Weili Kang: A gentleman in a dangerous shopping mall-President and CEO of Lanier Universal Corporation
[Exclusive interviews with leaders]
Translated by Mo Zhuoyijuan Xiurun/Weng Jingyu
The so-called Customer Vision is to view the business from the perspective of customers, employees and shareholders, respond to needs and exceed expectations.
∼Lanier’s Customer Vision
Once the diagnosis was confirmed, I immediately summoned my senior staff to explain the condition. During that time, we prayed for each other and grew closer. The support from everyone in the company is heart-warming, and everyone is trying their best to help me in every aspect.
Q Do you come from a religious background?
Yes, I grew up in a Christian family. My father was a preacher. I have benefited a lot from his words and deeds. If the preacher's words and deeds are inconsistent, there will be "big problems." In my eyes, my father always lived out his testimony.
I was saved when I was eleven years old, and experienced a crisis of faith when I was fifteen or sixteen. The main reason was related to my father, who was expelled from the church that year. At that time, I was at war with myself: "My father is the best person I know, but the church treats him like this. I never want to have anything to do with the church anymore." So from high school to college, I broke away from the church. Fortunately, God has given me a wonderful Christian wife, Bernadine. Shortly after my marriage, I decided to return to the right path and return to the church.
The birth of my first child in June 1958 meant a lot to me. I looked at this sweet little girl and said to myself:"I have a responsibility to this person, and in the eyes of God, Bonnet and I have a responsibility to raise her and guide her." ThatIt is an important step towards "maturity" in my life.
Q You have stayed in Lanier almost all your life since you came out of society?
It was my first job out of college, so to speak. From taking office on June 13, 1955 to today, Lanier's bosses have changed again and again, but I have always stayed at Lanier.
Q You were often transferred during the early days of Lanier. Please talk about the meaning of faith to you during that period?
In 1959, our family moved to Augusta, Georgia, and attended a small local church. The preacher was very good and had a profound influence on me. We were enthusiastically involved in church service, where I taught Sunday School for the first time and was ordained a deacon.
Q How has faith impacted your life in the business world?
My faith drives me to work hard and keep my promises to my customers and employees. As a Christian, my words and deeds should be consistent. During that period, I gave up some habits in my life that did not please God.
One of my bosses, the big boss of the Atlanta headquarters, talked to me between 1959 and 1960. He said, "Weili, I noticed that you no longer drink alcohol or even socialize."
I said, "Keane, you're right."
He said: "Did you know that if you don't drink in social situations, you will never be able to stay in this company? If you invite me to your home as a guest but don't give me a glass of wine, wouldn't that be too disrespectful!"
I said, "Keane, if that's the case, I'd rather stay in Augusta National and be a top salesman for the rest of my life."
Within a year, he summoned me to Atlanta to discuss transferring me back to Baton Rouge and promoting me to regional manager. This means that my words, deeds and character are more important than socializing and drinking!
The funny thing is, the big boss threatened me, but promoted me. Four years later, I moved back to Atlanta and became general manager of the answering machine business. In 1977, I was invited to attend a meeting where it was announced that we would separate from our then-parent company and become a listed company on the New York Stock Exchange. In addition, I was selected to serve as president and CEO of the new company.
It was so unexpected, one of the founder’s children was there and I thought he would take over the company, but instead they handed it over to me.
Q How do you explain your promotion within the company?
Years later, I read Psalm 75:5-7:"Do not lift up your horns, do not speak with stiff necks. Exaltation does not come from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. Only God determines that He humbles one and exalts another."
In short, do not brag; all promotion comes from the Lord. Keane and the people on the board may think they decided to promote me, but in fact, it was the Lord Himself who pushed it.
Psalm 75:10 also says: “I will cut off all the horns of the wicked, but the horns of the righteous will be exalted.” The Lord cuts off the horns of the ungodly and exalts the horns of the godly and faithful. . This reminds me of two things: first, you don’t have to curry favor with others for a job; second, you shouldn’t take credit for getting a job because it was given to you by the Lord. From then on, I often use these scriptures to teach young people to be ambitious, but the prerequisite is to completely obey God.
Once, a student in my Sunday school class wanted to know why I didn’t drink. I mentioned five reasons, two of which were based on the Bible: 1. If you don’t drink, you have no chance of becoming an alcoholic! 2. I don’t want to have a bad influence on my children. Since then, I have been careful about my words and deeds so as not to mislead others.
Q You are a Christian and have been at the top of a non-Christian company for many years. What does that mean from a practical point of view?
Regardless of whether the boss is a Christian or not, they still value sincerity, integrity, trustworthiness, punctuality, courtesy and other qualities that everyone cherishes. Although Christians may not necessarily have those qualities, Christian faith is the foundation. In business, people expect you to establish trust and good relationships with employees, bosses at all levels, and staff. However, this is rarely seen in today's shopping malls.
Proverbs 22:1:"A good reputation is better than great wealth"It had a huge impact on my early career. That verse became the guiding force throughout my life, helping me make all the decisions I made in my company.
First, be determined to earn a good reputation with your wife and family. I have been married for forty-four years, and extramarital affairs are common in shopping malls today. If your employees know that even your wife doesn't trust you, I don't understand how you can expect your employees to trust you?
Secondly, the company should try its best to meet the needs of customers. According to Total Quality Management (TQM) research, focusing on customers is the top priority, and everything you do must exceed customer expectations - in addition to what customers deserve, you must also provide additional services.
We follow the old saying of Tom Peters: "Blow less, pay more." I think this is the best interpretation of "good reputation". Before adopting all-round quality control, we already did a very good job in customer service, and the all-round quality control process has enabled us to strive for excellence.
