Recently, Fosun’s global leadership development project series training was held at the Bund Finance Center. Fosun International’s executive director and CEO Wang Qunbin shared with the trainees his own insights into Fosun’s strategies and his understanding of leadership. The main content shared by him is as follows: 

Recently, we have been engaged in much reflection over the ways in which we can continuously foster organizational transformations and upgrades, and in which we can emerge as a global first-class player. In the first place, we should think carefully who Fosun’s customers are, and consider whether there are any differences between our thoughts and theirs. We have five important customer types, namely external customers for products; staff; investors; suppliers and ecosystem-based partners; and the general public and governments. Fosun’s objective is to ensure a high level of satisfaction among these five customer types, and this also represents a point of departure that is key to our continuous, rapid evolution. 

1. Doing the right things, the difficult things, and the things with patience

According to the industry research conducted by Fosun, we believe that in China’s current stage of economic development, the markets for consumption of the development and enjoyment types are expanding rapidly, with a continuous increase in the proportion represented by the high-end consumption demands within such typical sectors as medical care, leisure and entertainment, and wealth management.

In the face of these changes, we recently refined Fosun’s positioning, identifying ourselves as a technology-driven consumer group. We pursue the objective of creating high-quality products and services for 1 billion global customers in relation to the household consumption industry. This is a right thing to do and also something that is not easy to achieve, and it is possible that some of our customers have not yet grasped our transformation as of now. But I hope our Fosuners should first believe in this new positioning and devote their efforts along this direction. 

Fosun’s development process is one characterized by the transformation and upgrade of its business models and organization, as well as one that goes from disbelief to conviction. Right at the outset when we started up our business with just RMB38,000, we already proposed the pursuit of global development and the need to pursue innovation in the biological and pharmaceutical sectors. Back then, few people believed in our possibility to succeed. But looking back, we can now see that each of the objectives we mentioned in those times has been transformed into reality.

2. Achieving the two “121”s by means of the two “127”s

At Fosun, we often talk about the two “121”s. Firstly, this means that we are to help humans live to be 121 years old through our health, happiness and wealth products and services. Secondly, this means that we are to ensure the eternal youth of Fosun’s fundamental organization, such that its continuous development can last for at least 121 years. To achieve these objectives, we would have to rely on the two “127”s.

The first “127” relates to the top-level management planning. At Fosun, we advocate that each of the product lines should be associated with “1+2+7” planning relating to the short-term, medium-term and long-term, where well-defined top-down design and planning shall be devised for the next 1, 3 and 10 years. In relation to the top-down design and planning, we should, on one hand, replicate international excellence by benchmarking the global first-class companies and, on the other hand, remain benchmarked against China’s “speed” (growth) to ensure that our speed of evolution is among the highest in the world. 

The second “127” relates to the implementation of the top-down design and planning of our mechanism. We advocate that the 20% best-performing, the 70% “average”, and the 10% “to-be-optimized” staff members should be identified by means of a “Coopetition” (cooperation-competition) and assessment mechanism. Through reasonable auditing and incentive mechanism, our staff members will be all motivated and efficiency will be further enhanced.   

3. Spearheading reforms and pursuing rapid evolution

In the current era, the success achieved by Internet enterprises is not simply attributable to the fact that they are engaged in the Internet sector. More importantly, the Internet represents a market where competition abounds and innovative business models quickly emerge and iterate, where virtually nothing is irreplaceable. This, in turn, has compelled Internet businesses to strive for perfection within each of the niche segments in the industry. Such action power and evolutionary swiftness have precisely contributed to the thriving development of Internet enterprises. As such, Fosun is to continue with its rapid evolution.

As a leader of product line enterprises or industrial groups, we hope that each of you are equipped with innovative notions for spearheading the reforms and advancement of your organization and for identifying where the “blue ocean” is. Besides, you should achieve better performance and more rapid evolution than your peer competitors upon implementation of the top-down design and planning, so as to create value efficiently for our five major category of customers.