Which one do you like best?
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “He Jiayan” ( ID: ihejiayan), author He Jiayan.
01
When Li Yanhong went to CCTV’s “Meeting Big Coffee” program, there was such a paragraph:
In the staff discussion, Li Yanhong said:
“Repetitively doing something to show your technical skills, this is something I hate very much.
This year’s top prize has a project with all the customs off, and the last one I got rid of is because I know there is another team doing something similar, and that team did it first. Right?
Your technical content is high, and finally there is a big demand for the business, but you have done a repetitive work, I will kill it (crash), I hope to make this mass (information) layer by layer Pass on the ground, everyone should not do this kind of thing.
I heard Li Yanhong say this, I immediately think of Tencent.
Tencent’s approach is exactly the opposite of that of Li Yanhong, which takes the “horse race mechanism”. Often a project, there will be several teams are doing, and finally see who is doing the best, get the biggest reward.
For example, when Zhang Xiaolong was on WeChat, three teams were developing similar products. Finally, the Zhang Xiaolong team made the first move. When playing the game, there were other teams who did it. In the end, Ren Yuzhen’s team was the most successful.
Zhang Xiaolong and Ren Yuxi are doing repetitive work with other teams. Baidu is to criticize. But in Tencent, they have all been reused, among Tencent’s highest-ranking, most powerful, and highest-paid individuals.
Tencent never said that this caused a waste. Ma Huateng believes that this waste is necessary.
In the article “Seven Dimensions of the Law of Grayscale”, Ma Huateng proposes:
Tolerate failure, allow moderate waste, encourage internal competition to try and error, and fail without success.
……In the face of innovation, allow for modest waste. How to understand? Even under the premise of resource licensing, even if one or two teams develop a product at the same time, it is acceptable, as long as you think that this project is strategically necessary.
A lot of people have seen the success of WeChat since last year, but we don’t know. In fact, within Tencent, several teams have been developing mobile phone-based communication software at the same time. The design concept of each team and The implementation is different, and finally WeChat is favored by more users.
Can you say that this is a waste of resources? I don’t think it is. Without competition, it means the death of innovation. Even if the last team failed in the competition, it is still the source of inspiration for the winners, which can be understood as “internal trial and error.” Not all system redundancy is a waste, there is no success without trying to fail, and it is difficult to obtain reality without creating various possibilities.
From this point of view, Tencent’s popularity is much larger than Baidu’s.
Tolerance of internal competition, tolerance and waste, can create a relaxed atmosphere in the company, is an important means of attracting talents and motivating talents. Many entrepreneurs don’t realize this, causing high-ranking officials to shrink their hands and get rid of it. In the end, they will either get caught up or walk away.
This is why talents can’t stay in Baidu, but they are more stable in Tencent.
02
However, Tencent’s temperament is mainly aimed at the winners who stand out from the competition. What happened to those who failed in the competition?
I specifically checked the information of people who failed to do WeChat and the game in Tencent, and found it very chilling.
Zhang Xiaolong’s main opponent when he was on WeChat was Liu Chengmin.
Liu Chengmin worked at Huawei before, because of his excellent performance, he was dug up by Tencent. He once made great contributions to Tencent because of the expansion of SP business.
When Zhang Xiaolong developed WeChat, the internal competitors were the mobile QQ team and the Q letter team, all of whom belonged to Liu Chengmin. But what succeeded later was Zhang Xiaolong and Liu Chengmin became the failed horse.
Since then, Liu Chengmin’s life has been very difficult. As the company’s resources are heavily invested in WeChat, Liu Chengmin’s department is gradually weakening, in the case of Tencent.