Companies

China in need of talent with strong leadership

By Nie Peng (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-10-21 16:19
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An IT guru on Wednesday called on the founders as well as shareholders of Chinese companies to make their management team more professional.

China in need of talent with strong leadership

James Ding speaks at the 2010 Tsinghua Management Forum. [Photo/ Sohu.com]

A company will experience growing pains at every stage of its growth, and problems such as disagreement between majority shareholders and professional managers could be detrimental to its survival, said James Ding, chairman of AsiaInfo-Linkage Inc, a leading provider of telecom software solutions and IT security products and services.

The problems that Gome Electrical Appliances, China's second-largest electronics retailer, encountered were most typical, Ding said at the 2010 Tsinghua Management Forum held in Beijing on Wednesday.

On Sept 28, jailed founder and ex-chairman of Gome, Huang Guangyu, lost his battle to regain control of the company as shareholders voted in Hong Kong against replacing Huang's successor Chen Xiao and another top executive with Huang's sister and one of his lawyers.

"First of all, as a company shareholder and founder, you should be determined that your management team must be more and more professional," Ding said. "If you don't hire professional managers, you must be professional in management yourself."

According to Ding, hiring highly qualified professional managers to take care of company operations would help bring it to a higher stage.

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Ding said he co-founded AsiaInfo between 1992 and 1993 and got the company listed on the Nasdaq in March 2000, one of the first Chinese companies that went public on the US stock exchange.

He has withdrawn from full-time participation in AsiaInfo-Linkage's operations and is focusing on venture capital investment. He is managing director of GSR Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests primarily in growing technology companies in China.

However, not every company is as lucky as AsiaInfo. It may be hard for many Chinese companies to find the managers they need as the country's formal MBA programs were launched only two decades ago.

China in need of talent with strong leadership

Deng Feng speaks at the forum. [Photo/ Sohu.com]

Deng Feng, a co-founder of Northern Light Venture Capital, a venture capital firm targeting start-up opportunities in China, put it frankly: "We don't lack very smart engineers. What we need are people who have leadership."

In a rapidly changing world, leaders as well as ordinary employees should cultivate leadership, Deng said at the forum. They should draw from good traditional values such as modesty, and cultivate global vision as well as the ability to learn fast, make decisions fast and give feedback fast.

Responding to a question about effective ways to resolve conflicts within a company, AsiaInfo-Linkage's Ding said it is important to know when and where to make compromises to arrive at a situation in which everybody can benefit.

Chinese companies should also be familiar with the law and strengthen their corporate governance to help solve problems in a proper manner, Ding added.

Tsinghua Management Forum

Tsinghua Management Forum is an annual event organized by the prestigious Tsinghua University, dubbed China's MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), since 2007, and this year's forum was themed "Leadership in an Innovative World".

China in need of talent with strong leadership

Dominic Barton guestures during his keynote speech.[Photo/ Provided to China Daily]

More than 20 VIP guests, mostly Chinese and foreign scholars and business executives, shared their views on global leadership, telecommunication, global supply chain, entrepreneurship management, and management education in the new century.

Dominic Barton, global managing director of consulting firm McKinsey & Company, delivered a keynote speech at the forum Wednesday as he called on governments to play a greater role in meeting future challenges and controlling risks in a fast-changing world and in removing barriers to businesses and encouraging them to innovate.

Sir John Bond, chairman of Vodafone Group PLC and former group chairman of HSBC Holdings PLC, said China should play a leading role in the world arena.

"What's clear to me is that China will be the heart of global leadership. It's only right for 20 percent of the world population to have a leadership position in solving the enormous challenges we're facing in the 21st century," he said.

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