It is not a problem for the next generation to enjoy more than the previous generation but have bigger dreams than the previous generation. If they enjoy more but have smaller dreams, that is a recession. Minister Nguyen Manh Hung told 2,000 Viettel officials at 100 online locations in a discussion on the topic "For Viettel For Vietnam".

Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung and Chairman of Viettel Group Tao Duc Thang at the seminar "For Viettel for Vietnam" held on July 19, 2023

Pressure often comes when we worry about ourselves.

Chairman Tao Duc Thang thanked the Minister for visiting and working with the Group, and on behalf of Viettel staff, asked the Minister the following questions:

People are very interested in following your work at the Ministry. You are very strict but it is to help people grow. Some people find it difficult to understand the constant rotation of cadres. So when there are so many changes, do you feel any pressure?

Minister Nguyen Manh Hung replied: It is not true that there is no pressure, but there is not much. Pressure often arises in the context of thinking about yourself, worrying about yourself, and fearing that if you do this, what if tomorrow something happens and you lose your job?

At Viettel, when assigned a new task, people still have the habit of returning home to report their achievements to their parents and family, but some people lost their jobs 3 months later and did not dare to return. Later, people spread the news that they quietly accepted the job to reduce the pressure.

When creating more work and pressure for others, as a leader, you have to make them see that the work is meaningful to them, to the industry, to the country. If it is not meaningful, not valuable to the country, then people will not be motivated to do it. If it is meaningful, then people will do it without being told.

When we move to a new position, it is like going to a new space to create stimulation. The brain is only stimulated by new things: new boss, new colleagues, new environment. When we move, we should have faith that they will have a lot of new energy, even if it is a bit confusing at first.

But leaders must also act as backup. If a transferred cadre encounters difficulties, the leader must be able to help, show the way, and even roll up his sleeves to help. Leaders are not allowed to assign difficult tasks if they do not back them up, because assigning difficult tasks puts them in danger, so they must be responsible. When assigning difficult tasks to others, they must also show an easy, feasible way to do them. Often, that is a new approach.

When assigning work to colleagues, we need to make sure that after each month or quarter they can see the results, as if to give them more energy. If you work continuously without any results, you will get tired and lose strength very quickly.

Building a culture: Through regulation, then by example

Viettel has nearly 80,000 people in many markets, skin colors, ages, and languages. How can Viettel people understand Viettel's core values?

The Minister said that culture is a story of many decades, building culture is a long journey, and depends a lot on the leadership of the first generations.

It is important that generations of leaders maintain culture. Culture enters an organization mainly through regulations, through the way the business achieves its goals, which is decided by the leaders. Culture also enters an organization through the example of the leaders.

For example, if Viettel says its core cultural value is to grow through challenges and failures, but it imposes heavy discipline on those who fail, not giving them another chance, then Viettel will never have that culture.

Culture is a story of decades, building culture is a long journey, and depends a lot on the leadership of the first generations.

Better conditions than the previous generation, dreams must be bigger

In Viettel 's journey, the most difficult places grow the best, difficulties create motivation for development. When we are happy, favorable, and enjoy, the results go down. Just like our children's generation, when they inherit the achievements of socio-economic development, have good conditions, they lose the motivation to develop? Will we force the next generation to live in difficult conditions like the previous generation? This is the concern of Viettel people.

Answering this question, Minister Nguyen Manh Hung compared the previous generations who grew up from hardship and deprivation, they rode bicycles to make revolution, to do business, hardship was the driving force to create success. The next generation has better conditions, rides motorbikes, then cars, will that advantage make the next generation inferior to the previous generation? We cannot force the next generation to be as deprived as the previous generation when material conditions are getting better, but better conditions mean bigger dreams. Riding motorbikes but dreaming of making rockets, riding cars but dreaming of making satellites. The next generation enjoys more than the previous generation but has bigger dreams than the previous generation, that is not a problem. Enjoying more but having smaller dreams is a decline.

Do it right and do it well

How can a business develop quickly and sustainably? People say that to be fast, you have to do new and innovative things, but doing those things is difficult because government regulations do not keep up with reality. In reality, people see many businesses violating the law, leading to the mentality of retreating when faced with difficulties. What kind of mentality creates inertia and hinders creativity and innovation?

Regarding the fear of working now, especially new work, the Minister said that most of this fear is due to not understanding and not being confident in what you are doing. Making an investment decision without having a basis to calculate its effectiveness will make you afraid. Doing something without clearly understanding the legal regulations will also make you afraid. Viettel has made very big decisions. When Vinaphone and Mobifone were born decades before Viettel, the network only had 700-800 broadcasting stations, and Viettel was born later and decided to invest in 4,000 stations to implement the strategy of "surrounding the cities from the countryside", so there must be a very solid theoretical basis and very careful calculations to be able to make such a big decision. Without a deep understanding, one would not dare to make a big decision. Without a deep understanding, making a big decision is reckless.

To address this mentality, the Minister of Information and Communications recounted the story of Viettel in the past. In 2004, Viettel decided to invest in 4,000 BTS stations, while VinaPhone and MobiFone, which were established decades earlier, only had 700-800 stations. Was that a big deal, a breakthrough? Of course. Was there a risk of leaders losing their positions and going to jail? Of course, because failure would mean a loss of state assets. Only those with deep understanding would dare to make such a decision.

