"The third time should be the most difficult of these three organizational changes." Back in 2065438+the end of February 2009, in the exclusive office on the 49th floor of Tencent Binhai Building, Zhang Zhidong briefly thought for a few seconds and told China Entrepreneur at his usual slow speed.

This is a top-floor office with a view of the sea. It has a large area, but the layout is simple and tidy. A few scattered penguin dolls and some old photos in the bookcase have become the only remaining Tencent symbols in the room.

Zhang Zhidong and Ma, the current chairman of the board of directors of Tencent Group, are the first two founders of Tencent. After they formed Tencent, the other three founders joined the company one after another.

20 14, Zhang Zhidong stepped down as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Tencent Group. Nearly six years later, there is still no successor to this position. After retirement, Zhang Zhidong entered another stage of his life. Now he is honorary president of Tencent College and general lecturer.

Over the years, the desire of the outside media to interview Zhang Zhidong has all failed. He no longer wants to talk about the company's existing business in public as a co-founder of Tencent, but only occasionally shares it internally.

These sharing did not evade problems, nor did they spare encouragement. Zhang Zhidong is highly respected by Tencent employees, who call him "Big Brother" who dares to tell the truth. In the top team of a big company, such a role is precious, but rare.

This is especially true for Tencent. Within this giant, a large number of businesses compete with each other, and the organizational structure is huge and complex, with revenue data as high as hundreds of billions of yuan. In the eyes of latecomers, Tencent seems to be no longer young, and it is facing many big company diseases.

Before 20 18 announced the third organizational restructuring, Tencent faced many internal and external disputes. Since the "3Q War", Tencent's reputation in values, business and finance has never been so divided.

"There is no perfect enterprise. In fact, every organization has many bugs. " Zhang Zhidong told China Entrepreneur, "(But) if a group of people are willing to debug with you, this is a great team."

Among Tencent's more than 60,000 employees, many have only joined the company in recent years. They yearn for this Internet company, which ranks among the top ten in the world in terms of market value, but they are often confused about the difficulties and disputes it encounters, and even get lost in the surrounding criticisms.

Zhang Zhidong's attitude is very calm. He compared Tencent to a team. "A team will always lead, lag behind or even lose. Don't care too much about the gains and losses of one city and one pool. Come back if you lose. " .

Only one year after the "930 adjustment", Tencent regained its optimism in the capital market, and its share price rebounded from a low point, even hitting a new high this year. History has repeatedly proved that when the company's market value goes up, the outside criticism will weaken.

However, if Tencent's management team and front-line employees relax their vigilance because of the beautiful revenue data and stock price performance, and think that the adjustment is over, the crisis may reappear.

The increasingly complex big country game is increasing the geopolitical risks faced by Internet companies in China. Because of the social contradictions brought by scientific and technological progress, it has also become an unavoidable problem for scientific and technological giants.

This year marks the second anniversary of Tencent's "930" adjustment. We sorted out the interview content at the end of last year and added some questions to this Tencent No.2 employee. The dialogue involves Tencent's cultural background, values, differences, organizational adjustment, and the contents are merged and issued.

In the business world, there is no casually successful enterprise, and there is no overnight reform. The test that Tencent will face is far from stopping.

The third adjustment is the most difficult.

China Entrepreneur: Tell me about the adjustment of "930". what do you think?

Zhang Zhidong: From the perspective of technological development, we have entered the so-called ABC era (AI, big data, cloud) from the mobile era. Tencent's original organizational structure was not prepared for this era, so it changed last year (20 18).

I feel that this is the organizational adjustment that Goose Factory (Tencent) needs to adapt to the era of industrial Internet cloud. In the era of big data, if large-scale science and technology enterprises lack the construction of an intermediate platform, the trial and error cost of the front desk will be higher.

For example, if you want to make an innovative attempt, it will be easier to try and error and cultivate talents if the front desk only needs 10 people. If there is a large shortage of intermediate stations and hundreds of people need to try, you will have less opportunities to innovate and it is not easy to give young people opportunities.

