与合资公司的外方老板讨论工作的邮件（2004）

武夷山

Dear Dr. XXX:

First please accept my remote best wishes for the Year of the Rooster!

I was promoted as the Chief Engineer ( a title at the same level as the deputy director general of ISTIC) in early 2002. Since then, XX Company is one of the business units that I take charge for. In March 2004, I was appointed as the deputy chairman of XX Company, to replace Mr. X, who was retired in 2003. I hope that I could cooperate with you well in the future and learn from your rich experience. I have thought about how better to develop XX for a long time. Here are my personal observations.

Above all, I think that XX Company should be managed more formally. At the start-up stage, timely and flexible decision making is everything. As the size of company grows, however, it has to adopt increasingly formal management so as to reduce the risk possibly induced by hasty decision. By the end of this November, XX Company has obtained 24 million yuans of revenues for 2004. this size calls for tighter discipline than before. So far many important decisions were made quite quickly by Mr. XX without much consultation with either XX and myself. For instance, in November 2002 he signed an agreement with a foreign company on behalf of XX Asia, XX China and XX Company before we checked the contents of the agreement. Later, the similar thing happened again with the signed agreement with another foreign company. It might be possible that his decision to choose these two partners would turn out as very wise one, but it seems not recommendable to go over us.

The second, since XX Company registered itself as a consulting company at its founding, consulting service is within its legal business scope. Recent years have witnessed rapid development of consulting industry in China and the potential market for consulting is huge. It’s a pity that XX Company has not tried anything in this regard in addition to journal publishing. Considering the fact that China Association for Science and Technology Consulting, which is an influential national association headquartered in ISTIC building and its Secretary General is a formal staff of ISTIC, could assert great impact in China’s consulting market, XX Company should take advantage of this liaison and make some trial splash in this field.

The third, up to now, each magazine in XX Company functions like a traditional family, with the president being the father (although all our presidents are women) who hold huge power. Here exists a horrible risk: what will we do if the “father” defects to our competitors or just quits some day? We lack any knowledge (in particular tacit knowledge) sharing mechanism among the magazines and within XX Company. We have to think about how to integrate vital client databases and other important businesses at the company level rather than leave them as the assets of individual magazines or even individual managers.

I would like to know your comments about the above views before I discuss with Mr. XX.

Best regards,

Wu Yishan