professional."

During the interview, Huang Hongsheng repeatedly emphasized "Skyworth's current stage Still concentrating on specialization", which also shows his specialization and diversification. However, it is an indisputable fact that Skyworth has invested huge sums of money to enter the real estate development field in Sanya, Nanjing and other places, and Skyworth's technical reserves in mobile phones have not stopped. Diversity or specialization? Or more precisely: how to diversify? Or how to specialize? This is the right question that Skyworth, who pursues excellence, must answer.

Employment:

From "cruel" training to systematic training

When it comes to the employment of Skyworth, we cannot fail to mention the "Lu Qianghua Incident" that made Skyworth "famous". In 2000, Lu Qianghua, the former general manager of Skyworth China Regional Sales Headquarters, led more than 100 employees to defect, including 11 original area managers and more than 20 core management cadres.

The impact of this incident on Skyworth can be said to be "losing the horse", which directly changed its employment model. As a last resort, a group of college students graduating in 1999 who had been practicing in the front line for a year were given orders and pushed to leadership positions. Later, a large number of these college students stood out. Later, batches of newly assigned college students entered the ranks one after another. This has become a way for Skyworth to cultivate people. "Cultivation is to give you opportunities, but you must do it yourself." said Skyworth's human resources director Bi Bo.

This is also Skyworth's pragmatic approach to employing people: eclectic, the most important performance. In terms of employing people, in addition to professional ability, Huang Hongsheng looks at two aspects, one is to have enthusiasm, and the other is to have a sense of responsibility. After that, it is "no matter black cat or white cat, whoever can contribute to Skyworth is a good cat".

The cruel cultivation of Sun Weizhong is a model of Skyworth's internal talent cultivation. In 1999, Sun Weizhong, a university graduate, joined Skyworth and worked as a salesman in Tianjin. In the two counties he took over, sales quadrupled in three months. Subsequently, he was transferred to the Cangzhou office in Hubei as a manager, and soon achieved the number one performance in the country.

Sun Weizhong's third position was general manager of the Sunan branch. Skyworth has 22 branches across the country. The performance of the Sunan branch is the last in the country. After Sun Weizhong left, it achieved the first place in the country in nine months.

"There are reasons for opportunities and methods for doing well." Sun Weizhong said, "I pay more attention to data analysis and strategic things. Later, I also attracted a group of excellent talents." Sun Weizhong is very courageous in his actions. In the Sunan branch, after he took office, he cut one-third of the staff, kept one-third, and adjusted or transformed the other one-third. "The main reason is that some people have different market concepts. Some people have a more conservative understanding of the market, and their methods are also very outdated, that is, they invite customers to eat and drink, and they do not pay attention to the research of market data. They can only study the market, analyze their opponents, and analyze their own advantages. Only 28-year-old Sun Weizhong is already the brand director of Skyworth. His experience has also become a major "selling point" for Skyworth to attract college students. Sun Weizhong's evaluation of Skyworth's performance-oriented and result-oriented employment method is "although it is not very systematic, but it has its rationality".

The current role change has also put a lot of pressure on Sun Weizhong. He used to be a military attache and fought on the front line, but now he is a civil official and advises him. "This is a cruel way to cultivate me." Sun Weizhong said.

There are many young people like Sun Weizhong who grew up in Skyworth. For example, Shi Chi, the president of Skyworth Digital Technology Co., Ltd., was only a department manager when he first entered Skyworth.

When talking about Skyworth's talent training method, Bi Bo said: "Cultivation is not about putting fertilizer and watering in flowerpots. Cultivation is a very cruel process. Our personnel at all levels are also being tested by the market."

On the one hand, Skyworth internally cultivates talents, and on the other hand, it also introduces various talents from various aspects. The approximate ratio of the two is seven to three. Bi Bo is a senior executive hired by Huang Hongsheng with great effort. He has a working background in Ping An Insurance and BOCO.

Skyworth College's performance-oriented and clear employment ideas ensure Skyworth's rapid growth and drive a group of young people to grow rapidly in Skyworth. However, the growth of these talents is not comprehensive enough, and the professional manager training system is not systematic enough. The managers are quite chivalrous, but the standards are insufficient. One of the manifestations is that in the entire enterprise, especially at the forefront of facing customers, everyone still cannot reflect Skyworth's style and Skyworth's values consistently.

