issue 267 may 31, 2016 - app.huawei.com

Issue 267 May 31, 2016

CONTENTS

COVER

STORIES OF HUAWEI PEOPLE

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IP Eagles in a Data-driven World

Strategic Patience for the Best Opportunities--Speech by Vincent Pang at the 2016 West European Enterprise Business Mid-year Conference

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18Technology Is in My Genes

14Life at a Run

22How Did Instant Incentives Energize a Project Team?

William Xu has led the Europe development team from less than 100 people in 2005 to a business worth nearly US$10 billion today. This result is a testament to the dedication and unity of the Europe team over the past decade. So we must stick with that strategic patience. Our Enterprise Business will follow the same path. In the very near future, the team will have more managers and team members with vision, strategy, leadership, and professionalism. I know that the West European Enterprise Business will follow the script of success, and we will achieve the breakthrough we want in the next 2-3 years. Very soon, we will be on the highway to victory!

Contributions and FeedbackAn informative and inspiring Hua-

wei People magazine needs your continual

contributions and feedback. Please feel

free to submit your department's news &

events, achievements of your BU, stories of

your team and your co-workers, photos,

prose and poetry, and your comments, to

the editors at [email protected].

If your contribution includes excerpt from

other sources, please indicate.

HUAWEI WORLDWIDE

Issue 271

September 30, 2016

Available ln-house Free of Charge

The information contained in this document is for reference only, and is subject to change or withdrawal according to specific customer

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Copyright 2016 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Editor-in-ChiefCatherine Cao ([email protected])

Managing EditorLeslie Gong ([email protected])

Executive EditorGeorge Zhang ([email protected])

Huawei TechnologiesHuawei Industrial Base,

Bantian, Longgang,Shenzhen 518129, P.R.C.Tel: +86 (755) 28562203Fax: +86 (755) 28562706

Email: [email protected]

26Café for Debate

30What Being a Professor in Huawei University Means to Me

36Ready to Be a Good Business Partner

32Hire, Fire or Inspire

34Start Small and Finish Big

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Voice of Top Management

Strategic Patience for the Best Opportunities--Speech by Vincent Pang at the 2016 West European Enterprise Business Mid-year Conference

HUAWEI PEOPLE 3

COVER STORY

I got the news first thing this morning that we didn't win the B project. It was a blow, because we poured a huge

amount of time and energy into this bid over the last six months. Our colleagues in R&D and sales busted a gut to help, not just because of the scale of the project itself, but because of the shine that a prestigious customer like B could lend to the company. But in the end, we lost it. Of course, this is far from the end. This is just the beginning. We are going to keep working with B, redouble our focus, and give them even more of our best efforts. We never say die: I believe that one day, B will roll out the red carpet for us. Named Account (NA) is actually an art at which Huawei excels. We know how to do B2B business. We know how to build strong customer relationships and run good projects. The only thing we need is just a little more patience!

I'd like to share a story of three times when I went knocking on the customer's door in Germany. In November 2004, I was sent by the company to build up our relationship with V. I started in Dusseldorf. The reason was simple: V's global CTO had visited us in China, and said that he was interested in testing Huawei's 3G networks. He asked Mr. Ren, "Where would you like to do the test?" Mr. Ren's immediate answer was: We should start with tests in the most demanding market. The CTO thought for a moment, then said, "Then it

should be Germany." And with that, I was on a plane to Europe. But at the very first kickoff meeting with the V Germany team, the message they gave me was stark: We do not believe that V Germany will ever use Huawei equipment, and we don't care who in the Group wants to run these tests. Please don't waste the time of our Germany team, just pick another country for your tests." That's how the Germans are. Straightforward, honest to a fault, but you know that they always mean what they say.

In 2007, our second opportunity came. It was ushered in by the merger of N and S. V Germany had 12,000 S base stations, but now they had to decide: Would they hand their network over to N, or would they choose another company? They issued an RFQ, and for the next nine months, Huawei had 170 people working on this project. It was as big a deal as the B project today. On the day that the result was to be announced, the V Germany CTO called me on the phone. He said, "Vincent, I know that you have put in a huge amount of work on this bid. But we have been working with S for 20 years. We know them, and we trust them. Even if they have merged with N, it's still the same team. Huawei came very close on this project, but I have to say to you, sorry, and thank you for your participation in the tender process." I said to him on that phone call, "Sir, you know what? The Chinese have a great virtue, which is patience. Even if you didn't select us today, we will

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continue to work with V Germany. Whenever you need us or you have a problem, call us, and we will be there for you."

In 2009, V won its first LTE license in Germany, and started to organize testing of vendor equipment. I received their call once again. The customer was very excited: "Vincent," he said, "you've got to grab this opportunity. This is a perfect chance for Huawei to become our official partner." That was how Huawei ended up being V's exclusive partner for LTE testing, and launched another nine-month project preparing a bid and commercial negotiations. On July 14, 2010, we were in Paris for a Bastille Day celebration with our French customer. I got a phone call from V once again, and this time, it was good news. "Vincent, congratulations, you got it! Huawei is going to be our primary partner for the next 5–10 years. We are awarding you the biggest share in future 2G, 3G, and 4G."

This customer whom we courted so assiduously from 2005–2010, is just like B today. So I want to make today a milestone. I am confident that if we commit sincerely to this customer, we can win over B within three years.

Digital technology means that many companies are racing to go cloud, go smart, and go IoT. This is a huge strategic opportunity for West European Enterprise Business. We have to commit ourselves to working with our customers and building solutions and industry clouds that meet their needs. We

have to help them get an edge in this transformation process. In the enterprise market, what customers need are end-to-end solutions that can help them achieve business success, including industry applications and end-to-end ICT infrastructure. There is a lot of room for expansion in the Western European enterprise business market. For example, one shock that I got was to learn that one of Germany's leading car makers spends about EUR400 million on IT equipment and services every year. That is about the same as what a German telecom operator spends on equipment. We only have xx carrier customers in Europe, but there are 133 Fortune 500 companies here.

The task for Enterprise Business today is to establish more OpenLabs around the world, to build up an ecosystem of industry applications that will support our market development. Mr. Ren says that anyone can make foundations with sand. But we are drawing together all kinds of resources, providing commercial solutions that scratch our customers where they itch, and that means we will never be going to market empty-handed. Mr. Ren thinks that this is how Apple, Microsoft, and Google do it. If we focus on building the open ICT platforms, in the end, the only way for us to go is onward to success. As Mr. Ren says, "We don't touch applications or data." What we do is cultivate ISVs who will fill in those gaps, while we position ourselves as an end-to-end ICT solution provider.

So if we keep up the focus and keep on improving, we are certain to win in the end. Over the last year, we have updated our market strategy, and going forward, our focuses will be:

NAs and industries: Beginning last year, we have been narrowing our focus. Last year we defined our key NAs

and industries in each country based on market characteristics. This year we will start to increase our efforts on those NAs and vertical industries. The NAs alone in Western Europe represent a market that is large enough for us to hit our growth targets.

Better customer relations and project operations for our NAs, to build closer ties.

Making use of the OpenLabs: We have opened our first OpenLab in Munich, and very soon we will be opening more

in France, the UK, the Netherlands, and Spain. Our ability to win trust from carriers was built not just on good customer relations, but also on powerful product innovation. How can we be competitive in Western Europe? We have to understand exactly what our industry customers need, what our partners can offer, and what our competitors are doing. Then we can innovate together, do integration tests, and quickly build competitive

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COVER STORY

solutions, so as to integrate value across the industry chain, and build a robust industry ecosystem in Europe. That is what OpenLabs are for. Given its functions, we must quickly open and make the best use of it.

Winning key projects: This will be a key milestone. Key projects are a vital

technique for building reputation and brand. In order to win these projects, we must keep on building our skills and capabilities.

Branding: When we have secured some key projects, we will step up

our marketing and publicity efforts within our target industries, so that we can quickly replicate them and build up our portfolio. We have established our brand influence in carrier business, but that is just one industry. Enterprise business includes many different industries, so here brand is even more vital. Brand is the cornerstone that leads to customers choosing us.

Building channel capacity: Even as we execute our high touch strategy, we must not forget to build up channel

capacity as well. Channels are the key to the second phase, from 1 to N. We have found that in many countries, distributors tend to focus on specific industries. They do not often cross industry boundaries. So we must build up separate channel capacity for each of our target industries. We will need to maintain close links with channel

partners, and win their trust.

