Lyu Jae-cheol, CEO of LG Electronics, cited rebuilding fundamental competitiveness in "quality, expense, and delivery (Quality·Cost·Delivery)" as the execution solution to win against fast-chasing rivals.
CEO Lyu stated accordingly at his first companywide town hall since taking office, held recently at LG Science Park in Magok, Seoul, saying, "Let's expose problems, focus on winning execution, and build a No. 1 LG Electronics that grows together with employees." He reiterated the importance of basics that secure cost competitiveness by strengthening product leadership—the essence of business—accelerating with AX (AI transformation), and boosting competitiveness across the manufacturing ecosystem.
CEO Lyu, who joined as a researcher at the Goldstar home appliance research lab in 1989, shared his philosophy on work built over the past 37 years, saying, "A seemingly small 1% daily advance creates a gap of about 40 times after a year, and a 1% daily retreat leads to a setback of about 1,480 times after a year." He continued, "What we must never forget and put into practice is accumulating a 1% change every day, and the competitiveness we will build going forward starts with actions improved by 1% today," urging, "Let's achieve small changes and innovations every day."
CEO Lyu redefined REINVENT, LG Electronics' signature workstyle and organizational culture innovation campaign, as "REINVENT 2.0" and set the direction for change. LG Electronics has run the REINVENT campaign since 2022 to encourage employees to create enjoyable change on their own. REINVENT 2.0 inherits the core values of the REINVENT campaign—such as growth and communication—while accelerating changes in how work gets done by exposing problems, focusing on execution, and increasing speed. "Exposing problems" and "executing to win" are also CEO Lyu's usual management philosophy.
Exposing problems means accurately identifying the issues to be solved and their causes, and building a culture that allows them to be brought to light without hesitation. CEO Lyu emphasized, "Even the same matter can be an opportunity for improvement depending on perspective, or conversely, lead to complacency, so change must start with a cold-eyed view of reality."
He added, "The size of the problem is the size of the improvement," and said, "We should think of ways to make it work rather than reasons it cannot, and a new approach is needed that shifts thinking so small fixes become big innovations." He continued, "To foster an atmosphere that sees exposing problems as an opportunity for progress, the management will take the lead."
Executing to win puts the emphasis on "winning." It means not stopping at working hard but checking whether the speed of execution is effective in a competitive sense and executing to win in competition. CEO Lyu encouraged, "No matter how well I do, if I do relatively worse, I lose; even if I don't do well, if I do relatively better, I win," adding, "Let's make sure to execute to win through a process that thinks of the outcome first and then executes."
He concluded by encouraging employees, saying, "Change is what we do best, and exposing problems and focusing on execution to increase speed is the REINVENT 2.0 we are starting now," and, "Trust the innovation DNA and latent power of LG Electronics, which has come this far through countless crises, and let's combine everyone's small changes to transform the future of LG Electronics."