Sliding Door Moment

As a Leader, Francis Leung Ticks All the Boxes. Armed With a Sharp Analytical Brain for Business and Engineering, He’s Equally Disarming With His Warmth and Love of Laughter.

- Wendy Kay

Francis Leung likes to laugh. A lot. His infectious hilarity bursts out frequently, perfectly in tune with his endless zeal for life, and gives a refreshing insight into a civil engineer turned Senior Vice President of a global company.

In fact, Francis, the Senior Vice President of dormakaba China North Asia, is so enthusiastic in his explanation of how his global products impact us that you can’t help but feel inspired by a simple sliding door or basic lock.

Take, for example, the humble ATM. Until it spits out money (or doesn’t), it’s something to which we don’t give much thought. But Francis does. “Inside, there is a safe where the money is stored,” he says. “We provide the lock for that safe. Did you know that?”

The wow factor hits home when he delves into the nitty-gritty of dormakaba’s technology. There’s no stopping Francis as he continues to divulge how the company simplifies our lives without any of us realising it.

“When you walk towards a door at a shopping mall and it opens itself? That’s us! That’s dormakaba,” he says. “Or when a door closes quietly by itself, a soft close, there we are again! And when you want to book a huge ballroom in a hotel, but need only a third of it, our movable partitions section it off. We also provide the door locks in the hotel, whether they are card locks or accessible by bluetooth. These are dormakaba products that nobody thinks about but most of us use every day.”

Francis laughs delightedly as he reveals surprise after surprise. Communicating is clearly his skill, a talent he knows how to work as he effuses energy and enthusiasm for the company he has spent 26 years building in China.