Make Lenovo a global brand
(People's daily online)
Updated: 2006-06-19 17:01 Yong Tang: You once said one time when you visited China you were greeted
warmly and being picked up at the airport. Even before coming to the hotel you
were given a detailed schedule for your whole trip. But when a Chinese colleague
went to America, you failed to pick him up at the airport and there was no
schedule for him either.
Advani: The schedule part was not so bad. There were meetings lined up for
everything. I am a quick learner. When I make mistakes I learn from it very
quickly. When my colleagues come to the United States, say, they come on Monday
night and they come to my office in Tuesday morning and we have a nice meeting
and then we have lunch and dinner. When I went to China, I was very surprised at
the level of care and attention to detail. They have somebody pick you up at the
airport, show you someplace and make dinner arrangements. Very nice. I feel very
welcome. So next time when my Chinese colleagues came to the United States, I
would make sure somebody would pick them up at the airport and send them to the
hotel. My Chinese colleagues would also give gifts to me. I have built strong
relations with a Chinese colleague whose name is Lu Yan. He gave me the latest
cell phone and music player. He even sent a desktop computer to my home. So next
time when I meet Lu Yan I would give him a nice ThinkPad computer.
Yong Tang: I know Lenovo has decided to cut down its size of employees by 5%.
It is about 1000 people. It also moved its global corporate headquarter from New
York to Raleigh, the capital city of North Carolina.
Advani: You just look at the number of employees. We have a significant
number of employees in Raleigh, NC. It is always a difficult thing for
executives to make layoffs. I joined IBM in 1992 and since then I have seen tens
of thousands of people being laid off. It is really difficult especially for IBM
which is known for lifetime employment.
In the international part of Lenovo, we are still structured very much like
IBM. We needed to restructure and reorganize ourselves so that we could be
limber and closer to our customers and be more responsive and fast moving. We
had multiple layers between the customers and CEO. We reduced it quite a bit. We
have a huge presence and huge market share in China. You have to spend a lot of
time back and forth flying. By consolidating everything together you can be more
efficient. You have to be very efficient in order to survive.
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