Li Wenzhi, former Huawei executive, becomes the head of the CFO Office at Li Auto

Li Wenzhi, a former Huawei executive, has been appointed as the head of the CFO Office at Li Auto, marking the completion of the latest organizational restructuring at Li Auto.

Who is Li Wenzhi, and why did Li Auto decide to make this organizational adjustment in advance? Let’s delve deeper into the matter.

The Huawei Veteran: Li Wenzhi

Li Wenzhi graduated from the University of Electronic Science and Technology in 1997, and joined Huawei as a fresh graduate. He spent 18 years of his career at Huawei, where he went to the African and Indonesian markets, and later became the Director of the Huawei Global HRBP Management Department. He then left Huawei to venture out on his own.

In 2015, Li Wenzhi and three other co-founders established Dmall, a vertical SaaS platform that helps physical retailers achieve digital transformation through e-commerce. However, the business failed, and Li Wenzhi went on to join Zhongsi Technology, a LeEco investment, which was later merged into Coolpad. Li’s last position before joining Li Auto was the Vice President of IoT Business at 360 Group.

The First Major Restructuring

In December 2022, Li Auto carried out the most in-depth organizational restructuring since its establishment.

Li Xiang himself oversees the “Product and Business Group”, responsible for strategy, product, brand, three-end (Retail, Delivery, Maintenance), charging network, and other departments;

The former Chief Engineer of Li Auto, Ma Donghui, was promoted to the President and entered the board of directors, responsible for the “R&D and Supply Group”, managing R&D and the supply chain;

Xie Yan is responsible for the “System and Computing Group”, responsible for building the computing platform, operating system, system security, and intelligent cloud platform departments;

Li Tie is responsible for the “Organizational and Financial Group”, overseeing the financial, administrative, accounting, and process departments, and reporting to Li Xiang and Li Wenzhi, who serves as the head of the CFO Office.After a major organizational restructuring, IDEAL now has five functional departments: Strategy Department, Product Department, Commercial Department, Supply Department, Process Department, Organizational Department, and Financial Department.

Within these seven management departments are seven first-level processes, namely:

• DSTE (from strategy to execution);

• IPD (Integrated Product Development);

• IPMS (Integrated Product Marketing & Sales);

• ISC (Integrated Supply Chain);

• BT&IT, LTD, IFS (Integrated Financial Transition).

This forms a matrix organization similar to Huawei’s matrix structure, realizing the minimal operational cycle.

Why should we change?

In theory, the orders and actual sales of IDEAL’s L series models are doing very well. Even the first product, the IDEAL ONE, left behind an impressive sales record of 200,000.

However, the delisting of IDEAL ONE was the trigger for the overall incident. The entire event caused IDEAL to lose 800 million yuan, seriously affecting the gross profit level of the entire quarter, which plummeted to 12%.

This is a reflection of the fact that the IPD system did not penetrate all departments. IPD only circulated between the product and development teams, and the sales department was isolated, resulting in the occurrence of this event.

On the other side, Li Xiang must proactively start organizational change to meet the target of one-hundred-billion-yuan revenue:

The company is undergoing organizational restructuring in order to give IDEAL the power to achieve annual revenue of one hundred billion yuan. At this stage, any catastrophic decision or low-quality product delivery will have a devastating impact on the company.

The reform at the top of the organization has basically taken shape, and each department will continue to adjust according to requirements.

Whether IDEAL’s ambition for one hundred billion yuan in revenue can be met in the future still remains to be verified by time.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.