Because of its high cost of trial and error, if it fails, these hundreds of people will have to find jobs again within the company, which is easy to hurt the bones and the organization is easy to be conservative.

There is a big gap between the original organizational structure and production mode of Goose Factory and the construction of China-Taiwan. Recently, I saw Goose Factory actively investing in the technology of China and Taiwan.

However, only one organizational change is not enough to estimate the evolution of China and Taiwan, and it is expected that Goose Factory will continue to change in the future.

China Entrepreneur: What is the difficulty of this change?

Zhang Zhidong: This is the third major organizational adjustment in Tencent's 22-year history. I feel it will be more difficult than the previous two changes.

Because the timing of the change came a little late, the competition in the whole industry has been very fierce. The new productivity model of Goose Factory needs more remedial classes, and the company needs to climb the slope and fill the pit patiently.

China Entrepreneur: Tencent has been established for more than 20 years and has experienced all the turning points of the Internet in China. Why are you so slow to face change?

Zhang Zhidong: There may be inertia, or the lag of dividend period.

During the three years from 20 15 to 20 17, Tencent's life was relatively easy. Every year, its business grows by 40%-50%. Users spend more and more time on smart phones, which makes payment more and more convenient. The natural growth of user time multiplied by the ability to pay allows Tencent to enjoy the deferred dividend in the mobile era. Those years were wonderful.

Later, the country introduced a strict policy in the online game industry, which was equivalent to a kind of coercion and indirectly stimulated the organizational change of the goose factory. Enterprises are sometimes too tactful, and it is easy to miss (lose) the sensitivity to the changes of the times.

Looking back on this matter, the stricter supervision of the 20 18 game industry is only one factor, and the times have changed in essence.

Docker was the technical representative from 20 15, and later Google opened K8S (cloud computing technology). In fact, the entire cloud community has been surging, but Tencent's response is relatively slow. It was not until 20 18 that the tissue changed, and it was a great pain to be late.

Tencent's third organizational change will be far more difficult than the first two changes in history. This reform is a steep slope with many pits, but it needs the patience of Goose Factory to climb the slope and fill the pit.

If it can adapt to this era, Tencent still has the opportunity to produce talents in large numbers. If you can't cross these hurdles, your road will fall behind the times and become an old thing.

China Entrepreneur: It sounds a bit like the period before the "3Q War". Will past success paralyze the company?

Zhang Zhidong: Yes, yes, yes. This is not surprising. Enterprises always have their ups and downs (cycles), and often an enterprise with less money is not easy to make mistakes.

When your life is too beautiful and all kinds of figures are too easy to increase, it is time for you to become dull. Tencent naturally grew very fast before, and its financial report rose very well. It is easy to make mistakes at this time when the capital market touts you.

At that time, I told my colleagues that you should not call yourself a big Tencent when you go out, but some colleagues still said it was awesome when you go out. Look at how high our market value is. I want to hit him. It is not good to make money too easily.

China Entrepreneur: It's only been a few years. Why did you jump into the same pit again?

Zhang Zhidong: Yes ... Why?

China Entrepreneur: I talked to several employees of Tencent in its early days, but they couldn't figure out why. They said, I ask you, is it possible to adjust actively instead of being passive every time?

Zhang Zhidong: Personally, I think Tencent's senior management may be younger, or the mechanism for giving young people a stage is not enough. When an enterprise is too big to fit in one building, it will be divided into several buildings. You may only know one or two hundred people, even the number of employees in the company is less than 1%. The bigger the scale, the less chance others have to challenge you.

Times have changed, and young colleagues are often the most sensitive. Can Tencent give these young people a chance and how to show what the management can't see clearly with an endogenous mechanism? I think this is a challenge to Tencent's future talent system and middle-level system.

China Entrepreneur: The backward technology intermediate platform construction of Goose Factory should be related to the long-term vacancy of CTO position, right? This makes it difficult to coordinate various BG's.