Finding the best people, building up our own organization: We need people who believe

in the same goals and are willing to grow with us. We need experienced people who can handle big business, and who embrace the chance to challenge themselves. We look forward these people to joining our Enterprise Business Dept. There is a small shift between the Western European x and y plans: The target is now US$z billion, because Western Europe is the second largest market outside of the US, and there is great potential for growth. How are we going to meet this challenge? The most vital step is to build a strong operating organization. How can we attract top talent from our target industries? How can we upskill our current team? These are our long-term challenges!

If we stick to the strategic vision, we will make a major breakthrough in Enterprise Business in the next 2–3 years, and take a great leap forward.

William Xu has led the Europe development team from less than 100 people in 2005 to a business worth nearly US$10 billion today. This result is a testament to the dedication and unity of the Europe team over the past decade. So we must stick

with that strategic patience. Our Enterprise Business will follow the same path. In the very near future, the team will have more managers and team members with vision, strategy, leadership, and professionalism. I know that the West European Enterprise Business will follow the script of success, and we will achieve the breakthrough we want in the next 2-3 years. Very soon, we will be on the highway to victory!

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A group of passionate young people…a vision of strong Chinese hearts powering core routers…Something sparked that cold winter night, and set our youthful hearts ablaze.

IP Eagles in a Data-driven WorldBy Gai Gang, edited by Gong Hongbin

HUAWEI PEOPLE 7

"Chinese chips" set youthful hearts ablaze

In 2000, at the age of 22, I graduated from university, and came to Shenzhen to join Huawei as a hardware engineer. I worked hard, and I was soon promoted to be the project manager in charge of S8500 switch products. That project developed Huawei's first ever 10G Ethernet interface for switches. In 2003, I was transferred to the IP core router team, and I have now been working on IP routers for more than a decade.

When I started to work with IP, I realized that IP really is a very high-end technology. Even today, only a handful of manufacturers around the world have really mastered IP technology. Back in 2003, Huawei was racing to catch up with the industry leaders. Our competitors were starting to market 40G routers, but Huawei was still selling our old 10G and 20G products, because we just didn't have the technology..

The 40G chip is the crystallization of everything we know about IP networking, and our entire IP approach. We increased specifications and performance by creating entirely new architectures, algorithms, multi-million-gate circuits, and the very latest semiconductor manufacturing technologies. We also ran into unprecedented technological challenges.

Many new members joined our team, and they worked in Beijing, Shenzhen, Chengdu, and overseas. We learned and developed as we worked. At the time, the whole team was battling to speed up our algorithms for routing table entries, and butting up against the physical limitations of the system. We brought in experts and key workers from the chipsets and software teams to tackle the knotty problems with us. We combined chipset modeling and simulation with virtual layout and routing, and the first time we ran a full simulation, we found that we had managed the technological breakthrough we needed. That paved the way for us to develop the real chipsets and applications.

By the end of 2009, the first batch of 40G chipset samples was ready for testing. We talked about how to go about it, and decided to bring the whole batch to Shenzhen and upgrade our core routers with the new "Chinese chips". That would give a massive boost to the competitiveness of our products.

A week before Spring Festival, the first 40G IP chipset rolled off the production line, and the team scrambled them to the Shenzhen R&D Lab for assembly and testing. We sat together in the lab, discussing and solving problems as they appeared. The lab was alternately a babble of voices, then dead silent save for


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the tapping of keyboards. At 11 o'clock at night, the 40G IP chipset successfully forwarded its first data packet, and after that we romped through the scenario tests one by one. Deep into the night, we were bubbling with excitement, running through all the tests we could. In the end, our boss came and chased us out of the lab. "You've passed all the key scenario tests," he said, "Go and get some sleep, and you can finish up tomorrow."

On New Year's Eve, Zha Jun, president of the Fixed Network Product Line, came to see in the Chinese New Year with us at a hotel near the company. He brought his parents, wife, and daughter along to the dinner, and the little four-year-old girl treated us to a rousing duet of the Chinese national anthem, with her dad. We all sang along with her, louder and louder as we went, and a number of us became quite emotional. It was a night of laughter and tears, with plenty of drinking, and plenty of singing. A traditional time for family…a group of passionate young people…a vision of strong Chinese hearts powering core routers…Something sparked that

cold winter night, and set our youthful hearts ablaze.

On New Year's Day, we took the day off, and went out to the Overseas Chinese Town. The next day we threw ourselves back into the battle of chipset testing. On the eighth day of the New Year, the first day of work after the Spring Festival break, we delivered Huawei's first generation of IP chipsets for core routers on time.

The performance of our chipset was comparable to the world leaders, and significantly improved the competitiveness of our router hardware. We had made many breakthroughs, and had now mastered the core technologies. We were set to challenge for the very top spot in the chip industry, and had paved the way for future development of chipsets up to 400G and beyond.

It has been a good few years now, but I still remember that Spring

Festival we spent together, the songs we sang, the New Year dinner we shared, and the days that we struggled through side by side. Those days have given me a store of lasting memories.

Joining the exclusive "cluster club"

We moved on, and new challenges rolled in. Huawei was building China Telecom's national backbone network, and we needed new technology for the nodes. As product owner, I was given a new mission: delivering a cluster router within one year.

Core nodes in the national backbone network are the information hubs for regions. Data streams from multiple provinces and cities converge on and radiate from them, so the torrent of data is enormous. Even worse, the flow data is still growing by 50% every year. The single

2010 Chinese New Year Dinner

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chassis cannot handle the volumes of information that flow through a core node, so we would have to combine multiple chassis to form a large cluster, which would be able to support the growth and evolution of the network. For a long time, US companies had dominated the market for multiple chassis cluster systems, and American products were to be found in the national backbone networks of many countries. The multi-chassis cluster is the most complicated IP system, and router clusters represent the pinnacle of technology for any equipment manufacturer. Cluster technology is the Mount Everest of IP tech.

This was a key project for the company, and we were given all the support we needed. To develop the router architecture, we quickly called in a team of a dozen experts in a range of fields: Jun, the hardware expert; Yang, the switching network expert; Zhou, the processing expert; Fan and Mao, software service engineers; and Tian, the Mechanical Power Environment (MPE) expert. We gathered in a meeting room in the Beijing Research Center, with seven or eight computers and a couple of whiteboards, and we got to work sketching out the architecture for router clusters.

Router clusters are a huge technical challenge. You have to take what was originally a group of independent devices, and integrate them into an "8+64" cluster. The complexity of both the hardware and software increased by several orders of magnitude. Our existing knowledge and architecture could not produce the result we needed, so we had to start from scratch. We had little or no guidance, so all we could do was hope that the long experience which our expert team brought to the table would spark something. Whiteboard

space became our most scarce resource. Over and again, someone would have an idea, draw it up, and if it didn't work, wipe it off. For a month we bounced ideas off each other, and finally we developed a proposal that we could show to an IP expert, the Huawei Fellow Deng Chaojun. Deng reviewed our idea and approved it, and at that moment Huawei's own router cluster architecture came into being.

However, product development proved to be much harder than we had imagined. We had had to invent many new technologies: the cluster central chassis, cascade optical fibers, trunk control plane, distributed computing… they were all new. And each one threw up problems to be overcome. When the first batch of central chassis was produced, design errors meant that many of the boards had bent pins, or did not work at all. We had to stop while that problem was fixed. The underlying VxWorks operating system did not support cluster operations, so we had to switch and adapt a lot of the software. As the number of system boards in the cluster increased, software performance dropped precipitously, so we had to optimize the software over and over again….

We kept supporting and encouraging each other through the hard times, saying "There are only four countries in the world that can launch satellites. There are only two companies in the world can make router clusters of this complexity. If we can make our own router cluster, we will be one of the three members of the "cluster club". That's pretty impressive!" Every time we ran into difficulties, or felt like giving up, we thought of being part of that exclusive club, and powered on through.

You might call this delusional; you might call it boastful; you might

think it was a pipe dream. But whatever it was, it was a goal, and goals are what we fight for. When a boast turns into reality, we see that it was actually visionary; but boasting alone won't get you there. It takes blood, sweat, and tears, every step of the way.

An integrated test on a cluster of routers demands hundreds or thousands of ports, and a large number of meters and instruments. We had limited resources, so the project team split into two shifts to keep the equipment running 24/7. Even at night, our passion for work remained undimmed. At first, we only had instant noodles to keep us going through the small hours. Then parents of Tao Chun, the manager of the cluster hardware test, came for a visit from their home in the Northeast. They would make a pan of New Year wraps, and bring them to the Huawei gates at 9:30 every night. Tao would pick them up and bring them to the lab for us all to share. Every day, regular as clockwork, our nightly meal would arrive. Everyone loved the wraps, and they became a saying in our team: "Eat a plateful of wraps, solve a plateful of problems." I think that after we finally completed the project, we missed those wraps most of all.

