Wolf Culture: How Ren Zhengfei Forged a Pack of 'Native Wolves' into a Fearsome Global Legion

Prologue: A Resignation Letter from a "Wolf"

In 2007, an article titled "Why I Resigned from Huawei" circulated widely on the Chinese internet.

The author was a long-time Huawei employee. In his letter, with a tone mixed with love and hate, he described a Huawei world that was unimaginable to outsiders: a place with endless battles to fight, endless meetings to attend, and endless overtime to work. A place that revered the team spirit of "celebrating together in victory, and fighting to the death to save each other in defeat." A place permeated by a powerful, suffocating, and extreme hunger for success.

He summarized this culture in three words: "Wolf Culture."

From then on, "wolfishness" became Huawei's most famous and most controversial label.

To the outside world, it seemed to represent ruthlessness, heartlessness, and a win-at-all-costs mentality. But within Huawei, it was revered as the creed for survival and victory.

So, what exactly is Huawei's "Wolf Culture"? And how, under Ren Zhengfei's shaping, did it become the core organizational DNA of this company?

Act I: The Three Characteristics of a Wolf

Ren Zhengfei himself does not shy away from the "wolf" label. On several occasions, he has systematically elaborated on the three major characteristics of the "wolf" he admires.

First, a keen sense of smell.

A wolf's ability to spot opportunities is almost obsessively sensitive. The faintest scent of blood from miles away is enough to excite it and spur it into immediate action.

Ren Zhengfei demands that Huawei's employees, especially those in marketing, possess this same wolf-like sense of smell. They must always maintain a high degree of sensitivity to the market, customers, and competitors. They must be the first to spot an opportunity and pounce on it when others are still unable to see or understand.

Huawei's early rise through the "encircling the cities from the countryside" strategy is a perfect embodiment of this keen sense of smell. When all the international giants were fighting bloody battles in the big cities, Huawei smelled the huge hidden opportunities in the vast rural market.

Second, a fearless offensive spirit.

A wolf is a born fighter. Once it locks onto a target, it will launch attack after attack at any cost until the prey is taken down. It never fears failure, nor does it fear opponents stronger than itself.

Ren Zhengfei demands that Huawei's teams also have this wolf-like aggressiveness. He has repeatedly emphasized that markets are not waited for, but won through fighting. When faced with an opportunity, there can be no hesitation, no wavering. They must concentrate their superior forces for a "saturation attack," using the "pressure principle" to achieve a breakthrough at the most critical point.

In the lawsuit of the century against Cisco, Huawei demonstrated this offensive spirit of "charging ahead knowing full well the dangers." Faced with a "strangulation" attempt by the industry hegemon, Huawei did not back down but chose to fight head-on, ultimately carving out its own space.

Third, the ability to hunt as a team.

Wolves are never lone fighters. They are natural experts in teamwork. When hunting, a wolf pack has a strict division of labor: scouting, encircling, ambushing, and coordinating, all in perfect order. It is this unparalleled teamwork that allows a wolf pack to capture prey several times its own size.

Ren Zhengfei regards this team spirit as the highest realm of "wolfishness." He knows well that in modern business competition, the era of individual heroism is long gone. For a company to succeed, it must rely on strong teamwork.

To this end, Huawei designed a complex "iron triangle" operational model (consisting of a customer account manager, a solutions expert, and a delivery expert) to ensure that in any frontline project, an efficient, coordinated, and precise combat unit can be formed.

Act II: "A Bird That Cannot Be Burned to Death is a Phoenix"

To inject "wolfishness" into the bloodstream of every employee, Ren Zhengfei and Huawei established an almost brutal system of selection, incentives, and elimination.

First, there is "ideological unity." Every new employee who joins Huawei must undergo months of militarized training, often described as "brainwashing." During this process, the company repeatedly instills Huawei's core values in the new employees, especially the philosophy of "customer-centricity and being striver-oriented."

Second, there is "results-oriented" assessment. At Huawei, there is no credit for hard work, only for results. All value assessment is based solely on whether you have contributed "responsible results" to the company. To motivate employees to charge forward, Huawei has designed lucrative salary and bonus packages, allowing the true "strivers" to earn rewards far exceeding the industry average.

The most famous manifestation of this is Huawei's "mattress culture." Almost every Huawei employee receives a mattress upon joining. The meaning is self-evident: overtime is the norm, the office is the battlefield, and one must always be ready to pull an all-nighter for a battle.

Of course, with incentives come eliminations. Huawei is also one of the companies that most resolutely implements a "rank-and-yank" system. For employees who cannot adapt to the high-intensity work or fail to continuously contribute value, the company will mercilessly let them go.

Ren Zhengfei has a famous saying: "A bird that cannot be burned to death is a phoenix." He uses this high-pressure, high-incentive, high-elimination environment to screen and forge an iron army that truly possesses "wolfishness."

Epilogue: Wolfishness and Humanity

Undoubtedly, "Wolf Culture" has been the core driving force behind Huawei's growth from an unknown small company into a global tech giant over the past thirty years. It has given Huawei astonishing resilience and combat strength in the face of market crises and pressure from giants time and again.

However, this strong culture is not without its controversies.

Outsiders criticize it for being too cold, turning employees into emotionless money-making machines and eroding their humanity. Within Huawei, issues like "overtime" and "rank-and-yank" also frequently lead to employee complaints and reflection.

Ren Zhengfei himself is not unaware of these criticisms and reflections.

In recent years, he has begun to mention "absorbing the energy of the universe over a cup of coffee" more and more in his internal speeches, emphasizing openness and compromise. He has also started to pay attention to the physical and mental health of employees, advocating for a work-life balance.

This may indicate that Huawei's "Wolf Culture" is entering a new phase. It is trying to evolve from a "wild wolf" purely pursuing survival and victory into a "pack leader" that is more balanced, wiser, and more humane.

But no matter how it evolves, that hunger for victory, that spirit of teamwork, and that constant sense of crisis have been deeply imprinted in the company's bones like DNA, becoming its indelible background color.

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Key Takeaways

1. Culture is a Force Multiplier for Combat Strength: A distinct and powerful corporate culture can unite a group of individuals from different backgrounds into a strong organization with a unified goal and coordinated action, thus unleashing a combat strength greater than the sum of its parts.
2. A Sense of Crisis is the Best Driver: One of a leader's core tasks is to continuously convey market pressure and a sense of crisis to the organization, preventing it from falling into comfort and complacency. Huawei's "wolfishness" is essentially a profound "crisis-driven" culture.
3. There is No Perfect Culture, Only a Suitable One: While "Wolf Culture" led to Huawei's success, it also brought its own problems and costs. This shows that every corporate culture has its applicable boundaries and contexts. What a leader needs to do is to continuously and dynamically optimize and manage the culture according to the company's stage of development and changes in the external environment.