Recently, at the passage of 618, Fang Hongbo, the head of Midea, was interviewed by well-known media.
After reading the content of the interview, I can see that Fang Hongbo is very real and will answer every question.
From Midea’s specific business and business competition to enterprise management and business transformation, to enterprise inheritance and everlasting foundation, it reflects Fang Hongbo’s business philosophy and life philosophy in all aspects.
Both investors and entrepreneurs can get a lot of nutrition from it.
But from behind this, we can also see part of Fang Hongbo and Midea’s anxiety.
Doing IP, engaging in character design, is Midea really good at it?
This anxiety is shared by the Big Three of Home Appliances, and the source of this anxiety is Xiaomi.
Since 2021, the revenue of Xiaomi Group’s major appliances has been rising, with a growth rate of more than 40%, and in 2024, Xiaomi air conditioners will rank among the top three in the air conditioning industry with a growth rate of more than 50% and an online listing share of 11.77%.
Under the anxiety, it is required to change, and the home appliance industry has become a trend because it faces consumers and entrepreneurs become “Internet celebrities” and the main carrier of corporate marketing.
Seeing that Haier, Gree, and Xiaomi all have entrepreneurial IPs, Lei Jun and Zhou Yunjie use their personal influence to lead brand marketing, and play through social platforms such as short videos, which in turn leverages sales growth and shortens the distance with consumers.
Fang Hongbo, who has always liked to toss, will naturally not be idle, and will no longer be as low-key as before, and the appearance rate will begin to increase.
Let’s string things together.
Since last year, Fang Hongbo has appeared frequently, first Fang Hongbo said last year that Midea does not accept PPT reports, to live broadcast with NIO Li Bin saying “never work overtime” and “95% overtime is formalism”, and issued internal documents prohibiting invalid overtime (off-duty meetings, WeChat group “fist raised” emoji, etc.).
At the same time, Fang Hongbo said in his exchange with Li Bin thatMidea “must actively embrace” the creation of personal IP.
and now in an interview, Fang Hongbo is Lei Jun’s big brother next door, Miss Dong’s strong woman, and Zhou Yunjie’s cute character.It seems that he wants the role of a good boss who is down-to-earth.
Judging from the feedback from the interviews, the shaping of the image is successful to a certain extent.
For example, he said: It takes about 800 hours a year to understand the situation with middle-level cadres, and 800 hours are strictly in accordance with the 8-hour work system, which is 100 working days.
Everyone knows that technically speaking, we have 248 working days.Fang Hongbo spends nearly half of his time every year to understand the following situation one-on-one.
As the chairman, it is very rare for a leader to be able to do this and always be vigilant to prevent the disease of large enterprises, which is also the foundation of Midea’s efficient management, and at the same time, the image of a people-friendly chairman jumps on the paper.
But there are also flaws under the success, when the concave shape is made, it seems to have forgotten the basic law,For example, a point repeatedly mentioned at the beginning of the interview is efficiency, and there is no internal volume.
Interview Chinese Hong Bo said frankly, “I never work overtime, I didn’t say that I would go to work after 6 o’clock, which is absolutely impossible, and I have never worked overtime on weekends, and I have been like this for the past 20 years.” ”
However, these words are the same as the gods of school that I went to school with back then, I never went home to study, it was just a cover, even if I listened to it, it was all a character, and you would lose. (Post-editing)
Top students seem to have this habit.
For example, Bill Gates wrote in his autobiography about his experience in middle school, to the effect that I would buy two sets of textbooks every year, learn simply at school, never seriously, but when I got home, I had to tutor like crazy, and whenever I saw the surprised eyes of my classmates when I got results, I was proud.
merelyAfter all, beauty is not a regional king with a pure heart and few desires like Fat DonglaiMidea in the expansion period in 15 years needs to work overtime, and Midea in the 24-year market contraction period also needs to work overtime.
In China, there are not many people who can let employees do less and get more money, and the people are familiar with Fat Donglai as one.
However, Brother Donglai is first of all the founder + actual controller, he is not responsible for minority shareholders, Tianyancha APP shows that Yu Donglai holds nearly 70% of Fat Donglai’s shares.
Giving profits to employees and shrinking the front is something that one person can decide, and the competition is far less complicated, in third- and fourth-tier cities, the business model is basically dimensionality reduction.