During that critical period, my daughter was born. In the hospital, I was delighted to see my first child, but also worried about the project schedule. I was glued to the phone even in the hospital, and my wife told me, "Get back to the company to check on your 'boy'. My parents can take care of me and the baby. You concentrate on your work." With the support of my wife, I went back to work immediately. My colleagues were surprised to see me, "What are you doing back so soon?" They

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asked, "I have another 'baby' to look after here," I answered. "I can't leave it alone." In fact, everyone saw this product as our baby. We were completely devoted to this project. And it was only possible because of the understanding and support from our families.

The development of the cluster was much more difficult than we had imagined. The project schedule had to be repeatedly pushed back, until the sales department finally sent out an internal memo requesting that we hurry up because we had to meet the deadline for that year's centralized procurement tests by the major carriers. Now, the pressure was on. The centralized procurement tests are like college entrance exams: the date is fixed, and you only get one chance. Only products which pass the test will be used in network rollout for the next year. If you don't make it, then you have to sit on the sidelines till next year's test.

If we failed the test, we would miss the opportunity to supply China

Telecom's backbone network project. That would be an enormous blow for the whole team. As the saying goes, he who dares, wins. We rose to the challenge of the sales team's high expectations, and unveiled our router cluster for the first time at the Guangdong Institute of Telecommunications. The next three months were a high stress period of testing, but we were able to handle everything that they threw at us, and finally we received the credential we needed to become a part of the national backbone network. We were now officially a member of the exclusive club of just three companies in the world with the capacity to build router clusters.

To this day, my wife still makes fun of me, and asks, "How is your boy doing at work?" I tell her that my boy is performing brilliantly. We staked our first claim on the nodes of China's backbone network when China Telecom Xi'an successfully installed the world's first "2+4" core router cluster. In 2013, we pulled

off the world's biggest router cluster swap project, when we successfully migrated the China169 node in Wuxi for China Unicom. This project showed that Huawei is able to swap out existing clusters, as well as build new systems.

Today, our router clusters are everywhere, in the core nodes of operators and in the national backbone network. We have become an indispensible part of the China backbone. But I would like to say to my family, "Thank you, and thank you to the families of every member of the project team. Without your understanding and support, we could not have made it through the hard times. We could never have created one of the world's most advanced pieces of IP cluster technology. Half of all our success is down to you."

An operating system ruthlessly refined

There are some achievements that stick in the mind. There are some people who command your respect.

To make a powerful IP network, one of the other key elements you

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need is the versatile routing platform (VRP) operating system that runs the routers. Upgrading the hardware is all very well, but the software must keep pace.

The next generation operating system was to be VRP8, but during the initial development phase, we got stuck in round after round of discussions. Some of the software specialists thought that we should evolve the system we had. Others thought that the old system would never be able to support the performance demands of new customer networks, and that we needed to start afresh. We examined the merits of each position very carefully, and took a considered decision: we should develop a new system. The new system would become the basis for the long-term future development of our IP systems, and would be a common platform for all of our next-generation network equipment.

21 system architecture engineers gathered at the Beijing Research Center, and officially began the development process. Every engineer wrote a commitment to the project, and they were all displayed in nice crystal frames. Each one of them said, "I hereby promise to commit myself 100% to creating the very highest quality system architecture for VRP8."

The team came from many different parts of the country, and each one was a recognized leader in his own field. These software champions had a natural competitive energy, and they turned that system architecture into a work of art. Over and again, they sculpted and streamlined it, each one of them pursuing the point of perfection. The review process that they set up brought whole new

meaning to the word "stringent", as they ruthlessly eliminated even the tiniest flaw. Every time they reviewed each others' latest progress, they would push the bar a little higher. Every decision would be questioned again and again and again, until the presenter didn't have any answers left. Some of the team members weren't used to this rough treatment, and would storm out of the meeting room to refine and perfect their work so that next time they could deflect every possible attack.

In the summer of 2010, the VRP8 system faced its first major test: a pilot deployment in Jinan. The sales teams were watching this first deployment of VRP8 with very great interest. We thought it best to calm any worries the customer might have about being the first to try out this new product, so we asked Huang He to take some of the team to Jinan. They checked out the installation and talked to the customer about how advanced and reliable the new VRP8 was, and about our plans for mitigating any risks. In the end, the customer agreed to the installation. In the early hours of September 9, 2010, we switched over the China Telecom Jinan network to the world's first VRP8 system, and it smoothly took up the load. This successful start proved that the VRP8 system was up to the challenge of real-world operations, and was a great boost to the confidence of the development team.

At the end of 2010, we loaded VRP8 onto our core node routers, and presented it for the first time at the centralized procurement tests of the major Chinese carriers. In the tests where we had always underperformed in the past, like convergence time

and switchover time, we outshone every other product there. From its very conception, we always meant for VRP8 to become number one in performance among all of the world's IP network operating systems. And our high standards and stringent quality demands meant that we hit every one of the targets that we shot for. Many of the architects who were part of that team still get excited just at the memory of what we achieved together.

Focus, persevere, breakthrough: the road to 400G

At the end of 2011, I became the president of Huawei's router product line. The biggest question in front of me, was how to make the next breakthrough.

We had to handle HD television signals (4K and 2K), and cloud data flows. Operators were demanding more and more bandwidth, and we had to supply them with pipes big enough to carry whole oceans of data. These were major opportunities, and we had been investing heavily in chipsets, software operating systems, and router clusters for over a decade. Huawei was ready to become a world leader in product development. The only question was, could we grasp the nettle? Could we turn those years of investment into new breakthroughs, and realize the ambitions of generations of our IP engineers?

In the summer of 2012, Beijing was in the grip of a heatwave. Near the Beijing Research Center, at the foot of some large hills, is the Temple of Great Awakening. It has stood there for centuries, red walls in among green trees, an oasis of calm. This was where we met to discuss

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our next steps. We brought together the management of the sales teams, marketing, and R&D, for a session of vigorous debate.

Marketing had analyzed our competition, and believed that if we could bring a 400G router to market six months ahead of schedule, we could take a commanding position in the core router market. To many, this sounded like a mission impossible. There was just too much to do. We could never shave six months off the delivery time.

At the end of a day of vigorous discussion, the product team agreed that ten years of efforts on IP chipsets and software systems had given us the R&D capacity to take a world-leading position. And even if we were only 50% confident in the projections from the marketing team, we would still commit ourselves to making this push. After all, if we missed this window of opportunity, we would regret it forever.

We decided to drop everything unrelated to the 400G router project, and focus all our attention on it. We would make it to market six months ahead of schedule, or more, and we would take the market position Huawei wanted in 400G.

At the end of the meeting, we shared a vegetarian meal at the temple. It tasted better than steak to us, because we had made a commitment, and we glimpsed the possibility of success. Just before we left, we posed for a group photograph at the temple gates. If we succeed in this 400G mission, we said, then we should remember that this was the moment that it started.

At the R&D's current rate of progress, the 400G router was not due to be ready for delivery until the second half of 2013. Now we

had shifted the delivery date to May. Undoubtedly, this was a mammoth task that we had given to the R&D team. It meant that we only had one shot at every phase. The 400G chipset had to be right first time; the boards had to be right first time; and our software development process had to be massively accelerated. In order to make the new schedule, R&D set themselves the targets of "zero adjustment, zero wait time, zero errors".

And they wrote themselves a slogan, "One team, one dream," to draw together the chipset side and the board team, and remind themselves that they were part of the same effort. Paul Nadj, a Canadian systems architect, liked to say, "When we run into a problem, we have to take a step back, and think about what the heart of the problem is and what the cause is. We analyze and find the key pain point, then we blast it." Painstaking work brought us quickly to solutions on the key technical issues, and meant that quality was built in from the beginning. That laid the foundation for straightforward integration of the chipset technology into our products.

On October 8, 2012, the 400G chipset arrived at our Shenzhen labs. After nine hours of booting and testing, our chipset was ready, and everyone was very excited. On October 25, in the same lab, we gathered all of the chip team, the driver team, the forwarding plane team, and the higher-level software team, and the hard work of commissioning began. The minutes and hours flowed by. On the first day the CPU mini system booted up; on day two we got the network processor (NP) functional. But when we came to the traffic management (TM) module, we got stuck. The

whole team of experts crowded round the whiteboard, running through the protocols line by line, analyzing and checking each one, to eliminate every possible problem. Finally, every issue was resolved, and the module integrated smoothly into the system. We watched the meters jump as they recorded packets sent and received, and as the "lost packet" counter settled and sat firmly at 0, we punched the air and whooped in excitement.