Zhang Zhidong: The business model and organization model of Goose Factory is BG's vertical autonomy model. Even if there is no fixed CTO at the group level, several business BG can be self-driven and self-evolving.

In the long run, if there is a suitable CTO candidate, it can help enterprises to have a sharper sense of touch and a more forward-looking vision when observing the changes in the technological era.

However, the business span and complexity of different BG in Goose Factory are quite large. It is difficult to find a candidate who can be recognized by all BG. I hope Goose Factory can find a suitable candidate in the future.

China Entrepreneur: We even have two completely different BG's, to B's and to C's, and the cultures of these two enterprises are very different. Can a company really have two genes?

Zhang Zhidong: You can ask Dawson specifically. He is in charge of the to B business of Goose Factory and is most familiar with this matter. I can only talk about my personal views from a technical point of view.

In the PC era, it is difficult for an enterprise to do consumer business and enterprise service at the same time, and it is difficult for the two cultures to be compatible. In the cloud era, because of the development of technology, there will be more welding scenes between to B and to C, and it is estimated that many new categories will be born, which is no longer as distinct as in the PC era.

For example, the recent star product Zoom is a new category of cloud services, which is both to C and to B services. This is very different from the growth path of Cisco, Webex, Skype and other previous generation products in the PC era.

In the future world, it is estimated that there will be more and more such new categories. All walks of life are digitizing on a large scale, which is the future industry trend.

Under this trend, I personally understand that Goose Factory should not do traditional to B sales or comprehensive services, nor should it enter a certain industry to compete with the original to B company. On the contrary, based on the concept of cloud services, we have developed many digital infrastructure capabilities and cooperated extensively with these to B eco-enterprises to help the industry upgrade digitally.

This requires the Goose Factory to formulate appropriate organizational culture and the ability to adapt to ecological development. This ability is not innate. It needs a lot of actual combat, organizational running-in, and stumbling. It is estimated that it is inevitable to take some detours and fill the pit. It also requires the team to have enough wisdom and efforts to find a suitable development path and fulcrum in order to achieve something.

Tencent's good products are still not enough

China Entrepreneur: Historically, Tencent did some business late, but it often came from behind. Why?

Zhang Zhidong: Not everyone can catch up. Tencent also has a lot of unfinished business.

In Tencent's capability model, Tencent had a good understanding of things close to consumers and relationship chains, but in fact, Tencent did not have an advantage over other companies in business far away.

At that time, our search business "Soso" and e-commerce "Paipai" failed to achieve the leading position in the industry. Later, one was given to JD.COM and the other to sogou. So you can't do everything well.

Enterprises still need to look at the competency model. It doesn't mean that if an enterprise has good profits and strong financial ability, you can cross borders. I still don't quite agree with this logic

China Entrepreneur: Tencent used to be good at discovering users' needs, but in the past two years, it seems that it has regressed and missed something.

Zhang Zhidong: You may have this impression because Goose Factory, as a large science and technology enterprise with tens of thousands of people, has a large number of products, but there are not enough "good products" with unique product souls that can surprise users.

A good product in the eyes of users is not measured by the revenue figures and click figures of a product, which is different from the inertial perspective of many teams in large organizations.

A hard-working team may not be able to make good products.

China Entrepreneur: What is your understanding of good products?

Zhang Zhidong: A good product will have its own unique value proposition, which is born to solve the pain point problem in a historical period. This unique value proposition is the soul of the product.

A really good product is not that the higher the income, the better, and the longer the user time.

Many teams will not understand the soul of the product in place, and pay more attention to various indicators. In the absence of product soul, the team is very dedicated and hard-working. In order to drive business figures, they try their best to do various algorithms and routines, as well as various hard sales.

Although these efforts will also get some achievements because of inertia, behind these clicks, the user's pleasure is not reflected. It is a short-term behavior of overdraft product credit.

This kind of problem, the main bug lies in the team leader. When the product wisdom of the team leader is insufficient, he lacks determination and patience, he can't be grounded, can't shine, and can't gather the wisdom of the team to understand the pain points of users.

