Guo Guangchang: Four Questions That I Always Ask Myself And Four Beliefs of Mine

In the past 40 years of being in an opened up and reformed environment, entrepreneurs in China have been working hard unremittingly and it is fair to say that we have been developing smoothly. Although we always say that we are having a hard time over the past years, we got it through every time. But this winter is different.

I’m wondering, what’s happening? We always say that we should change ourselves in the past. But how much have we changed?

My opinions about the current economy are: 

First, it is a cold winter regarding the economy. Second, there should be a savior in the world, namely the market; and in the market, the one who can save you, is yourself. 

The government has seen these problems and difficulties, and has issued a series of policies to facilitate the development of companies. Therefore, according to my judgment, the situation will become better. But whether you can get through this winter is still depend on yourself. 

We should continuously self-reflecting and self-questioning. I think we have to think seriously about what problems that we are having now, and what we have done in the past five years. 

The following four questions are what I have been often asking myself over the last few years. 

01. We should ask ourselves: how much time have we actually spent on serving our customers, knowing our own products, and promoting our products and services? 

Every chairman should be the chief product experience officer of his company. Are the products good? Are the customers satisfied? You should know the answers the best. And, such knowledge should in no way rely on your preference nor intuition. Instead, you need to spend more time communicating with customers. If the products are not selling well and there are many competitors in the market, you need to experience the products more diligently. 

I spend most of my time studying our products now. Through my study, I believe that there are two ways to make good products: First, building a good platform, though few enterprises can build large platforms as Alibaba and Tencent do. Secondly, spending more time in studying how to make good products. 

I have to emphasize that, we must ensure our products are of the best quality, and we must keep improving the products and must create value for customers. 

02. We should ask ourselves: how much money have we spent on R&D? How much time have we spent on learning new models and perceiving new trends and directions? 

I believe that everybody attaches great importance to the mobile internet. But I want to ask: how many people truly understand the mobile internet in manufacturing enterprises? Does mobile internet just mean selling things on Taobao? Although Jack Ma is having a great internet company - Alibaba, he is still spending much time studying offline business and manufacturing. 

We can't rest on laurels and stop learning. Only by learning faster than others can we go better and farther than others. Our customers are changing very fast, and we have entered an era in which technology R&D can be monetized quickly. The evolving technology, industry and market are forcing us to keep learning. 

On the other hand, we should focus more on technology R&D and innovation. As for many of the enterprises in trouble, though they might have been very large companies, but we feel that most of their products are homogenous low-tech products and they were expanding their sales volume with low gross profit. It is very likely that what you’ve manufactured are not products to be sold, but would become inventory directly. Therefore, now we particularly need to lead our way with technology innovation. 

03. We should ask ourselves: how much energy have we spent on organizational upgrade and personnel training, on introduction of senior personnel, and on young people? Have we learned anything from the post-90s and post-00s generations? 

Organization and personnel are absolutely the most critical assets of an enterprise, because everything needs to be done by people. Moreover, according to the development and change of the market, our organization needs to keep on upgrading and the personnel of the enterprise shall keep on being renewed. We must absorb high-level, more devoted and more ambitious people. We all have our own teams, but how much energy have we spent on upgrading the team? 

Here is an example. The Wolves was promoted from Football League Championship to Premier League this season. However, I found that though they played well in Championship, they still have many problems in Premier League. Why? Because the requirements of Premier League for our players are different from that of Championship. China has been involved in global competition and objectively we are already playing in the "World Cup" of global economy. By this time, if your personnel still remain in the original state, isn't it strange that nothing goes wrong? 

04. Finally, we should ask ourselves: are we willing to slow down and do something slow? 

Over the past four decades, China speed has impressed everybody and everything developed very fast. We get used to being fast. For instance, when seeing that Jack Ma built a world-class giant enterprise within a dozen years, everyone wants to copy his successful path. 

However, there is only one Jack Ma in the world. You have to know what you are doing. Did you settle down to do what you should do? As to many enterprises, I feel about their style of doing things is like "All in", namely "betting". This "betting" doesn't mean going to a casino; it means one likes to "bet" in doing business. In the past four decades, since the whole market was developing fast and many weaknesses could be easily covered, there were chances to win in the “betting”. But you can't take the general economic trend for granted. What if the market is stagnant? It is very cool to play All-in, but what might happen? 

I believe that we should really settle down, do the right things, do the difficult things and do the things that accumulate over time. 

Of course, in spite of all these difficulties and problems that I talked about, I am still fully confident in the future as always: 

I firmly believe that China’s market will be increasingly liberalized and the business environment for enterprises like us will become better. I think that Chinese entrepreneurs are very capable of enduring hardship. As long as we really invest more in innovation, we will have more opportunities in the future. 

I also think that we will be integrated into the world. For us, this is our important direction in the future. We are not afraid of global competition. In the increasingly open and regulated market, the global entrepreneurs will have a better performance in the global integration. 

This is like China's football. If China's football team wants to play in the World Cup, our players should be trained all over the world, instead of only getting high pay in CSL. 

I believe that we entrepreneurs have this expectation and this ability. Let's work together.