Fang Hongbo is not a major shareholder first of all, making money is an important thing, and Midea is not facing shopping malls in third- and fourth-tier cities, but like wolves and tigers Haier, Gree, is the fierce Lei Jun, Dong Mingzhu, some time ago Xiaomi exposed the news of forced overtime, requiring the average daily working hours to be not less than 11.5 hours, and the time is not enough to be cleared, although Xiaomi has refuted the rumors, but it can also be seen the degree of its volume.
Although Midea does not have such news, from the frequency of its personnel replacement, it can also be seen that the internal competition is fierce, and the possibility of not working overtime and not rolling up can also be judged with common sense.
Therefore, this advocacy of not involution and overtime is not reasonable and in line with common sense under the fierce competition in the market, but I believe itThe credibility of old entrepreneurs stands up to scrutiny.
With the assumption that things are true and not so in line with business laws, you can only look for external reasons, that is, not working overtime may be forced.
In early February this year, a number of media reported that employees of Midea and Haier factories received notices to “cancel regular overtime and strictly control working hours”, and starting from February 8, DJI forced employees to leave work at 9 p.m. Midea introduced TÜV Rheinland to carry out “surprise factory inspections”, and even toilet cleaners had to accept “voluntary overtime” interviews.
All this happened in the European Union, the EU Regulation on the Prohibition of Forced Labor Products in the Market, which came into force on December 13, 2024.The regulation prohibits the circulation or supply of products involving forced labor production on the EU market and prohibits the export of such products from the EU.
To put it bluntly, the goods you produce overtime may not be sold directly in the important market of the European Union.
We boldly speculate that perhaps because of this, Midea pays more attention to the domestic market and node marketing, and Fang Hongbo came out to stand on the platform.
Therefore, when people watch entrepreneurs play the Internet, they don’t look at what they say, they look at what they do.You can pick out the dry goods first to absorb them, and then see which words are scenes.
It is not easy to engage in IP marketing, this wave set off by Lei Jun, under the microscope of the Internet, it is easy to make these old entrepreneurs “overturn”, here will not give examples, a lot of searches.
Moreover, judging from Midea’s performance, to the first position in the home appliance industry, it still relies on the operation of still water, has not smashed the refrigerator, and has not gambled a billion.
Still water and deep flow management is the nirvana
From the performance point of view, Midea, which was once the most low-key, is also the largest one, and the data shows that its revenue has been on par with Gree from 2012 to more than twice that of Gree.
This interview is an irrefutable dry goods, Fang Hongbo’s business experience, and an entrepreneur who does his duty to do business and is humble as a leader.
Fang Hongbo, like He Xiangjian, does not like to show his face, but in terms of operation, “people don’t talk much”, not long after he officially became the head of Midea, he launched a huge adjustment internally, cutting 7,000 of Midea’s original product models in half a year, stopping the operation of more than 30 product platforms, and almost closing all non-home appliance businesses.
This is still implemented today, more than 10 years later.
He said in the interview: What does it mean to promote growth through simplification? Just like people, there are more and more levels, more and more subdivision modules, and there are many unnecessary, redundant, and valueless business activities, even an action is an activity.
For example, Xiaomi may have fewer product models for air conditioners, and we have hundreds of products as soon as we come up, many of which are superfluous.
Large enterprises have the symptoms of large enterprises, it doesn’t matter, at the product level, the knife is precise, and it is rare to see managers who can put the shortcomings of the enterprise on the table, which is sincere, externally and internally.
When talking about how to understand the real situation of the enterprise, he said: It is often difficult for CEOs of large enterprises to hear the real voice, and executives have a natural tendency to block and filter the layers below.
Judging from Fang Hongbo’s experience, this is almost a person who does what he does, and when he does the right things one after another, others and himself will gradually feel that he is the right person.
However, with the change of the environment, when the right thing becomes incorrect, or when the right thing seems not so correct, or even outdated, people will have an instinct to maintain their own correctness.That is, when your achievements become bigger, your face will also become bigger, and gradually you will not be able to let go of your figure and face。
Therefore, at this time, Fang Hongbo can still see clearly or be willing to say such things in front of the public, and humility is engraved in his bones.
To a certain extent, entrepreneurial marketing is a kind of heroism, one person leads the entire enterprise.
Fang Hongbo is a hero of Midea, but when he positions himself as a passerby and does things in a low-key manner, doing a good job is the best publicity, and playing IP marketing is led astray.
