On the evening of September 13, 2016, CEO of Coca-Cola Bottling Investments Group China Glen Walter came to the Forum of Masters as guest and gave a theme speech to share his experience and understanding of leadership. Dr. Lijin QIU from our School’s Department of Marketing presided over this forum.

Mr. Glen Walter summarized the qualities of future leaders as 3 P – Passion, Perseverance and Purpose. As a father of three children, Mr. Walter told the audience not to underestimate the importance of the family. For him, the family is his support and the first source of his “Passion”. Besides, the big family of Coca-Cola is the second source of his “Passion”. A strong sense of belonging is an important part of The Coca-Cola Company’s culture. Every employee believes that he can contribute to the big family of Coca-Cola, and faces new challenges with such passion each day.

As the largest beverage company in the world, Coca-Cola is one of the most valuable brands in the world with a market valuation of about $185 billion, selling products in more than 200 countries in the world and having more than 700,000 employees. China has become the third largest market in the world following the United States and Mexico. However, 600 million Chinese people have never drunk Coca-Cola, which means huge opportunities. On such a market full of opportunities, making more consumers like the brand of Coca-Cola is another source of passion for him and other employees.

After showing a video about Coca-Cola’s history in China, Mr. Walter told the audience that everybody often encounters various challenges and difficulties in his/her career. Against the backdrop of the slack global economic growth and transformation facing the Chinese economy, how to incentivize employees and make consumers like his product are huge difficulties he faces as a leader. These difficulties can be overcome only with perseverance and courage. “The Chinese economy is being transformed into a consumption economy and short-term difficulties do exist, but I firmly believe that such transformation is a good thing for China and an important opportunity for The Coca-Cola Company.”

Promoting community development and environmental protection is the purpose of Coca-Cola as an enterprise with social responsibility. Coca-Cola actively cooperates with local governments, universities and commercial entities, forming a “Golden Triangle” to solve social problems together and promote communities’ sustainable development and prosperity. To give children in poor areas opportunities to receive education equally, Coca-Cola has opened more than 120 Hope schools in China. Meanwhile, women’s leadership is also an issue that The Coca-Cola Company always gives attention to. Coca-Cola has launched the “5by20 plan” – providing 5 million women around the world with support and education in multiple aspects and enabling them to start their businesses and careers by 2020. In China alone, thousands of women have started up enterprises through this support plan and become The Coca-Cola Company’s raw material suppliers in China.

Statistics show that consumers around the world consume Coca-Cola products 1.6 billion times a day, which means that 1.6 billion empty containers are generated every day. Therefore, Coca-Cola is always making efforts to replace plastic bottles with more environment-friendly containers, and has developed environment-friendly bottles with renewable plants such as sugar cane and corn as raw materials. Mr. Walter promised that in the near future, Coca-Cola would bring more environment-friendly containers to consumers, but creation of a better environment and community required the whole society’s common efforts. Mr. Walter also called on the audience to pay attention to these issues together and contribute to creation of a better world with Coca-Cola. He also hoped the audience would become fond of the brand of Coca-Cola through this lecture.

After the engrossing theme speech, the audience asked questions on topics such as leadership, time management, career development and marketing one after another. The whole speech ended successfully in warm applause.