Hugo Zhang
Head of Government Affairs China
Beijing, China
Investment in talent, trust and a long view continues to inspire me.
I joined Elsevier, a RELX business, in 2006. Prior to that, I worked in Chinese central government responsible for publishing policies. At that time, very few people were leaving comfortable government jobs to join the private sector. China has a history of central and sophisticated civil bureaucratic rule. Central government jobs are always well respected in society with many people comparing them to a ‘Gold Rice Bowl’ - meaning guaranteed lifetime work. So my departure was surprising to many of my colleagues and friends.
To reflect my journey with RELX so far, three things stand out.
First is investment in talent. To quote my former boss Sharon Ruwalt, MD of Elsevier China, I was her ‘high risk hire’. I had no business management experience at the time and it was a huge transition for me personally. But she took the risk anyway. Fortunately, RELX has a systematic approach to training young talent and coaching new people managers. I was assigned two very experienced senior executives as my mentors, and attended several enterprise-wide high quality training programs. Thanks to this, I quickly adapted to the multi-national culture and acquired skills I needed to do the job.
Second is trust in people. Using my personal experience again, I started my job as Director of Business Development in Elsevier’s Greater China team. Back then, the team was very small - fewer than 20 people in Beijing. My responsibilities were actually broad - including local business strategy and development, journal cooperation and marketing, corporate communications and serving as vice chairman for a joint venture Elsevier has with a leading STM publisher. This was huge trust in a young person who just left the government.
Third is the vision and long view of senior leaders. China is a strategically important market for RELX. As the head of Elsevier and later RELX China, I got a lot of exposure to our senior leaders. One thing I observed is that our executives' strong vision and long view for China. We have long-term strategies, cultivate long-term partnerships and develop people who stay longer with us. See more in this story.
Twenty years is not a short time. But I still feel excited, inspired and have a lot of new things to learn.