Wang Xing on Learning, Lei Jun on Hiring, and Ren Zhengfei on Motivation

#HowDeeplyYouThink #DeterminesHowFarYouGo Ren Zhengfei, Lei Jun, and Wang Xing on management The biggest difference between people is how they understand the world. Ray Dalio: ‘If you do not now think you were an idiot a year ago, you have not learned much this year.’ In this era, we can clearly feel intangible things increasingly determining tangible outcomes. As a manager, you can especially appreciate how important it is to understand something better than others do. ---- Wang Xing: the ability to learn quickly is the only sustainable competitive advantage Management thinker Peter Senge: ‘The only lasting advantage in the future is the ability to learn faster than your competitors.’ Wang Xing quotes this statement attributed to U.S. President Lincoln: ‘The best way to predict the future is to create it.’ What once seemed out of reach is now within reach. Why has Wang Xing been able to achieve this? He has a particular ability: identifying opportunities in an industry and, once he finds them, learning quickly to develop the capabilities they require. Wang Xing is an exceptionally strong learner. This is one of the qualities that distinguishes him from other entrepreneurs. People who have dealt with Wang Xing know that he is a machine for deep learning. When he wants to understand an industry, he speaks with all its leading experts, returning to them repeatedly over two or three months. He keeps testing the same questions over long periods. Sometimes he does not reply to three emails from an executive, yet will spend three to five hours talking with an industry expert. He may spend more time learning than on anything else: reading, looking up information, exchanging ideas, learning from peers and competitors, and studying established practices abroad. Even under enormous external pressure—for example, when Meituan lagged behind rivals Lashou and Wowo, or when Fanfou was shut down and he had to travel around trying to resolve the problem—Wang Xing kept learning about new developments on the internet. His learning speed and insight were also evident in an internal conversation with Hu Weiwei after Meituan acquired Mobike. He told her that, during the bike-sharing boom, everyone focused too much on competing for market share and too little on improving operating efficiency. That might be the central reason for the industry’s problems. In his view, the only way to end the battle was to keep improving efficiency, the most effective defense against competitors’ attacks. Those few simple sentences came close to identifying the industry’s most fundamental problem. Learning has no end, so Wang Xing has no boundaries. Where are the boundaries of Meituan’s business? Or are there no boundaries at all? Wang Xing puts it this way: Too many people focus on boundaries rather than the core. Think of boundaries in terms of gravity: because an object has mass, it exerts gravitational force and influences all other matter. The difference is that its influence weakens with distance from the core, or because its own mass is smaller. Things do not really have simple boundaries, so I do not think we should impose limits on ourselves. As long as the core is clear—whom exactly do we serve, and what services do we provide?—we will keep trying different businesses. ---- Lei Jun: if something does not need managing, do not manage it Ray Dalio has said that finding the right people to do things matters more than deciding what to do. ‘If you assign goals and tasks to people who can carry them out well, and make clear that they are personally responsible for achieving those goals and completing those tasks, they will do an excellent job.’ The world does not lack talent. We need to discover each person’s gifts, then shape and develop them. Lei Jun has just one principle for finding and employing people: use the best and most suitable people. He believes a good engineer is worth not 10 people, but 100. The best people have strong internal motivation. Put them on something they enjoy and let them approach it with a sense of play. Only then can they create something that truly moves them—and, in turn, moves others. Invest your energy in finding people so that those you hire are both highly professional and the right fit. The right fit means having an entrepreneurial mindset and deeply enjoying the work. With the best, most suitable people, nothing is impossible. Summing up some lessons from Xiaomi’s nine years, Lei Jun said: ‘My central management philosophy is really this: do not overmanage a startup.’ In exploring simpler management, he identified three points: 1. Finding like-minded people is the most important task. People who do not need managing have three qualities: ability, responsibility, and self-motivation. 2. A simplistic, mechanical KPI system does not work. Real KPIs should be closely tied to the company’s mission and values. 3. Maintain a flat organization. In a relatively equal environment, every business unit can show strong initiative. Lei Jun’s management philosophy is: ‘If something does not need managing, do not manage it.’ ‘Not managing’ is management at its most skillful. Why refrain from managing? Because capable, responsible, self-motivated people do not need managing. They need you to find them. ---- Ren Zhengfei: when every cell is activated, the person will not decline Ren Zhengfei sees a simple way to motivate the cells: ‘Reward whoever runs out in front.’ He says the essence of management centers on building incentives, and its biggest challenge is designing those incentives. What exactly is his management philosophy? ‘I do not understand anything else. I just understand a bucket of paste: pour it over Huawei’s people, bind more than a hundred thousand of them together, and get them to work with all their might in one broad direction.’ ------- Understanding is the foundation of management. Management deals with individual people, and behind their behavior lies a way of understanding the world. This is also the challenge for managers. However sophisticated your management may be, some people will not respond to your approach. That is the curious nature of management. For managers, the best approach is to find a management style of our own. Original article: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/NUj0kmbc41mNY8B8SVD3mg