Ten years of efforts have brought us valuable experiences. We have witnessed the ups and downs of China’s business consultation industry and traded our wisdom and sweat for honor and reputation. With the efforts of all our staffs, the Group is about to reach maturity.

Recalling the very beginning when Dives was just established, I remember once a friend of mine asked, “You had a wonderful job. Why did you give it up and choose to do business consultation?” Back then, I actually didn’t give him a clear answer, because I knew that it could not be explained in simple words, and the most forceful answer to the question was, hopefully, to forge a brand with considerable influence in the industry after several years of development. I observed lots of enterprises in stagnation and lack of competitiveness and realized that it was not a simple problem of technological short slab but a series of issues caused by their low-level systematic management. Thus, I devoted myself to providing enterprises with solutions to practical problems through management consulting, since there was a huge demand in the industry. During the ten years of actual practices, I have been working with entrepreneurial leaders of various types, which enables me to further realize that as an entrepreneurial leader, especially a top leader, if his horizon is not broad enough and his leadership cannot be enhanced, all the efforts of establishing an advanced management system will be in vain. In terms of such demands in the market for the upgrading of leaders’ thinking patterns and the enhancement of leadership, my team and I have been making great efforts in the development of the course of “West-point Leadership Training” so as to help more entrepreneurial leaders and entrepreneurs get enhanced.

Dives has not been developing very smoothly in the business consultation industry during the past ten years. First, the industry just has a history of20 years in China, and there have been many problems; the most outstanding one is that, compared to the industrial situations in the foreign countries where management consulting is regarded as a profession which calls for profound knowledge and intelligence, it is of vey low standard in China; thus, tens of thousands of business consultation firms spring up throughout China, while few of them can survive after 3 years and even fewer after 5 years; apparently, enterprises in the industry differ greatly in quality and excellency due to the lack of necessary supervision and self-restraint. There are still many Chinese people and enterprises that misunderstand the true meaning of management consulting and see the profession as a business of cons men. However, in fact, good management consultants are the doctors of enterprises. They “diagnose” based on the “symptoms”, prescribe “medication” accordingly, and help enterprises get out of difficulty and make new, remarkable performances in the market, showing the real value of management consulting. Among so many Chinese enterprises, Huawei is one of those which I respect most. During the process of corporate transformation and procedural regulation, the company has been working with many business consultation firms to seek solutions, and undoubtedly, the result turn out very encouraging. To “borrow brains” from outside is one of those important factors which have forged Huawei’s success. During the past 10 years, I have got the feeling so deeply that many enterprises are in dire need of reform, and they need aid from outsiders, if they want to yield successful results; however, the heads of many enterprises often cannot realize the positive value of management consulting, and they fight alone in reforms—chances for their success are slim, and lots of them even totally fail. A management consulting firm is a third party, i.e. the outsider, and consultative experts can see the problems which insiders usually neglect. They speak out and touch the problems about which insiders even dare not to talk. Management consulting firms play an irreplaceable role in effectively pushing forward corporate reforms.

My team and I have confronted challenges one after another during the past 10 years, and there have been joys of success and also pains resulted from failures. Sometimes, we felt comforted, while at some moments, we sighed with regret. We have been repeatedly asking ourselves what on earth has been supporting us. Of course, the prime support has been from our respectable clients—no matter whether they are among the Top 500, big state-owned enterprises, joint ventures or private-owned enterprises; it is their recognition that has been pushing us forward. In the meantime, we also owe our success to the good cooperation among our team members and their practicality, as human resource is one of its most important assets for a management consulting firm. We have never paid less attention to the construction of our governance mechanism and corporate culture, and we attach great importance to human-oriented management in the Group. To discover talents, cultivate talents and put them on key positions is one of our priorities concerning corporate development. We regard the improvement of the comprehensive quality of our staffs as the key to the development of our corporate culture.

As a consulting brand which has been providing services for the manufacturing and engineering construction industries for a long time, Dives has its clear strategic goals. In the next 5 years, we will focus on the cost-oriented, lean manufacturing programs and the development of refined management in the manufacturing and engineering construction industries of China. In the meantime, based on consultation case study, we will develop series of applied management courses. We will continue to take advantage of our cooperative relationships with prestigious colleges and universities, such as the School of Management, Lanzhou University, the School of Management, Tianjin University, the School of Business Management, Hunan University, the Civil Engineering College, Hunan University, Tongji University and Leipzig Graduate School of Management, on talent cultivation and explore ways of enhancing the capacity of Chinese enterprises on professional training and corporate management.

“So many deeds cry out to be done,/ And always urgently;/The world rolls on,/Time presses” (By Mao Zedong). No matter how arduous the journey ahead will be, we will stick to the practice and development of business consultation in China. We believe that more wonders will be in store for us in the future.