In May, 2013, seven months ahead of schedule, Huawei's 400G router was officially launched to the markets, a full year and a half in advance of our competitors.

In August of that same year, the first 400G router went into service in Saudi Arabia, sending shockwaves through the carrier world. An expert assessment concluded that a single Huawei NE5000E Cluster Router unit offered the same capacity as a 2+4 cluster of 100G routers, while using just 1/8 of the energy, occupying 1/6 of the space, and weighing just 1/12 as much. And in terms of availability, we had 18 months on anyone else in the industry. This was Huawei's best ever result, and it put us at the forefront of the technology race.

The 400G router was a reliable, high-quality piece of equipment, with superior line capacity, high performance, and low power consumption. It quickly became the most common piece of equipment on China's high-capacity data lines, ending China's reliance on Western suppliers for core routers, and stunning the global communications market.

The Huawei 400G is now used in over 60 nations and regions on every continent. It is serving over a billion people. The success of the 400G router came because we were

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bold enough to seize our window of opportunity. It came because we had made the sustained investment, and at crunch time we persevered until the victory was ours. Cohort after cohort of IP engineers committed their time and effort to the key technologies, and our financial investment was heavy. Ultimately, when opportunity came knocking, we were able to surpass the competition and lead the world.

Youth, passion, ambitionAt MWC 2016, Huawei

presented its latest router, the petabit-rated NE9000, and the world's first 2 terabit router line card. I saw the CEOs and CTOs of the biggest carriers in the world stop in front of our product display, listen to the Huawei experts explaining their functions, and express their admiration and appreciation. I couldn't help but feel proud. The breakthroughs we have made in chipsets and many other key technologies have made Huawei a trailblazer in IP networking technology.

Looking back over my career, it was just chance that I ended up working in IP technology. I certainly

Crowds at the Huawei router exhibition booth, MWC 2016

never expected to be working in this same field for more than a decade. Over these years, we have kept up a high level of investment of both time and energy in IP chipsets, operating systems, cluster technology, and other key technical features. We have fought to catch up with our competitors; we have doubled down when the going gets tough; we have focused, persevered, and when the opportunity came, we made our breakthrough. We became the leader in 400G. Today, I feel a combination of pride, satisfaction, and a little resignation.

I had heard people tell me that the telecom industry is a cruel master. "You never know what is coming tomorrow, or next month, or…" I didn't believe it at the time. Now that I have been through it myself, I finally understand what that warning meant. This is an industry that combines the highest levels of technology, fierce competition, and a startling pace of change. Every player swaggers in with a bellyful of confidence, and some exciting weapons in the armory. But how many of them last? I have

been thinking hard about what factors contributed to our success. What was it that inspired us to stay so dedicated, when the rewards were so uncertain? What keeps us as committed, over ten years later, as the day we first started?

I believe that Huawei has created for us a great stage on which we can develop. Huawei has accepted the costs that that growth inevitably incurs. The company makes the investment, delivers the resources, and gave us the space to play out Huawei's IP fairytale. I believe that the families who support us, and the colleagues who inspire us create a haven of warmth and mutual encouragement, so that we can handle the isolation, overcome the hurdles, and embrace our dauntless vision. I believe that when a group of ambitious young people come together, committed to devoting their youth and energy to making a "first in the world" product, then they will shrug off any hardship, exhaustion, and problems, and stop at nothing.

We are youth. We are the eagles on the crags who choose the sky, always the sky, always that further patch of bluer-than-blue sky…

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A boy in a rural villageI was born in a village. My parents were always encouraging us to

study hard when we were young. They used to say, "Children who grow up in low-income families become independent earlier". They were very strict with me as I am the eldest son. For as long as I can remember, I used to get up early to run with my father. During the busy seasons, my parents were working non-stop in our farm, so I had to cook lunch, with the help of my little sister. I just managed to reach the kitchen stove. As I became independent very early, I grew up to become an optimistic person with a positive view of life and the world. I have always kept in mind that only continuous hard work leads to a happy life. When I was a child, my mother often said: "Overcoming difficulties is just like transplanting rice: we can have a harvest in autumn only if we transplant seedlings into paddy fields in spring." This means that we need to make efforts to get over difficulties.

A more seasoned colleague at Huawei once told me: "If you continue to fully devote yourself to your work and have no spare time for leisure activities, you will do better than everyone else in two or three years. You just have to persevere, and maintain a good working habit and attitude to life."

Life at a RunBy Pan Li/Brazil

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Push-ups helped me get through the transition

After working in a project team in Shenyang and then in Beijing for about a year, I came to Brazil in 2013. I was a new member of the project management office (PMO) in Brazil, and assumed responsibility for the wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical network project for T Brazil. However, due to delivery delay and quality issues of the project, T filed a complaint to our HQ. This happened just as the project manager (PM) was about to leave the company and the job handover – to ensure a smooth transition period – was only two weeks. As a result, I had to lead the local team to handle these issues. During the nearly six months of the project ramp up stage, we regularly reported to our customer's HQ and regional offices and solved problems as quickly as possible; visited the customer and checked up on the sites in various regions; reviewed business scenarios by developing daily and weekly reports; and discussed solutions by means of a war room mechanism. We managed to complete the construction of more than 1,700

sites and activated the WDM link of the whole backbone network. By the end of 2013, we replaced our competitor’s WDM link of backbone network in the northeast region, and accounted for over 90% of T's WDM optical network in Brazil. Our project won the GTS Project Operation Award of the Year.

Many people wondered how I could produce so many summary reports at night after a whole day of tough work. I had a secret: I would do push-ups whenever I felt tired, and then continued to write reviews and analyze problems with a clear head. I also won the first prize in a push-up contest during the 2013 annual meeting in Brazil.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

In 2014, I took over the microwave project for T Brazil. For some reasons, we had ceased our cooperation with customers on microwave in Brazil. We won this microwave project amidst fierce competition. We were thus able to support the wireless backhaul of several thousand sites and also explore the model for delivering microwave projects in Brazil. If our competitor could survive in the microwave market of Brazil, why could we not try?

Our project team made great efforts to deliver the project successfully. We analyzed the market share, profit model, supply model, and sub-contracting model of our competitors (such as C, N, and S); took actions to improve our project

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and explore an appropriate strategy for selling microwave products in Brazil; established a green supply channel and achieved co-site delivery; and made breakthroughs regarding market share and new product development in various regions. During this process which took nearly nine months, our team members ran home every day after work at about 2 a.m.. The night sky of São Paulo witnessed us running.

Keep on running The former project director

of the Integrated Accounts Dept resigned in 2015, affecting our business cooperation with three carriers, who complained to our rep office. "Would you like to take up the challenge?" my manager asked. The next morning, I got on a plane bound for Brasilia to meet with Customer S. I attended a meeting with the account manager from Z at the office of the customer. The CTO of the customer listed 16 technical problems, and the implementation director complained that we had put only 80 LTE sites into commercial use within four months, making it hard for them to achieve the annual target set by their VP. The engineering director grumbled about problems related to the version of remote radio unit (RRU), which had prevented the Operation & Maintenance (O&M) department from proceeding with project acceptance.

Faced with these problems, I reviewed the internal needs of the customer's various departments and established a communication mechanism with department directors, managers, and engineers in key positions, so that I could pinpoint major problems and solve them or

come up with solutions. One night, we had already identified the problem but had to wait until 2 a.m. to deploy the solution in coordination with the R&D team at HQ. We decided to go for a run at midnight so that we could have some energy when we got back to business. During our run, many dogs chased us and it must have been a memorable night in some way because several members of my team decided to become avid runners.

We shared our workplace with the customer and we were always the earliest to arrive and the latest to leave. Our team members were always the ones who switched off the lights after everyone else had left the office. Towards the end of the project, the directors of implementation and engineering took the initiative to greet us and show their appreciation.

The project team continued to make progress for four months, setting a new record in delivery and putting sites into commercial use in a single month. We received letters of appreciation from the customer's VP and directors of three departments, moved all the TDD sites given by Z; and the customers agreed us to clear up the backlog related to cluster acceptance, which involved US$X million. That year, our project won the GTS Major Project Delivery Award and President's Commendation Award for the TDD Product Line.