Viettel has a big discovery that the higher the technology, the cheaper the price. Investing about 2 billion VND for a BTS station, the station can serve up to 5,000 people. If there is one customer, the investment is 2 billion VND, if there are 5,000 customers, the investment increases by only 10% to 2.2 billion VND. So whether it is 1 customer or 5,000 customers, the cost is reduced by thousands of times. With such a reduced price, people in rural areas can also use it.

Thus, a unique strategy was born for mobile to develop rapidly, "using the countryside to surround the city", which is to target the most populous market to make telecommunications prices cheaper, and it is also the farmers who benefit the most from the cheap results of this strategy.

Without deep understanding, one does not dare to make a big decision. Making a big decision without deep understanding is reckless. Only when one has faith and reasoning, and a solid foundation, can one dare to make such a big decision. When one has faith and can prove it, one is not afraid to make big, breakthrough decisions.

Creating value for the country, meaningful to the people, bringing profit to Viettel, transparent, there is nothing to be afraid of. From now on, Viettel should only say whether it is worth doing, whether it creates change for the country and whether it is successful.

Businesses can do anything that is not prohibited by law. The creative space is therefore very wide. Doing everything that is not prohibited by law is already too much. Even things that are prohibited by law can still be tested under control, for example Mobile Money.

Businesses can do anything that is not prohibited by law.

On the relationship between management and development

We tend to focus on management and less on development. We must set development goals and make them our top priority because if we don't develop, we will fall behind, and if we fall behind, we will be annexed. So when building institutions, agencies need to pay attention to this management-for-development ideology. Development will also create problems, but development will create more resources to deal with the problems.

Never innovate through departments.

If you want to make changes in the corporation, never report to the department. The department's job is to maintain stability, to follow the rules, not to innovate, and they have no right to innovate. If you ask them for their opinion on something new, the answer will be: no. And they are doing the right thing.

In an organization, only the leader has the right to change. If there is something new that is not in accordance with regulations and has no precedent, it must be brought straight to the highest level, bypassing the intermediate steps. The old goes through the department, the new goes straight to the leader.

Create high challenges to attract good people

Viettel also has many talented young people leaving. Is there any way to retain them, is there any way to attract more talented people to Viettel?

Minister Nguyen Manh Hung said, although Viettel is big, Viettel is not the whole world. Even though Viettel is big, it is just one of thousands, tens of thousands of businesses, it is normal for people to come and go.

The most important thing for a talented person is to have challenging work to do. Talented people look for a leader, talented people look for a place with good working conditions. Talented people are not first and foremost about income. Therefore, if Viettel wants many talented people to come and stay, the first thing is whether they can think of great work for them, whether they have working conditions, and whether the leader has the qualities of a leader.

What do talented people want? Ignoring the obvious factor of making a living, the more talented people want to go to places with high challenges. The ancients had to raise a high flag to start an uprising, thereby attracting talented people from the whole country. When we do not think of and do not take on such tasks, talented people will never come to us.

The next question is whether there are conditions to do it? Leaders must also create the necessary working conditions.

The third thing is the leader. Talented people often seek out leaders, the attraction of the leader to talented people is very important.

To retain and attract talent, remember those 3 things.

Recalling the tasks set for Viettel, the Minister reminded: If we are not determined to take on great tasks, talented people will leave Viettel, and Viettel will become an average company.

If we are not determined to take on great tasks, talented people will just leave Viettel, and Viettel will become an average company.

Let others stand on your shoulders

At the working session with Viettel, the Deputy Ministers of the Ministry of Information and Communications also shared many perspectives to contribute to the overall development of this enterprise.

According to Deputy Minister Phan Tam, the traditional telecommunications sector is entering a period of decline. Viettel is looking for new growth spaces, but it is necessary to consider the proportion of new things to see whether the Group has boldly entered the new space or not.

“Viettel should reconsider, set goals, boldly invest and accept losses in the early stages. If the investment ratio for research and development remains average, not doubling or tripling, growth opportunities will remain the same,” said Deputy Minister Phan Tam.

Giving his opinion, Deputy Minister Pham Duc Long said that Viettel needs to allocate investment resources to new fields but must be close to telecommunications, which is the main pillar of the group.

In the coming period, Viettel needs to quickly deploy 5G using Vietnamese equipment because this is an opportunity that almost only comes once. Developing this industrial sector will also contribute to leading the development of other sectors.

Minister Nguyen Manh Hung continued: Before Viettel stood on the shoulders of others, now let others stand on our shoulders. We are the foundation, we go down to the source technology layer, core technology, that is the real mastery. Then many others will stand on our shoulders to develop and because of that Viettel can lead the Vietnamese digital business community to grow.

Deputy Minister Nguyen Huy Dung suggested that most of the world's major telecommunications companies are interested in AI. Therefore, Viettel needs to focus on developing Viettel AI from a platform perspective so that all small and medium-sized enterprises can access this technology as a service. At the same time, research and invest in hardware architecture systems to have enough computing power to train large Vietnamese language models.

Giving advice to Viettel, Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Lam noted the issue of digital trust because many social evils in other fields are attributed to telecommunications due to scammers contacting via phone. Therefore, network operators, including Viettel, should work with the Ministry to do a good job of protecting people in cyberspace.

Chairman and General Director of Viettel Group Tao Duc Thang thanked Minister Nguyen Manh Hung and the delegation of the Ministry of Information and Communications for their valuable suggestions and sharing with the Group. The words of encouragement, inspiration and assignment of tasks from the leaders of the Ministry of Information and Communications will be recorded by Viettel and transmitted to all Viettel employees.

After the seminar, Minister Nguyen Manh Hung gave a speech on development orientation for the Group and the telecommunications industry in the next 10 years.

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