Moreover, the field that Skyworth is involved in is also expanding, so where the relevant talents come from is also a problem. Although Bi Bo said that Huang Hongsheng "has a talent for finding people and can always find the people he needs", it is obvious that relying on his talent alone cannot fundamentally solve the problem.

Perhaps it is aware of this deficiency that Skyworth Academy was established this year, hoping to create an environment for Skyworth managers to learn, think and precipitate, and achieve the goal of improving managers' leadership and core business capabilities. This is also a symbolic move of Skyworth to systematically cultivate talents.

Skyworth College trains senior cadres, middle managers, and core business backbones, aiming to help them improve their leadership, management skills and core business capabilities. Its goal is to build a team of core lecturers with industry competitiveness this year to promote the leadership training program; in the next three years, to cultivate a team of outstanding managers that will grow together with Skyworth, enhance management advantages, and shape high-yield professional managers. Promote the harmony and win-win between talents and the company.

Bi Bo said that in the start-up stage of Skyworth College, Skyworth first used better resources from outside, and the first choice was to cooperate with Hewlett-Packard Business School and introduce its POM (Process of Management) course for leadership training. At the same time, it is also building its own team of lecturers, and invites the presidents and vice presidents of Skyworth's various industrial companies to act. Huang Hongsheng also went to the college to teach courses on differentiated business strategies and corporate culture inheritance.

The top priority of Skyworth College this year is to improve the leadership of senior managers, Bi Bo said: "When we are faced with a business that we don't understand, we find that the pressure is too great, because you can't send it. People who do things well. The core of relying on leadership is leadership, understanding of Skyworth culture, and recognition of this management system and norms.” This also shows that Skyworth is still carrying out talent development for diversity. Preparation.

Faith: Facing the cruel reality

In Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Skyworth Building and TCL live next to each other. Huang Hongsheng and Li Dongsheng are university classmates. An embarrassing fact for Skyworth is that 99% of Skyworth's revenue comes from color TVs or TV-related products, and color TVs are just a division of TCL. Huang Hongsheng's ambition is to be No.1 in the world's display industry. To realize this dream, we must first surpass TCL.

Huang Hongsheng believes that the gap with TCL has certain historical reasons: "TCL is a successful model for new local leaders to dare to think and develop productivity after the reform and opening up. Skyworth is a private enterprise without a strong government. Support. We must admit that there is a clear gap with TCL, and this gap also makes us have a learning goal. Skyworth employees like to look for some benchmarking companies as role models, such as Sony and Samsung internationally. An example to learn from. In China, TCL is our example."

At the same time, he also believes that it is not impossible to surpass TCL in the process of enterprise development: "We believe that as long as we persist, we can do it. Better, even surpassing TCL, which is entirely possible."

At present, Skyworth's competitors are obviously not only TCL. Judging from the domestic color TV sales last year, Skyworth and Changhong, Konka and TCL are very close. "Everyone is on the same order of magnitude, they are all moving forward, and they are all running out of breath in the marathon running." At this time, no one can relax.

Huang Hongsheng has become accustomed to such a competitive situation, and difficulties have followed him for more than ten years. From the early failure to make big-screen TVs to the recent personnel turmoil in 2000, there will always be one or two very big difficulties every few years, and these difficulties are often fatal. "We once brushed shoulders with the god of death, and a little dullness is over." In fact, among the several concepts put forward by "From Good to Excellent", "Facing the cruel reality" should be said that Skyworth has done the best. Staying in the highly competitive color TV industry, coupled with the history of repeated setbacks, Huang Hongsheng always has a sense of crisis.

It is precisely because of the sense of crisis that Huang Hongsheng has always been highly sensitive to news from the market. His attention to the market mainly comes from the following ways: pay attention to the data from the sales channels; hold a market lunch meeting every month, ask industry elites to give a third party's opinion on a certain aspect of Skyworth, "some of them are making products. , some are for brands, and we need these high-intelligence external resources"; the third is to spend expensive prices to buy survey data from market research companies, including sales ranking, ranking of each product model, ranking of each city, The ranking of new products, etc.; the fourth is to meet consumers and visit shopping malls to understand what new products competitors have, and understand the promotion of terminals. "Every time I go, I will get dozens of gains."