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Take off for ICT transformation

In North China where I come from and where corn is extensively grown, we have a custom involving limiting water and fertilizer even when there is little rain during the seedling phase – but there is still enough moisture in the soil. This means that the corns stop growing while the roots are forced to reach deeper into the ground for water. Thus, the corns develop firm and intertwined roots and, when they are eventually watered, they will have a solid foundation to grow. Developing stronger and deeper roots is thus a necessary process for their subsequent growth. If we do not reach deeper, we can never develop an extensive and sophisticated root system to take in the necessary nutrition and to flourish again after a low point.

ICT transformation is a major initiative that Huawei has championed in recent years. I am also exploring the direction ahead and how I can

basically transform myself. This year, I signed up for my first IT training and practice session, and continue to devote myself into IT project delivery management.

We will definitely succeed in the first project for which I am responsible. That's the confidence that runs in our blood. I am still a novice running on the long path to becoming a seasoned project manager, and I will continue to gain more experience in project management so as to improve my competence.

I certainly enjoy running, and it has become a habit that I can do during my workday. Now there are tens of thousands of runners attending amateur marathon events. It takes a long time to complete a marathon, but if we break down the entire length into 100-meter sections, we can have different experiences during each of these sections, and it means it is much easier to finish the marathon. Likewise, during our cooperation with other teams in Brazil, I reviewed our work and reflected on our mistakes at

each session, and maintained an open mind so as to continuously learn from others. I adhered to this philosophy and learned to be grateful, and that's the biggest reward for me.

Looking back at my work, life, and personal growth during these three years in Brazil, I feel that I have always been able to maintain an open approach so that I can work with enthusiasm even in the face of difficulties and learn from the people around me. Regarding my transformation from a newbie to a professional, I think I managed to accumulate the nutrition for growth and transformation, which helped me to bloom.

Brazil has witnessed my hard work and dedication which allowed me to succeed. When I work on projects to help customers move forward towards success, I am also moving further forward towards a brighter future for myself.

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Among the excellent staff working in Huawei Azerbaijan for more than ten years, Zarbaliev Tural has his insistent enthusiasm in pursuing new technologies. For him, technology is in his genes. Recently an OEC member from Azerbaijan Office took an interview with him. Let’s see how he shared his stories.

Would you please first tell us how you started your journey in Huawei?

Zarbaliev: Sure, I began my journey in Huawei on October 21, 2005. I got to know about Huawei when I was a student in the Azerbaijan Technical University. You know Huawei started in Azerbaijan around 2002. In its first 2-3 years, when Huawei came to the Technical University introducing and recruiting, I was interested about the Telco’s industry. Unfortunately, at that time I couldn’t speak English, therefore

Technology Is in My GenesInterview with Zarbaliev Tural/Azerbaijan

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I didn’t find it interesting. When I graduated from the university in 2004, Huawei donated the C&C08 equipment and built a new LAB in our university, and that was the first time when I saw this kind of new technology. It was very famous and popular for its debut. I was given many documents about C&C08. It was amazing, really. My major was Telecommunications. I’d like to be involved in technical issues. Then I realized that without English I couldn’t pass this interview to join Huawei. So I learnt English in four months quickly, and then luckily I became a Huawei member. In order to learn English quickly, I think it is PATIENCE that helped me to make it. I had a private teacher who taught me at home every day for speaking, listening and reading in these four months.

Technology Is in My GenesInterview with Zarbaliev Tural/Azerbaijan

So how was the initial year? Was there any training program for new employees?

Zarbaliev: I was sent to Moscow for training for 40 days in December 2005. As a new employee, it was a very amazing experience for me to go for training somewhere. After the training of course I came back to Azerbaijan and between 2005 to 2008 it was a new age for me. Again it was the time for C&C08. I was an engineer in D&S department and generally took part in all projects. I worked for C&C08 for one year and then the new technology was coming like NGN. My technical manager told me to learn it, for it is innovation, it is the future. So I was sent to Ufa, Russia for NGN since September 2006. Then year by year the training trips followed one another. Believe me, even now when I remember those years I feel very good spending time on the right thing.

Do you have any exciting story to share for the training?

Zarbaliev: The training was very good including theory and practice. I was very excited to learn something new. I was almost spending no effort in the training, and even on Saturdays and Sundays I was learning the power supply system. It was a little bit hard, but joyful and fruitful. Even today you can see that I’m learning. I am the guy who likes to learn new technologies, innovations etc. I always

feel myself not only a manager, but rather an engineer. Like many others, if you meet the guys who are more than ten years here, definitely they’re crazy about technology. Huawei is kind of a company which allows us to learn something new. Along with the new technology like 5G being invested by Huawei, I am happy that Huawei can put each year around 15% of the revenue in R&D, which means that Huawei is giving a huge power to ensure innovations. So today if you ask me whether I like working in Huawei and my answer is definitely “Yes I do”.

Apart from technology, what other aspects made you stay in Huawei?

Zarbaliev: First, of course technology, and second I should say culture. Until now I’ve been working for six D&S (Delivery and Service) Department managers, whether they are local or Chinese, they never blocked me, but only supported. Managers pushed me to learn, and they are open-minded. You can learn from everyone. Telecommunication has different fields: wireless, core, IP, etc, you can read and learn them from books, but in Huawei you can learn from people, and it’s kind of free training. Also, we have the platform called 3ms where we can find many documents to learn.

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You’ve delivered many projects in Huawei, which one impressed you most?

Zarbaliev: Well, yes, I’ve been involved in many projects. Believe me that each project for me is kind of new to learn. For example, if one project is coming, it’s like a new baby and we’re trying to let it grow up. Our projects can get larger than our competitors’. In 2011, we implemented the project with 21 city centers and 144 villages. It was on a large scale, and we delivered this project within two months. Normally this kind of project should take at least four months. Another one was at the end of 2014, and it was a huge competition from the technical point of view. We worked as one team with delivery and service team and with the sales team. My position was to integrate sales and delivery team. We signed the contract, and the payment was very successful. We got 100 % payment before the equipment shipped out of the factory. By the way, all they are not personal ones, they are team achievements.

We heard when you delivered the project, you always worked overtime.

Zarbaliev: Yes, it is true. One interesting story happened during our NGN project in Nakhchivan in 2010. We stayed in office till 11 pm every day, and once the C level customer complained as we stayed late and their staffs also needed to stay with us, if not, they felt ashamed to leave early.

What kind of projects are challenging to achieve the targets?

Zarbaliev: In delivering projects, for example, we are cooperating with subcontractors and we are working based on the frame contract. But with the government, we have to work with their

subcontractors. It is difficult to control and manage them as the controlling points belong to the customer and it is hard to deliver in such conditions. We must also think in advance, for example, we had a project, when we met the project manager, we agreed with the deadlines, but after meeting the CTO, he always cut the deadlines, and after meeting the CEO, he also cut the deadlines again. In such cases we must forecast such issues in advance.

What do you think about working in a cross-cultural environment?

Zarbaliev: One answer – if you know how Chinese guys are working it will be comfortable to work here, but if you can’t understand, of course

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it is difficult to adapt. We’re people, when we have questions, ask people, communication can solve everything. I had one teacher in 2009 in HQ, who knew the core network perfectly. His English was poor, but it wasn’t an issue for me. I could understand him, even sometimes I tried to speak Chinese with him. The target is not just saying he has good or bad English, but the target is learning from him. By the way, all of us are people, it doesn’t matter whether they are Chinese, English, French, etc.

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How do you see the teamwork? Some people say you are a spiritual leader, how do you think of it?

Zarbaliev: Now my position is FR (fulfillment responsible) and usually it has no any team but has to be working with all teams such as the delivery team, accounting team, triangle CC3. I am a member of all teams but none of them is mine. As for the spiritual leader, it’s their evaluation. I consider everyone as myself. If I see a new one coming, I will kindly support them. I am always trying to support new team members as much as I can.

How do you look forward to the future?

Zarbaliev: Believe me, as long as the telecom field exists, I think I’m going to stay in Huawei. Which company has the future in the telecom field? Which company is doing more investment in research and development? Which company is going to lead the market? Which company is leading the trend? In future if I change my mind and leave the telecom field, then I will leave Huawei. Again, in the telecom field, Huawei is quite enough to grow and enjoy in.

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In early 2014, T, America M's largest operating company, signed a contract engaging Huawei to swap its

wireless network equipment. This project involved over 7,200 base stations: swapping 2G and 3G equipment, building new 3G and 4G base stations to expand network capacity, improving network performance, upgrading power supplies, and migrating core networks and expanding their capacity. It was the largest and the most challenging project in our region at that time. Huawei's position in the market would be directly impacted by our ability to deliver a satisfactory project.

