'King of entrepreneurs' enters new arena

Major challenges

"I would say we had reached maturity when our market value hits 10 billion yuan at least, doubling our existing size," said Sun.

The biggest challenge for Lakala, according to Sun, comes from talent management.

The number of the company's employees has ballooned from the original 1,000 to more than 5,000 along with fast business expansion, posing a big challenge for the management, he added.

To address the challenge, Sun relied on building up a special corporate culture. "Our evaluation of our employees is mainly based on culture instead of business performance. And we have a sound internal training system to further consolidate the corporate culture," Sun said.

According to Sun, the performance valuation of the company's management consists of five aspects: 12 rules, core values, methodology, implementation and leadership. For ordinary employees, the company mainly values the first three aspects.

"Each aspect could be further broken down. For instance, the core value consists of matter-of-fact attitudes, aggressive approach, coordination, sharing and innovation," he explained.

If an employee failed to meet his or her target, the supervisor will help him or her discover the reason and whether the problem arises out of the core value, methodology or implementation. Once the reason is discovered, it will be easier for the employee to improve work in the following month.

Lan Xue, an executive at the company, said this kind of performance evaluation is quite special but also effective. She will have a personal summary every month to double-check her job. "It's just like replaying moves on a chessboard," Lan said.