My Recipe to Managing Global Teams

For several years, Lenovo has been expanding from primarily focusing on hardware manufacturing to becoming a services-led tech solutions provider. With double-digit year-on-year growth, our determination to make the most of our new reality is certainly an achievement that I am immensely proud of across our entire organization.?

As with companies across the world, the pandemic was certainly a shift for us. This “new reality” came without a recipe book for success. It meant that we had to collaborate and navigate entirely new market conditions and challenges - and many businesses, unfortunately, went from galloping ahead to a near halt.?

It was a great opportunity for my on-the-job learning as well.??On top of my role as Chief Operating Officer of Lenovo’s Intelligent Devices Group (IDG), since late 2021 I have also taken on a second role that I work in parallel: heading up one of IDG’s business segments. Needless to say, I’ve been very hands-on with all my responsibilities to ensure everything is adequately covered. But since there are only 24 hours in the day, this is a time when you have to use a little bit more than is optimal when facing new challenges.

With new decisions, priorities, and the never-ending lack of?time,??it’s a complex equation to balance what you can and can’t do within a set day, week, or month. There is no recipe book to explain exactly how to do it. Instead, I rely on a mixture of methods that haven’t failed me, time and time again. Some of it is gut instinct. Some of it is trusting, empowering, and delegating to others, and some of it is reshuffling and adapting to new situations. What works for me personally can also work on a larger scale: both in business segments, and across an entire organization.

Less complexity, more simplicity?

As part of our ongoing business strategy, several years ago, we split part of our business into two segments that focused on Commercial customers and Small-and-Medium-sized Business (SMB) customers. We wanted to focus more deeply on each segment’s performance and customer needs more closely.?

Fast-forward a few years, we’re performing very well in both segments; we grew fast, did more than expected, and even achieved several number-one rankings. And for this success, things had to change. You can’t rest on your laurels – you have to keep getting better. With the prevalence of remote and hybrid work during the pandemic, both traditional enterprise and SMB customers’ tech needs started to converge more during this time. So, about six months ago, I led two business segments to merge into a unified product management and development org. The integrated team, now called Commercial Product Center,??benefited from synergies in business priorities, customer insights, product portfolios, and more.?

This organizational integration speaks to something I truly believe in as a global leader:?less complexity and ambiguity, and more simplicity. We’re increasing efficiency while still retaining everything these two business segments learned during their time apart, and excelled at. And I’m happy to say it has largely gone exactly as we planned. There is still healthy competition and drive among the teams, but stronger cooperation as well, and they are taking advantage of each others’ expertise and strategic insights.?

Operations in a global shift

As with many other industries, the tech market has shifted. As an industry as a whole, we’re used to constant change. We have strategies to not only adapt to it but to thrive in it. People who may have just joined the tech industry in the last few years are new to a quieter market, where there’s now been a shift they may not have experienced before.?

For us, this means we’re doing a lot of training. And our efforts are working: we’re growing the markets in which we’re operating,?delivering improved profitability year-on-year,?and taking market share off our competitors in different categories. One way we measure success is by comparing our performance to the market. You can’t always change your own numbers, but you can look at the market and see how you’re doing relative to it.?

Just as with my own role, there was and is no secret recipe to train people to succeed in market conditions that they have never experienced. The first thing you have to do is use common sense, reflect often, and be honest with yourself and transparent with others about successes and challenges.?

A recipe for success - global teams

I have said in another article that I believe our "diverse spectrum of employees" is what future-proofs Lenovo and distinguishes the company as a truly global organization. We have invested in a diversity of people who give the company the duality of global and local in 180 different markets.?

For example, I’m writing this article in Europe, which is where I live and work day-to-day. But this month, I visited our offices in Tokyo and Taipei. I also collaborate with colleagues in Beijing, Milan, and Raleigh on a daily basis. Understanding the complexity of different people, cultures, and markets is both a challenge and an opportunity in equal measure. We have the incredible advantage and benefit of working together with talented people worldwide, but must face and overcome market conditions that are different for nearly every team across the company.?

As the world transforms, our goal is to be at the forefront of that intelligent, digital transformation. Lenovo as a company has a big entrepreneurial spirit: we often sprint in all of our functions. But what worked well the last time harsh market conditions were felt globally may not work this time or next time. So we must take the necessary steps to consider all avenues and options, and ensure our global team continues to adapt and lead from the front. We embrace learning by doing, so the shorter the learning curve, the more inevitable it is that you actually learn by doing something. The key is to be thoughtful, reflective, and adaptable in what you do next.?

I’m sure that most other global organizations don’t have a cookbook filled with the right recipes for every type of dish, or scenario. But that’s why we need to keep creating new recipes for success. Mine is this: so long as you’re learning, adapting quickly, and tailoring your actions to your situation, you’ll get a Michelin-starred meal at the finish line.