Could we successfully deliver, and give the customer a high quality network? I was the director of delivery management in Latin America, and was made project director for this project. After an in-depth analysis, I realized it was not going to be an easy task.

Low commitment, slow progress

This was the first time for Huawei to modernize T's existing network. The customer was still uncertain about Huawei's ability to deliver. The customer's own decision-making processes were long and complex, and they were not particularly cooperative with us, so six months after the beginning of the project, only six or seven base stations had actually been built. The migration of the first city network was already

How Did Instant Incentives Energize a Project Team?By Liu Xuanqian/Latin America PMO

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overdue, and there was no end in sight.

So the next time we had a meeting with the leadership of T, we asked the CEO, "Could you let us lead the project? We would like to speed up the swap, but we need unconditional support from every department in your company." To our surprise, the customer agreed without hesitation, and asked us to report on our progress in two weeks' time. That meant that we had to complete the first city in the next ten days: swap 2G and 3G equipment in over 100 base stations, optimize the network, and ensure that the performance of the new network was significantly better than the existing one.

Time was pressing, and the job was enormous. In order to get that first town done, I decided to lead the work myself. When I got to the site, however, I was stunned at what I saw. The members of the project team were doing nothing more than the bare minimum. They didn't seem to feel any sense of urgency. The contractor's workers were equally laid-back, ambling about slowly with their radios on. I knew immediately that we had not communicated our goals to the team members. The team had not pulled together. It had no passion and no ambition. I had only ten days, and the first day had already been wasted.

Unified team plus instant incentives

How could I motivate the team to start shooting for our goals? My idea was to use Huawei's "Contribute and Share" system: If I could offer them instant incentives, could that spur everyone to make greater efforts? On the second day, I gathered the entire team together to explain the project goals to them. I made sure everyone was crystal clear on what it was that we were trying to deliver. And I gave them all individual targets to complete. At the same time, we officially announced a new incentive scheme: Every day, an incentive equivalent to 3% of monthly salary would go to any engineers or team members who exceeded their quota of base station surveys/swaps for the day; and to the team which completed its daily quota first.

As soon as I announced the new incentives, the project team straightened up with a new sense of purpose. A local engineer, E, came and asked if he could take charge of swapping two base stations. He said that he could handle the responsibility, and asked me to give him more opportunities if he did the job well. To encourage him, I asked the project plan owner to arrange for him to lead the swap of two base stations. Then he went to collect the necessary data, and carefully read the plan and test information. Whenever he was unclear about something, he would go and ask the project solution owner for clarification. Once the work started, E posted updates continuously

in the project group's discussion platform: "Arrived at the site, up the tower, unscrewed the antenna port, transmission test OK"; "Cut over cell 1, no alarms, tests OK". On the screen in the control room, the cell icons turned green one by one as the new equipment went online. One and an half hours later, E became the first person that day to complete the swap of a base station. And he quickly moved on to complete his second.

On the third day, the project team presented E with his reward. They also sent out emails and messages praising the top performers from the day before. These messages really boosted everyone's spirits, and the whole team threw themselves into their work over the next few days. A survey engineer, J, completed the survey of seven base stations in one day, and produced installation drawings to guide the project members in the field. Engineer A insisted on taking on swapping two base stations every day… The project team united and managed to complete the swap for the first city on time. And crucially, network performance was significantly improved.

We reported our progress to T's CEO, who was very pleased. The CEO decided to give Huawei the lead for the whole project, and told his people to issue the necessary POs as quickly as possible. The successful completion of our first city had broken us out of our uncomfortable slump.

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Project proceeding at full throttle

We did not rest on our laurels after the successful migration of the first city, because we still had a vast task ahead of us. There were still over 7,000 base stations to be swapped, expanded, and renovated in the next 18 months. How were we going to maintain that same level of morale and team spirit over the long months to come?

The project team decided to motivate the team using the project bonus but changed the way it would be shared out. In the past, the employee's share in the project bonus would depend on his or her job grade and title. Now we decided to allocate the bonus depending on exactly how much each person had contributed to the project. Besides, we decided to distribute the bonus while the project was still on rather than after the project had been completed. Contributions and bonuses would be published for everyone in the team to see. That would produce a positive climate in which everyone was working hard to win a bigger bonus.

According to the latest incentive methods for the Integrated Service Delivery Platform (ISDP), for every key task, the project members were required to upload the deliverables so that the system could calculate their total effective working hours. The project team set a baseline for the effective working hours. Every month, both contractor workers and

outsourcing staff won the reward for extra effective working hours (total effective working hours minus the baseline of effective working hours). Every quarter, for Huawei staff, the project team would also fairly allocate the project bonus based on their contributions and distribute it to them.

R was one of the biggest contributors in the team, and ended up receiving a bonus equivalent to eight months of his salary that year. That was 10 times more than those who only made an average contribution. And there were a few who did not perform well, and ended up with no bonus at all. The project team gave R an A in his annual appraisal, and his end of year bonus was increased in light of his contributions to this project and his share in the project bonus.

This equitable approach to incentives fired up the team and created a lively, competitive workplace. In the annual competency & qualification assessments, high performers in the project were promoted one grade. The company's move to a project-based organization means that the project teams now have more authority: We can offer more compensation, increases in job grade, and more opportunities for career development.

The project-based organization policy also means that project teams have become flatter. That makes for a livelier delivery team, and has made our delivery faster. After two years of hard work, we were able to deliver 30% more than the previous period, and the performance of the customer's

network rose by over 20%. Over that same period, we had no increase in the size of our project team, and we were able to send key team members, now armed with real experience, to take on even bigger challenges in other projects or positions.

More importantly, we helped the customer to be more competitive in a fierce marketplace. In the past, the customer had to manage many suppliers; now it only had to deal with Huawei. It was saving on labor costs, equipment costs, and power. Network operation expense (OPEX) was down as well. In fact, its OPEX per base station was down 20%. The customer publicly praised the strong expertise of Huawei's delivery teams on many occasions, and offered us the chance to bid on a number of new projects, including Huawei best network project.

Looking back on these last two years, I have learned a number of things as a Huawei first-line manager. We have to make a transition in the company's shift to a project-based organization. We have to embrace change, and learn to use the new ISDP. We have to dare to break with the old ideas and practices, to focus on the customer, and to deliver real value.

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About Debate CaféIn Debate Café, Xinsheng Community invites all users to discuss news events and other timely issues happening in Huawei. Our mission is to provide a forum for intelligent discussion, grounded in facts and informed by reasoned analyses. We encourage fierce debates and insightful arguments. Experts and thinkers are all here. You should be too.

Suggest a Forum IdeaDebate Café welcomes suggestions from readers: What questions should we be asking? Please e-mail us your ideas for debate, as well as experts whose insights you’d like to read.Contact us: [email protected]

3BACKGROUNDA thread “The greatest militarist turned out to be one of the greatest mathematicians” was posted on Xinsheng Community on Monday, September 19th. After reading this article, many Xinsheng users have expressed their opinions about whether Napoleon is deserved to be called as a great mathematician.

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Is Napoleon One of the Greatest Mathematicians?

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Shekhar

More than a great mathematician, he was a great supporter of mathematics.

Kumar

This shows how important it is to encourage and protect talent even during most difficult times (like War). And also Napoleon believed that people with great talent are the once who can produce golden eggs for the country and the Organization. Great learning from Napoleon.

ForestryS

During my study in Mathematics, I have never been informed about Napoleon’s theorem. Mathematic is everything.

Logitech

Without strong supports of mathematics, without strong RDs of mathematics, there is no core competitiveness! If you can solve problems casually, the others can easily too, the difference embodies in the details.

h00718026

Hm, ok, Napoleon... I have not quite understood the meaning of the geometrical exercise which Napoleon solved. Does it somehow influence or improve people's life? - On the other hand speaking about French mathematicians and improving people's life, I think the whole world and Huawei in particular owe Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier reminiscence and admiration: Without Fourier Analysis no (digital) radio communication and most likely no Huawei. - And even though Fourier is obviously nearly forgotten it is probably people like him Huawei and the world would need for a brighter future. Napoleons we maybe have enough anyway.

