Forum pays tribute to late Samsung chief's captivating leadership

Samsung revisited the leadership and strategies of late Chairman Lee Kun-hee at a conference, emphasizing the need to empower top talents and break the traditional hierarchical approach.

Prominent business management scholars and Ho-Am Foundation Chairman Kim Hwang-sik, fourth from front left, pose for a photo at a forum titled “International Conference Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the Samsung New Management: A Tribute to Lee Kun-hee” held at Samsung’s Seocho building in southern Seoul on Wednesday. [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

The late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee energized the once small trading company into one of the world's largest electronics makers with his strong can-do spirit, best summarized in his famous Frankfurt declaration in 1993.

The deceased patriarch called on executives to “change everything except your wife and children” to better compete with competitors, providing a catalyst to propel Samsung to become the 23rd most valuable company in the world.

Samsung Electronics revisited the late former chairman's leadership and business strategies on Wednesday at a forum attended by prominent scholars at the company's Seocho office building in southern Seoul. It was titled “International Conference Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the Samsung New Management: A Tribute to Lee Kun-hee.”

The management gurus referenced the late chairman's strategy of bestowing core responsibilities and power to top talents, and urged the remaining company leaders to do the same, breaking the traditional top-down approach that many Korean companies still dominantly rely on.

The company now sits in 23rd place after global firms such as Apple, Microsoft, Aramco, Alphabet and Amazon, with a market cap of $334.31 billion in 2023, according to global market researcher Statista. In order for Samsung to take another leap forward, the experts unanimously emphasized that fostering of young talent, and more importantly, maintaining them by assigning them to appropriate positions, is crucial.

Professor Rita McGrath of Columbia Business School speaks at the forum on Wednesday in southern Seoul. [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

“When a competitive advantage is exhausted and can no longer deliver the future to you, you need to be creating the next generation of advantage and moving your organization's center of gravity to a new place,” said Prof. Rita McGrath of Columbia Business School. “I think part of the genius of Chairman Lee was, he was one of the few leaders in the 90s who truly grasped the implications of this. He wanted his company to be able to grasp that it was part of a world that was shifting rapidly. It’s really interesting that he saw back in the 90s, before the rest of the world realized it, that the digital revolution was truly going to change everything.”

McGrath understands that it is important for leaders to break down the corporate structure in smaller units so that the employees can work together in a more efficient form of management.

“Maybe functions [departments] aren’t the right way to organize. Maybe what we want instead are single credit, full time people that work together on specific, single tasks for a brief period of time,” she said.

“Can we break down things and do them in parallel as much as possible? New technologies make that possible. Digital technologies allow us to do a lot more work in parallel than we ever had to do before. […] I call them ‘permissionless organizations’ where people are able to make decisions at the edges of the organization where leaders are as discovery-driven as possible. Permissionless structures allow you to move quickly and I think that in itself could be a competitive advantage especially when coupled with the organization's emphasis on talent discoveries as a leader.”

Strategy advisor and emeritus professor Roger L. Martin of the University of Toronto speaks at the forum on Wednesday in southern Seoul. [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

Emeritus Professor Roger L. Martin of the University of Toronto alluded to “crisis of engagement” in which employees part of a big company feel as if they’re replaceable and can’t find their significance in their community, thus making it difficult to stay engaged.

“I think the job, [...] for any company like Samsung in the modern world, is to figure out how to achieve the level of control and coordination you need to achieve [and] reinforce the happiness [of engagement],” Martin said. “If the big corporations of today don’t do that, they won’t be able to take advantage of their size.”

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]