As a major The leader of the group, he claims to pay attention to a relatively small, "for example, consumer complaints, a large proportion is a red flag." Repair rate, employee turnover rate, brand ranking, the effect of brand activities, cutting-edge technology and other aspects are all his concerns. Content. "Discuss problems in these areas and then discuss with the management to improve the implementation."

Although the competition in the color TV industry has always been known for its brutality, the data that has been quoted countless times by Huang Hongsheng is that the 1,000 color TV companies in the world have left over 1,000 color TV companies in 10 years. There are less than 30 companies. "Home appliance companies have experienced the baptism of market price storms ahead of time, so we are particularly strong now." But Huang Hongsheng still has no change in his beliefs. He believes that companies will be full of opportunities in the next ten years. He is optimistic about the opportunity, that is, the transformation of global digital TV. "The digital pie is getting bigger and bigger, and as long as we don't make big mistakes, we can definitely catch some fish in such a big market because the ocean is huge."

Brands: Big Businesses and Weaknesses Brand Contrast

Brands that are not mentioned in "From Good to Excellent" are very important to Skyworth, and are a threshold that must be crossed to achieve excellence.

The weak brand Skyworth is currently a large enterprise with a scale of 10 billion, but its brand image is very vague. When Skyworth people go out to eat and invoice, they are often asked: How does Skyworth write? Huang Hongsheng himself admitted that few consumers who went to the shopping mall to buy color TVs went to the Skyworth brand, but were attracted by Skyworth's TV sets after they went there.

To change the weakness of the brand, we must start with Huang Hongsheng himself. He just wasn't focused enough on promoting the brand. In July this year, Skyworth signed a contract with Twelve Women's Band as the spokesperson of the brand image. Interestingly, this move was originally intended to promote its "V12 engine", which is the first digital engine with all intellectual property rights owned by a Chinese company. Skyworth HDTVs equipped with this engine can receive digital signals of any format in the world, which is undoubtedly It's a big technical selling point. The 12 flowery women who played national musical instruments have attracted the attention of the world, and the V12 engine with independent property rights that can watch the global signal, it was an excellent match, and it was a great opportunity to promote the high-tech image of the Skyworth brand.

But when holding a promotion event, a reporter asked Huang Hongsheng: Is this move to promote its own brand in the international market? Huang Hongsheng said yes. As a result, all major media reports have become: With the help of the power of Twelve Women's Bands in Asia, Skyworth will promote its own brand in overseas markets from this year. For Skyworth, this approach obviously weakened a great opportunity to strengthen the brand connotation.

In addition, the connection between Skyworth's new business and the Skyworth brand is also a problem. When the brand itself is not strong enough, extending it to mobile phones and real estate will not produce synergies. On the other hand, some manufacturers have exploited the loopholes in the protection of Skyworth's trademark and launched products such as Skyworth washing machines, which further blurred Skyworth's brand image.

Brand promotion As for Skyworth's brand status, Brand Director Sun Weizhong said: "This is related to our long-term emphasis on tactics rather than strategy." As a private enterprise, it pays more attention to capturing short-term opportunities.

In order to improve the brand, in Sun Weizhong's view, more accumulation and opportunities are needed. The most important opportunity right now is product upgrades. "If you do well in new fields, you will definitely give consumers a brand new image." Sun Weizhong said, "You must develop new sales in new product fields and build your own brand first. Let the common people know that Skyworth LCD TV is doing well, or Skyworth LCD TV is doing the best."

On the other hand, internal accumulation is needed. Sun Weizhong believes that building a brand is a process from quantitative change to qualitative change. Only employees who do a good job in products, do a good job in research and development, and do a good job in sales can bring about a leap in brand quality. Sun Weizhong said: "To build a strong brand, we need to start from these basic tasks. I believe that if our company can really strengthen professional development in TV, it can do well in product quality, service, sales and other aspects. If so, the leap of the brand is a matter of time."

Huang Hongsheng believes that great efforts must be made in the communication of the cultural connotation of the brand. He hoped that Skyworth could form a unique brand image in the future. "Why people like Sony, because there is a Sony style, and Skyworth also has a Skyworth style."

After experiencing the test of failure and brutal competition, Skyworth has firmly established its position in the color TV industry, from ordinary to excellent. If it can develop a "Skyworth-style" on a par with the "Sony-style", that's when it makes the leap from good to great. We can't say what day that will be. But Huang Hongsheng and Skyworth give us the confidence to say that it is not impossible.