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Onurgu

Can you give references about this information? I couldn't find any on the net. According to this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon he seems to be in charge of a large army during the Italian Campaign during that time. If he was able to enroll into Academy of France, it would be very very surprising. There is a theorem called Napoleon's Theorem, but the origin of the theorem is also disputed. Maybe it is this information that motivated you to write this blog post?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon%27s_theorem

Fabiano

I disagree with your opinion. The theorem has been diputed for over 2 centuries, that's true, but this cannot prove that Napoleon is only a general of an army. Napoleon is a friend of many French famous mathematicians, and they discussed about geomytry problems together a lot. I have picked one paragraph from an article named Napoleon's Theorem http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath270/kmath270.htm "According to Wetzel, the earliest known attribution of the theorem to Napoleon is a parenthetical comment, “Theorem proposed for demonstration by Napoleon to Lagrange”, in an Italian textbook of elementary geometry by A. Faifofer published in 1911. This accords with Harris’ comment that “after the revolution, [Lagrange] fell into the favor of Napoleon Bonaparte, who enjoyed sharing geometrical puzzles with Lagrange and Laplace”. Indeed we know that Napoleon discussed the problem of quadri-secting a circle with his mathematician friends. "

a00363162

Good piece of investigation. Only on the age of 28 Napoleon Bonaparte he was not busy with his study, but with the battle of Rivoli Italy. Besides that... He did only his Graduate as a second Luitenant officer within the Artillery of the French Army. All his knowledge was based on experience and battle enemy information. Napoleon Bonaparte was an expert in creating new way of things.

Christiana

Napoleon's knowledge was not just from his experience and battles. He went to the Royal Military Academy in Paries. He has completed his two-year course in only one year because of death of his father. He was interested in geometry since he studied in Brienne. Being an artillery officer does not mean he does’t know mathematics.

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m00754532

I recommend reading books by William Duggan. He considers Napoleon as a strategist along with a number of other strategists from various other countries and eras in history. Duggan develops a theory of business strategy based on his analysis.

One can start with his "Napoleon's Glance":

t00733901

In other words ''first things first''. Napoleon was a visionary and he wasn't the type to do ''more with less''. Scientists are scientists and soldiers are soldiers. Scientists develop the weapons and solders fire them. It's as simple as that.

Sanford

The famous Napoleon Theorem is stated by Coxeter and Greitzer as follows: If equilateral triangles are erected externally on the sides of any triangle, their centers form an equilateral triangle. However, there is no evidence to prove Coxeter and Greitzer are the first discovers of this Theorem.

Here is a story about Napoleon and his mathematician friends:Before he made himself ruler of the French, he engaged in a discussion with the great mathematicians

Lagrange and Laplace until the latter told him, severely, “The last thing we want from you, general, is a lesson in geometry”.

Coxeter and Greitzer then remarked Napoleon probably not knowing enough geometry to discover Napoleon Theorem considering his friends' words.

However there is another version of the story:Napoleon explained his solution to the assembled mathematicians, Laplace commented:"We expect all

things from you, General, except a lesson in geometry". These words are totally different from the first version of story, and have proven that Napoleon is really

talented at geometry.In all, the connection between Napoleon and Napoleon's Theorem has been disputed for many years in

Europe. But even Napoleon was not the first discover or solver, he is not only a militarist but also a talented geometrist, a great mathematician.

In order to ensure the authenticity of the opinions, the replies posted by Xinsheng users are not modified.

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What Being a Professor in Huawei University Means to MeBy Dr. Leroy G. Blimegger Jr./Carrier BG

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that I had achieved over the course of the past 30 years in the Telco industry. I came to the realization that this, an invitation to be a Professor at Huawei University, is probably the most significant award/achievement I have received.

For you to understand this significance, I need to wind the clock back 30 years to my days in M R&D and Systems Engineering. Back then, I was a typical young R&D engineer, caring more about computers, programming, circuits, and algorithms than people. When I moved to Systems Engineering to design and deploy the world’s first commercial CDMA networks, I actually needed to learn to better interact with other people; to meet with them, share ideas with them, make presentations and even train them! What a nightmare! If someone didn’t understand what I was trying to explain, my first thought was to find their diagnostics port, plug in and fix their source code, so that they’d understand my ideas! Other times, I started thinking about rebooting them!

Over the next few years of my career, I began to realize that business was not about technology, business was about people, about engaging with people, about influencing people. Any advancement in technology is worthless if you can’t convince (influence) others that it can create value for their business.

For all of you that have only known me from the time I joined Huawei, you are probably finding it difficult to believe that I was once

I don’t normally write about my accomplishments or awards that I have received in Huawei,

but this one is special, so I thought I would share my thoughts and feelings about it. I was formally informed in August 2016 that I had been nominated, approved, and finally invited to be a Professor at Huawei University. When Huawei University called and made an appointment to deliver my certificate, frankly, I thought it was just a nice title. And, I was actually expecting a piece of paper that would have wound up in a drawer within a few days. When they presented the certificate to me, I started wondering; why such a beautiful (and quite heavy) certificate?

After some discussion, I discovered that there have only been nine people in Huawei that have ever been invited as a Professor at Huawei University. And, I am the first and, for now, only foreigner. At that point, I started to realize the significance of this certificate, actually, of this honor. I started reflecting on the awards that I had won and various accomplishments

a quiet, shy, introvert! But, just as companies that want to stay relevant and have sustainable business must transform, so to must individuals! During my remaining years at M and 10 years as an independent business owner, I transformed from introvert to extrovert, from technology focused to business and people focused.

During my time with Huawei (nearly 10 years now), I have had the opportunity to facilitate and/or teach various classes. You should take note that I use the word “opportunity”, rather than “requirement”. I don’t see taking a facilitator or teacher role as being a business requirement, but rather as a business (and even personal) opportunity. Students can quickly tell the difference between someone that wants to be leading a class and someone that has been required to lead a class. Facilitators and teachers that take the role as an opportunity more effectively transfer knowledge and influence the mindsets of their students. And, this is reflected in the students’ satisfaction ratings. To me, the students in a class are my customers and it is my responsibility to discover their pain points and business needs, just as I do with our external customers.

Over the past 30 years, I have won many awards related to technology and innovation, project management, quality management, etc., but, being invited to be a Professor at Huawei University means that I have successfully completed the transformation from technologist to being a leader of leaders.

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depending on the team spirit and its management techniques. We cannot set a fixed equation, but we can tell how to get the maximum benefit from the human resources.

In this article, I want to give simple words about how to get the maximum benefit from individuals in work environment through a three layered success stories from Huawei showing the role of the organization, the leaders and the individuals themselves to make the success through “inspiration”.

The Smart Organization“The way to organize and

manage big team is the same as for small team consists of few men. It is a matter of dividing the big team into small groups”

Sun Tzu – The Art of War

Compiled more than two thousand years ago by a mysterious warrior-philosopher, The Art of War is still perhaps the most prestigious and influential book of strategy in the

The Efficiency EquationThe efficiency of any team,

business unit or entity can be simply measured by the value of their achievements (revenue) compared to their cost. The evaluator may decide to decrease the team members by leasing some of them, change them by more efficient candidates or even add more resources to reinforce the team.

For a machinery unit, a computerized system or even a robot, this way of performance management is 100% efficient, but when we talk about human resources, many other factors must be involved in this equation. The human will and accordingly the human resource maximum expected output is immeasurable. For the same individual, the output can be totally different by changing the work conditions, environment and the motives of acting.

The equation becomes harder to be set if we calculate it for individuals working in teams. In a team 1+1 will rarely equals 2; it may be less or more

Hire, Fire or InspireBy Shady Elgohary/Egypt

world. The ancestors had known well the secrets of setting big organizations strategy by dividing the available human resources into small groups according to their skills. In wars, they divided the army into group of knights, ground forces and sailors. They considered this grouping as a very important strategic action and it was really a vital factor to achieve their victories.

In modern organization with the help of technology and modern facilities, it becomes easier to have a clear helicopter view for the organization human resources. Using this information in setting a smart strategy to achieve the organization goals is the secret of success.

I think that Huawei is somehow using this classic strategy model. A shining example for this is the “train the trainer to Train” global MooC training arranged by Huawei last year for their employees. They were in need to find the most talented people in our organization to be certified trainers. They started first to provide a

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high quality training for the standard training skill by using the modern technology to keep this training available for all the employees. The training was not only to teach them how to train, but also to inspire them to discover these skills in themselves. The final step was, if you really feel that you are skilled, be certified and get more benefits.

The organization role is very important to open the chances to inspire its employees to discover their strength points. It cannot study each individual skills, but it can help them to find himself in its big entity and this will reflect positively in its journey to achieve its goals.

The Art of Leading“Leadership is communicating

to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves”.