Q Do you have a company philosophy or motto?
Our vision, mission and action statements reflect these principles. Once I am no longer here, I hope these values will endure.
I have always worked for a listed company and had to face questioning from the board of directors. They may not all be Christians, but they all know my background. When responding, you don’t need to speak all the great principles of the Bible, but you need to translate them into different expressions. In fact, our company’s action statement is written based on the Ten Commandments, but the text of the Ten Commandments cannot be seen at all. You might as well do some philosophical analysis of the Ten Commandments, find out the motivations, and then apply them in business. You see strong family values, respect for the individual, and all sorts of things that draw from the Ten Commandments.
Q Please tell us about a serious health problem you recently experienced.
In 1996, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. For many days, I kept crying to God: "I am in trouble!" and "Lord, why me?"
Job 5:25-27 helped me get through this because it says that your descendants will be like green grass on the earth. I have twenty-one grandchildren, so this has been accomplished; and it also says that you will return to the grave at an old age, like a sheaf that has been collected in time. I regard these words as a personal letter from the Lord to me.
Have you ever received a rhema from the Lord? When you pray, ask the Lord to enlighten you, and when you study the Bible, He will give you the answer. That is what I have experienced. God used those verses in the book of Job to comfort me that I will not die for the time being until the day the Lord has destined me to die. Whether I have prostate cancer or not, I will live according to God’s plan. Finish my life.
Those verses conclude by saying: Know that this is for your own good. From the diagnosis, I began to see some benefits. Life is short, and you should do something valuable with the rest of your life. I did a lot of research and study, and started eating a vegan diet. Eventually, the disease was controlled and the cancer cells no longer expanded but shrank. This situation lasted for three years.
When Lanier and Harris split up in 1999, Harris left a large amount of debt and business was declining, which put me under a lot of pressure. Stress is very detrimental to the immune system, so my PSA (prostate-specific antigen, which was widely used to diagnose prostate cancer in the 1990s, and is generally less than 3.9ng/m as normal) index began to rise. It once dropped to more than three points, and then rose to 3.7, 4.7, and 5.7 in a very short period of time. I'm worried because this means the tumor is growing very quickly.
Q How do you deal with the bad news that the tumor has grown?
My good friend Larry. Larry Burkett (1939-2003) introduced me to some people at Emory University and took me to the University of California, San Francisco for a special spectroscopic MRI. Photographs showed that the tumor was larger than we imagined, and MRI also showed that it was squeezing the capsule around the prostate and could rupture at any time.
We returned immediately, set a date for the operation in Atlanta, and invited Dr. Marshall from Amory. Dr. Marshall is a great doctor and he did a great job operating on me. Since then, I haven't had any side effects, my PSA has dropped to zero, and I couldn't be happier.
Since then, I can’t wait to find time to care for other men with cancer, especially prostate cancer. I enjoy witnessing to others, especially in meetings with brothers. I am convinced that God has His special purpose in allowing me to experience all this, and I am confident that I can accomplish what I have been asked to do both personally and as a company.
Q What advice would you give to someone considering going into business?
For young Christians, the most ideal thing is to have their own business and run a Christian business in their own way. Of course, not everyone has the opportunity. The next best thing is to sell products. The more successful you are in marketing, the greater your freedom. People will not force you to cooperate with the company's social ecosystem, and time can be used flexibly.
Furthermore, if the Lord is willing to reward you and bless you with money, marketing is really easy—just give you a lot of business. But after you make a lot of money, He wants you to use it appropriately. What do you do with the money? Do you tithe? Do you use it for main work? Do you see Him as the owner of all your money and you as just the steward? What do you think about the money? These are worthy of careful consideration by young people who want to go into business.
*Taken from the book Corporate Giants: Personal Stories of Faith and Finance, by Bob Darden, Robert Darden, and PJ Richardson, published by FH Revell, 2002. The Chinese version will be published by Flying Eagle Press in the near future. Published with permission.
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A gentleman in a sinister shopping mall
In the fierce competition of photocopiers, answering machines, fax machines and printers, Lanier Worldwide, Inc., headquartered in Atlanta, successfully competes with other peers: Xerox, IKON and Canon. Lanier has 2,600 employees and sales of $1.325 billion. Today, it is owned by Ricoh, a Japanese business machine manufacturer, and more than 40% of its turnover is from transactions outside the United States.
Over the past decade, Lanier has been extremely successful under Kang's leadership. No matter how fierce the competition is, Weili Kang has always lived a beautiful Christian testimony. In the dangerous business world, he is "a gentleman among gentlemen."
Weili Kang first worked as a field engineer in the Lanier Customer Service Department in Atlanta in 1958, and then rose through the ranks, which was amazing.
1962-Baton Rouge, Louisiana/District Manager
1967 - Atlanta Answering Machine Business/Vice President and Sales Manager
1972 - Answering machine and 3M photocopier business/executive vice president and national sales manager
1974 - Oxford Industries (formerly Lanier's parent company)/Director
1977-President, Lanier Business Products, Inc.
1983 - Lanier acquires Harris Corporation/remains president
1987 - Harris and 3M Document Products, Inc./President and CEO
1989 - President and CEO of Lanier Universal Inc., an officer of Harris Corporation
1999 - Lanier separates from Harris and becomes chairman and CEO of Lanier Universal Inc.
Perhaps the most important day was March 2000, when Kang successfully overcame his most difficult challenge - cancer. Just like his outstanding achievements in the corporate world, Weili Kang defeated the disease and gave glory to God.