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Eight Principles for Global Businesses – How One Company Grew from $3 billion to $39 billion From The Lenovo Way, co-authored by Gina Qiao, president of human resources, Lenovo From its humble beginnings in an abandoned guard shack in China, Lenovo has grown to become the #1 personal computer company in the world. As we made the decision to become a global company and subsequently purchased the IBM PC division and its iconic ThinkPad product line in 2005, we had to learn how to navigate between the East and West in culture, language, and thought processes, in order to work…

Five Things Not to Do When Working in China From The Lenovo Way, co-authored by Yolanda Conyers, vice president, global human resources operations and chief diversity officer, Lenovo My passion for diversity started at a very young age; it was in my blood. I knew what it felt like to be treated as an outsider, and I wanted nothing more than to create a climate in which everyone had a voice and a place at the table. So when the opportunity to lead the culture integration of Lenovo through the acquisition of the IBM PC division and its iconic ThinkPad…

It's no easy task for a Chinese company to acquire an American one. I learned this recently when I spoke with Gina Qiao, senior vice president of global HR at Lenovo — the world's No. 1 seller of PCs — and her colleague, Yolanda Conyers, chief diversity officer and VP of global HR operations. The pair recently co-authored a book this year titled “The Lenovo Way: Managing a Diverse Global Company for Optimal Performance” about the process of acquiring IBM's personal computer business in 2005. And boy, were there complications. Here were just a few, and how they resolved them: The meeting-request dilemma Soon…

Do you have the 4 main ingredients to manage diversity in your business? Gina Qiao and Yolanda Conyers, authors of The Lenovo Way In 2005, when Lenovo took on the challenge of acquiring IBM’s personal computer (PC) division and its iconic ThinkPad product line, we knew we had a lot of learning to do, and we had to do it quickly. The marketplace was not going to wait for us to figure out how to integrate our eastern and western cultures. We had to jump in head-first and find ways to leverage our diversity in order to produce relevant products…

This is what corporate culture change looks like: a chief executive camped out in the lobby of headquarters, wearing a “Hello, my name is…” sticker and shaking hands with employees as they walk through the door. That’s what Yang Yuanqing, the head of personal-computer maker Lenovo Group Ltd., did in 1999, according to a new book by two Lenovo executives detailing the Beijing-based company’s transformation from a quintessentially Chinese firm into a global giant with operations in 60 countries. Previously, employees were used to calling their boss “Chief Executive Officer Yang,” or Yang Zong in Mandarin, a common practice in the formal, hierarchical style of…

Books about successful technology companies are usually written by the entrepreneurs who founded the companies. It is truly remarkable for a book about a company which has grown from nothing to one of the largest computer companies in the world, written by an employee with a HR background and another employee with a diversity background. However, that is what we find with The Lenovo Way: Managing a Diverse Global Company for Optimal Performance, by Gina Qiao and Yolanda Conyers, suggesting that the key features of the company are at least as much tied up in its attitude towards employees and diversity…