Leadership Takeaways — CEO Conversation with Ray Zhang, Lenovo Japan

On June 4, 2026, the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Japan (CCIFJ) Entrepreneurship Committee hosted an on-stage conversation with Ray Zhang, President of Lenovo Enterprise Solutions Japan. Ray brought to the discussion over two decades of leadership experience across Intel and Lenovo, spanning markets in China and Japan. The conversation surfaced a set of leadership principles that are as relevant to long-tenured executives as they are to entrepreneurs — centered on trust, values-driven decision-making, and the discipline to build for the long term rather than optimize for the short term. The following are my personal takeaways.

• Community builds trust; trust drives business. The most powerful sales strategy is not selling at all — it is creating a community where customers feel valued, heard, and supported. When you facilitate genuine peer connection, you earn a position of trust that no product pitch can replicate.
• Growth and cost-cutting are not just strategies — they are values. Leaders who are wired for growth find cost-cutting cultures corrosive. Knowing which orientation drives you is essential to finding environments where you can lead with conviction.
• Integrity has a price, and authentic leaders are willing to pay it. When circumstances demand a choice between personal values and institutional security, leaders of genuine conviction choose their values — even without a safety net in place.
• Earning the right to lead in a market means investing in it. Serving customers well requires understanding their world on their terms — their language, their context, their priorities. Feedback that stings is often the most valuable feedback you will ever receive.
• In times of constraint, transparency and collaboration outperform leverage. When disruption creates pressure to exploit customers, the better path is radical honesty and joint problem-solving. The short-term cost is real; the long-term loyalty is worth far more.
• Technology should serve people, not the other way around. Every technology cycle produces the same mistake: adoption for its own sake. The leaders who create lasting value are those who ask first how the technology improves businesses and improves lives — and build communities to discover the answer together.