Therefore, the team he leads is easily caught in the anxiety of business index growth or organizational survival, and the intelligence and direction of the team are also easily deformed.

China Entrepreneur: When it comes to leadership, Ali has many senior management rotation and up-and-down mechanisms, but Tencent seems to have none. How can we not let the middle and high level of goose factory lose their initiative?

Zhang Zhidong: The rotation of senior executives and the mechanism of going up and down are very difficult in any big enterprise. Ali's practice in this respect is also very effective, which is estimated to have a lot to do with Ali's business characteristics and organizational culture.

Goose factory is characterized by great business differences between BG, and it is difficult for senior managers to rotate their posts. There are few precedents in the history of goose factory. How to maintain the vitality of the team and emerge more young leaders who adapt to the cloud era? It is estimated that Goose Factory has to go out of its own mode and path.

What kind of battlefield does Tencent need

China Entrepreneur: After the birth of WeChat, Tencent has not fought a life-and-death battle for many years. How do you find and cultivate excellent leaders?

Zhang Zhidong: How to find and train more new generation leaders is a matter of special concern to the management of Goose Factory. It would be more appropriate for you to interview the current senior management of Goose Factory. I can only say it briefly from some external angles.

The first is talent. I think Tencent is not short of talents. Goose factory has enough passionate and creative colleagues, but it needs to give them more stage to show themselves.

The second is the intermediate platform. It is not enough for the intermediate platform to rely on an organizational change. To some extent, it is the ability needed by platform enterprises in the era of big data. China-Taiwan helps to reduce the cost of trial and error, and also helps young people to grow up quickly and take on heavy responsibilities in actual combat.

The third is the battlefield. I don't think this is a battlefield for stocks. It doesn't mean how big the stock market was in the past and how much market share Tencent wants to grab. It should be a battlefield to solve social problems.

Whether Tencent can make good use of technology to help the society solve the pain point problem may be the best stage to train leaders.

If Tencent can solve these three problems in the next few years, I think the third organizational change will be over.

Entrepreneurs in China: The Battlefield for Solving Social Problems sounds like the vision of "science and technology are good".

Zhang Zhidong: I also saw the company's recent proposal that "technology is good". I didn't participate in this discussion (the company's vision and mission), but I think it is a very courageous formulation.

Large enterprise organizations have a lot of inertia, which is easily deformed under the drive of team interests. It's really not easy to make this slogan.

I personally wish the team enough wisdom and ability to explore new growth opportunities in the process of solving social problems. It is estimated that it will take time to observe whether the vision of "science and technology are good" can be realized in the future.

China Entrepreneur: It involves user experience, social responsibility and business return. I heard that you used to argue about these things.

Zhang Zhidong: The early style of the Goose Factory team was very grounded, and it was possible to treat things rather than people.

Because of product positioning, founders can argue fiercely. If they can't get the result at first time, they can have a second quarrel. Pony's personality is more willing to listen to different opinions, and everyone can have a full interactive process. This kind of culture, I also hope Tencent can continue.

Generally speaking, when the income of an enterprise is too good and it benefits too much from the previous era, the judgment of the next era will become dull. I find it difficult to have a mechanism to avoid this situation. The only thing you can do is to encourage people in the organization who disagree with you. It depends on whether some things that executives object to can be tried in enterprises.

It is not easy to continue the culture of "not only being excellent, but also being grounded" after the enterprise becomes bigger. I have met some product leaders. Even though they have certain wealth freedom, there are still many obstacles.

It is expected that Goose Factory needs more sharp new generations to emerge, with enthusiasm and wisdom, and can lead the team to find the right direction and help the team build positive confidence.

China Entrepreneur: In a big company, the department that makes money usually has the biggest voice. How to persuade the Goose Factory team to invest time and resources to solve those social problems?

Zhang Zhidong: The problem between making money and social responsibility is a common problem of large enterprises. The instinctive inertia of enterprises is to expand the business scale and strive for greater market space, so as to strive for the development space of teams and individuals.