Stephen Covey – The 8th Habit

Once, a colleague said to me “Do you know the secret of Huawei success? It is because they are always trying to put the right person in the right position”. Actually, understanding the individuals’ capabilities and skills is a mandatory for all leaders. Assigning an employee for a task cannot be done randomly or according to the available person at a time. It shall match his skills as much as possible to guarantee the success. In other words, the manager must help his employees to succeed by assigning them to the right position that sharpens their skills.

A resource manager in Huawei was assigned to lead an overseas team. The main challenge for him was to improve the team performance. He started to analyze the team situation and take some normal actions like encouraging the team members to contribute more, punish lazy staff and arrange some training to

improve his team.Yes he succeeded to improve

most of his team members’ performance, but he found that the overall team performance was still not good! He thought again and found that the problem is that each one is caring only about his own benefit. Someone wants to increase his salary so he is trying to get higher grade and ignores the other performance KPIs. Another one cares about his technical skills and does not improve his communication skills. The team was like separated islands, each island was succeeding in one field, but still weak without the other fields.

The manger solution for this team was really creative; he started to record each individual strength and weak points. In parallel he started to show the team members how the overall team performance is important and how it directly affects their own benefit. He inspired them to care about team reputation which reflects directly on their respect among other competitor teams. The manager started to use each employee strength point to create a group to improve the others in this point. This team becomes one of the most successful teams in its region. Many members were honored to get awards and appreciation letters in several occasions for their contribution in Huawei worldwide projects.

This manager way was smart in using the team members to improve instead of doing it alone. He united the small separate islands to be a strong country only by inspiring everyone to use his power in the right direction.

Win together concept“The strength of the team is

each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”

Phil Jackson, NBA Basketball Coach

Employees in non management positions always think that they do not have to participate in developing the work process. They are caring only about finishing their tasks with good quality for leaders.

In all fields, successful teams are always the teams whose members are willing to win together. In a football game if each player is playing for his own glory - not for the team reputation- the team will lose. The team members must have the “Win Together” concept. They must realize that winning together will add value to them as well as to the team. They must act to get honor for their team believing that this will reflect directly in their personal benefits.

Let me show you the last success story from Algeria. I joined my current project team in Algeria 6 months ago. The project was very challenging and we had tough deadlines. At the beginning we thought about asking for more resources to support us, and then during a team meeting we decided to take the challenge with our current number; we decided to “win together”. We agreed on some concepts for our team. We agreed that in this challenge, everyone’s contribution matters. If someone did not finish his task, all the team will be affected and if we passed all the team will win. We agreed to work for team reputation and team success.

Finally, I want to say that mathematics is amazing, but not applicable for everything. If you are designing your project resources plan or if you are a team member preparing to join a new project, use logic and mathematics to analyze and make your decisions, but at the same time do not forget to inspire people around you.

Before you decide to fire or hire, do not forget to try to inspire.

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The problematic of our subject: How do we achieve customer expectation and satisfaction with these major difficulties and also make profit to continue to exist and grow?

We are actually in competition with our world major competitor, and we must be on top to show that we don’t want to be number one but we are just number one.

My journey started with Huawei in December 2009 when Huawei was stepping into Managed Services field in West Africa Region. At that time no single MS contract was ranked by our Rep. Office of Cote d’Ivoire but we did believe in a brighter future in this part of West

Africa with great potential of Telecom expansion.

Today we are delivering Managed Services for the best operators here. Our case will focus more on Guinea M Network Outsourcing Managed Services.

1-Personal development, the key to success and sustainability

Managing a World Wide team required a minimum of skill and experience. When you have to deliver MS in one of the world most difficult areas, in a challenging competition environment with a local customer’s expectation over dimensioned due to

Start Small and Finish BigBy Lonan Coulibaly/Cote d'Ivoire

poor business situation and at the same time with HR resource having no idea about managed services operation, the manager’s skill has to be in constant progression.

Personal development is one of the best solutions to survive and

succeed your mission because only operation experience is not enough.

2-Build competitive teams with resources that no one has a single believe in their potential and go beyond extra mile.

In every organization, Human Resource is the first capital which leads to company development and success. Within a team, you have three types of resources translate in following image: engines, passengers and breaks. Engines are those who drive the team and can contribute more than others. Basically, they are high performers and mean to be outstanding staffs. Passengers are middle level staff. Their performance depends on the style of management applied and the mental of the group. They can easily perform well or make the ship to sink if not well handle. Breaks are those who have little impact on the result and can affect

Personal development is key to success and sustainability

Build a competitive team with resources that no one has a single believe in their potential

Turn the desert into forest

Continuous improvement as guideline

Being crazy about customer satisfaction

Reflection & summary

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negatively the global result if not well manage.

3-Turn the desert into forest through hard and smart work

The manager needs to have capability and ability to identify the potential of every team member and build a homogenous team to overcome work and people management challenges to achieve great results. This principle was applied with main focus on the passengers. Within a very short period, two quarters maximum, we have transformed a desert into a forest. The source company for the same staffs was so surprised that their people can deliver better than what they were thinking about them. This has been a beginning of a success story. The strategy applied was very simple: Fit into the team and establish links; Achieve quick wins and gain trust; Stay on the right track.

4-Continuous improvement as guideline

As our company Huawei grows

rapidly, the first Guinea Managed Service delivery performance follows the same trend. This success could become a past if continuous improvement is not set as guideline. How can we keep improving when you have realized unforeseen result and ranked this OPCO into the leading position within his group in term of KPI’s and SLA performance? We come in with the idea of Quality Assurance.

Before 2015, Huawei was not the Top1 of telecom industry. Our benchmark was the competitors leading the market. Now Huawei is the Top1; no benchmark for comparison. The only way to be the first choice of our customers is the QUALITY of our products and the QUALITY of our services. Beyond our project, we believe that this value is at company wise.

5-Being crazy about customer satisfaction

Customer centricity is the top1 among Huawei core values. We exist because our customers exist. We should serve them with respect, with integrity. We have to support their business to grow, and then we can expect that our business will grow. This respect the logic of Push me, Pull you. Once you know how to apply this, you become your customer best

friend.A happy customer can bring

to your business a thousand of new customers. But an unhappy customer will churn and will also make thousands of other customers avoid entering in business with you.

Just considering these facts, we need to take care of customer requirements in the best way and make them feel happy and considered. The best way is to meet your goal and exceed customer expectation, and then we can expect their commitment.

6-Reflection & summaryWhatever you will have to

do at work or in the life, follow the right process and there is nothing to be neglected. Work as a team and be open to other team members; you need to be dedicated and show example or lead by example; take initiative as well to help others discover their mistakes and correct them for a continuous improvement; Never forget that customer needs to be put first because they are our reason to exist. If they don’t exist, neither will we.

So start by what is possible, go to extra mile, suddenly you will find yourself doing what is considered as impossible to others.

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Ready to Be a Good Business PartnerBy Luo Jianggan/Tanzania

OEC

Mr. Zhou Daiqi

Mr. Zhang Yongquan

Mr. Li Peng

Future Stars of 2015 New OEC members are taking the oath

Voting for OEC members

On June 18, 2016, the Tanzania Rep Office held its election of OEC members at the Bahari Beach Hotel.

Zhou Daiqi, Huawei's Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer, kicked off the meeting with a CEC/OEC keynote speech. He told the 185 participants about the OEC's establishment and operations. Jiang Xisheng, from the Secretariat Office of the Board of Directors, then urged everyone to actively engage in the election, and then Luo Jianggan, former OEC director, reviewed the OEC's previous work.

After the election rules were announced and agreed to by all candidates and participants, a total of 14 candidates delivered their election manifestos.

Amid a lively atmosphere, eight OEC members were selected from among the 14 candidates by vote. Witnessed by all attendees, the elected OEC members signed the OEC Commissioner Commitment and took an oath to comply with the Commitment.

Zhang Yongquan, CEO of the Tanzania Rep Office, told participants

about his expectations and requirements for the new OEC members. After the speech by the CEO, all the Future Stars of 2015 were awarded with glorious medals and flowers.

Towards the end of the meeting, Li Peng, President of the Eastern and Southern Africa Region, gave a speech, and started by expressing his gratitude to Ji Yongcheng, a senior expert, for his years of contribution to the OEC of the Eastern and Southern Africa Region. He also requested that the OECs of the region and representative offices should localize operations to contribute even more to promoting business growth and eliminating BCG violations.

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Issue 267 May 31, 2016

issue 267 may 31, 2016 - app.huawei.com

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