In the past, as long as enterprises abide by laws and regulations, operate in good faith, provide quality services to customers, provide a good working environment for employees, and then put part of their profits into public welfare to repay the society, corporate social responsibility has been done very well.

But for technology companies, this estimate is not enough. In the era of big science and technology, science and technology have more and more influence on society, and society also expects technology companies to have more responsibilities. It is estimated that the vision of "science and technology are good" put forward by Goose Factory in organizational change has something to do with the background of this era.

It is not easy to realize this vision. Quantitative figures such as business indicators, market share and operating income are obvious baton. In contrast, social problems and social responsibilities are not easy to quantify, which are relatively hidden, and management teams are easily deformed when they encounter their own conflicts of interest.

For Goose Factory, the business is mainly cloud service type, which makes it easy for users to vomit and vote with their feet. When an enterprise encounters more negative spit, it may be the time when social contradictions have not been solved well, and it is also the time for the team to self-review.

Science and technology companies are the beneficiaries of the times, with intensive team knowledge and youthful vitality. It is expected that the product team of Goose Factory will be more creative and can organically combine their own business development with solving social problems.

Some products that Goose Factory can do this at present are good, but not enough. I hope more teams can do this in the future and produce good works with both commercial value and social value.

Don't always think about a quick victory.

China Entrepreneur: Many employees think that you are a person who can convey Tencent's culture and values.

Zhang Zhidong: I'm just old. I came all the way from Tencent's small workshop, so many colleagues know more about us (founders) and trust us more, probably because we are old.

China Entrepreneur: What styles do you think Tencent has been deeply influenced by several founders?

Zhang Zhidong: Many old colleagues of Tencent started their own businesses after leaving their jobs. Their professionalism and industry reputation are very good, especially for some employees who have been employed for a long time.

In many old colleagues, we can feel the characteristics of some Tencent people, that is, they are more dutiful and pragmatic.

If we use chess as a metaphor, there is an "original hand" in Go, that is, what the hand should be, it should be upright, and we should not always think about winning quickly. The corresponding trick is called deception or deception, which is very fancy. If your opponent can't see, you will beat him soon. But this is not suitable for Tencent. Tencent can only take this move. If you want to be greedy and clever, you may achieve something in the short term, but in the end it is untenable.

The characteristics of traditional Tencent people are to find the places where users have needs, solve problems, and pursue to do things well before looking for business opportunities. They rarely package themselves outside, but inside the team, colleagues can feel what they do.

China Entrepreneur: There is a saying about Tencent that you are very lucky. There is always something new coming out to save the company. The company's 20 years should be more than an accident, right?

Zhang Zhidong: Actually, Tencent also made many mistakes, and it also delayed some time in good times.

Fortunately, Tencent has experienced several technological changes in PC Internet, mobile Internet and cloud and big data, and the company has encountered good development opportunities.

Tencent's team has a good culture of self-reflection and self-correction.

There are some powerful enterprises in traditional industries. They are like an army. They have a special commander who is in charge of everything. He is a super CPU. The following team has high execution, strong corporate wolf nature and high efficiency.

In our industry, I prefer to compare Internet companies to a team, which includes coaches, captains, forwards, midfielders, defenders, opponents and spectators. This is a relatively diverse cultural mechanism. Every player should understand the team's style and strategic intention, and at the same time, there should be room for players to play on the court.

The team will make mistakes, lead, fall behind and even lose. Whether a team can maintain its long-term vitality depends on whether its culture is cohesive. When we fall behind, we don't complain to each other, encourage each other, and find problems to correct the team, then the team may stand up again from backwardness.

There is no perfect enterprise, and every collective has many bugs. Don't care too much about the gains and losses of one city and one pool. If you lose a game, you lose. If you lose, come back.

Like Tencent, it is common for teams to fall behind. It doesn't matter if they get off to a bad start. See if you can make it up in the second half of the year. If a group of people love this enterprise and are willing to debug with you, this is a great team.

China Entrepreneur: When you fall behind, it seems that you often need external stimulus to promote internal changes.

Zhang Zhidong: Of course, it is best to see the next wave of changes when the enterprise is booming, so as to cope with it calmly. If the response is late, it will face the pain of transformation. The bigger the company, the more difficult it is to transform.

Listed companies make a lot of money every quarter. There is great growth pressure at the performance level. Colleagues still have a choice. The fluctuation of stock price will affect everyone's working mood. There is a lot of organizational inertia of "ass decides head" in big teams. These are all very realistic problems.

For enterprises, it may be a good thing if they encounter a big external stimulus and can make the organization reflect and update from top to bottom.

This depends on the willpower of the enterprise and the management team, as well as the culture within the team. Can you not care so much about short-term things, such as how much income will increase next year and how much market share will increase? Enterprises should have enough foresight and patience, focus on long-term issues, and solve the contradiction between science and technology and society. I believe the chances are considerable.

China Entrepreneur: Aren't you worried that Tencent's business or products will lose to competitors?

Zhang Zhidong: In areas with huge demand, there will naturally be strong competitors.

Personally, I don't care about the success or failure of Goose Factory at product level or business level. If a team can maintain a tenacious spirit, then the backwardness of some games is not the end of the team, and the team can get up again and start again after setbacks.

I am more concerned about whether Goose Factory can handle the conflict between technology and society in the era of big technology.

In the era of big technology represented by big data +AI technology and biotechnology, on the one hand, technology has created huge space, on the other hand, it has also brought derivative troubles to society. These conflicts are expected to become more and more acute.

For large technology companies, it is not only a matter of their own business development, but also a test and opportunity to fulfill their responsibilities.

I hope that Goose Factory can have a good organizational and cultural evolution, maintain awe, and make unique creation and responsibility in the era of big technology.

China Entrepreneur: However, we noticed that some scientists hired by Tencent left Goose Factory not long after.

Zhang Zhidong: The running-in between scientists and enterprises needs a process, which is a two-way running-in.

The investment in scientific research and development of Goose Factory is increasing year by year, and many business scenarios of Goose Factory also have strong domestic demand, which is fundamental.

The integration of most scientific researchers in Goose Factory is good. They and enterprises can find the fulcrum of joint efforts and exert their energy. There will also be a certain proportion. If the Industry-University-Research combination between enterprises and scholars is not ideal, there will be talent flow, which is also normal.

Personally, in addition to the matching of academic talents' personal style and enterprise team style, there are still many homework to be done in the construction of goose factory intermediate platform, such as technology intermediate platform and data intermediate platform. Good intermediate platform facilities may help to reduce organizational boundary walls and expand the space for academic and engineering integration.

China Entrepreneur: Some employees said that when they first entered Tencent, they didn't know what to do, so they came to chat with you and said that you could bring certainty to everyone.

Then this culture may be weakened a little after the enterprise becomes bigger. But Tencent's corporate culture, I think, is still good, without too much politicization or intrigue.

There may be some selfish departmentalism, where the ass decides the head or the management style is rough. It depends on whether Tencent can establish a mechanism for colleagues and companies to choose between different businesses.

China Entrepreneur: This level of communication is quite difficult.

Zhang Zhidong: In the early years, Tencent's interpersonal relationship was relatively simple. We can criticize each other and talk about it. Now enterprises are getting bigger and bigger, and the number of people is increasing. It is not easy to maintain these things after thousands of enterprises have more levels.

Before I left, I gave an idea to our internal IT colleagues, hoping that they could reduce the communication concentration of the company by an order of magnitude when building an internal platform.

Assuming that this enterprise has 10000 employees, can the communication level be turned into a company with 1000 employees through internal mechanisms?

It's hard to become dozens of people. If everyone knows, this is an irreplaceable advantage of any management mechanism. Tencent will never return to that level again.

But can it be reduced by an order of magnitude? I think this is the direction that Tencent's internal support system can work hard.

This article is from China Entrepreneur magazine.