September 30 is the first anniversary of Tencent’s organizational restructuring. Ma Huateng once compared this adjustment to a future-oriented evolution, taking the next 20 years of active innovation and upgrading iterations.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “InfoQ” (ID: Infoqchina), author Tang Xiaozhi, Zhang Xiaonan.
If you want to respond to the huge changes that have taken place in the past year, how will Tencent break the problem? What do you think about the changes in these aspects? InfoQ interviewed Tencent for three days and hoped to tell some of the stories behind the readers.
Experienced 365 days
Chen Huashan is one of Tencent’s first people to embrace organizational restructuring. His adjustment from MIG (Mobile Internet Business Group) to the later CSIG (Cloud and Smart Industry Group) was in June last year. It was three months earlier than the adjustment of the 9.30 organizational structure announced by Tencent last year.
The first reaction after hearing the news is: Is it because we used to “hit” too fierce?
The response of Chen Huashan stems from the business of his department: face recognition.
At that time, the company had four departments that were doing face recognition products at the same time. In addition to my Internet + cooperation department, there were also cloud product department, SNG (social network business group) operation department, and WeChat open platform department.
Tencent has a strong open atmosphere in culture. In the ToC field of siege, the “internal horse racing” has obvious advantages, but doing ToB business will make customers confused: people from various departments come to look for it. I can’t cope with it.
InfoQ reporter even listened to Tencent’s classmates saying: “A customer received a quotation from multiple teams of Tencent for the same project. The customer selected the plan with the highest quotation and the result was audited internally. Check, although the same product, but different teams with different programs and services, so the price is different.”
In addition to confusing customers, “internal horse racing” also has a problem that is reflected in the R&D level: each department creates its own wheels according to its business characteristics, and these wheels have no channels to reuse. The barriers between the departments are strict, and since there are no other teams to use good tools, there is no soil to embrace open source.
I also read about the post that criticized the construction of Tencent’s technology. I confessed that we can fully accept such criticism. The intranet forum is more direct and sharp.
For the 9·30 groupThe adjustment of the weaving structure, Chen Huashan thinks it is natural, but I did not expect that the later movement will be so big…
One-year resolution of architecture adjustment
The organizational transformation of large enterprises and the construction of China-Pacific are definitely a difficult problem. They require a lot of effort and wisdom. They also need to find a suitable evolutionary rhythm and construction order. It is estimated that there will be many pains, such as departments. Short-term conflicts of interest, security of departmental teams, and inexperienced injuries. I think the most important point here is two points. On the one hand, it depends on the top-down determination and will of the top management team; on the other hand, it is the culture and mind of the company’s products and technical teams. ——Tencent CTO Zhang Zhidong
The past year, such as walking thin ice
There is another 5 days from the first anniversary of 9·30. At the 37th floor of the top floor of Tencent Building, No. 10000 Shennan Road, Shenzhen, the head of CSIG, Tang Daosheng, president of Tencent Cloud and Smart Industry Group, was interviewed by InfoQ. This sums up his past year: “I am in a good mood, but I am also on thin ice.”
In the past, if you letting Tencent define it, what would it be? It may be a social company or a gaming company, but it may not be a ToB company. The establishment of CSIG can be regarded as the beginning of Tencent’s transition to the B-end and the transformation to the industrial Internet. It is not only necessary to directly earn the money of the government and industry customers, but also to open the C-side business through the B-side business. CSIG has a heavy responsibility, and Tang Daosheng describes that it is normal for him to be a thin ice this year.
“ToB business has a deeper understanding of each industry, but in fact the water in each industry is quite deep.”
Behind his sentence, it can be understood that Tencent did not understand the “routine” when doing ToB business. Give another example of Tencent’s classmates telling reporters:
Not long ago, a government cloud project had a failure, and multiple servers were affected. Other friends are a large number of people at the customer, and Tencent has only two people at the scene. Although our solution was the best after the event – with the support of dozens of technicians in the back for many days and nights, helping customers recover 100% of the data, but this customer is very good for us only 2 people at the scene. Comments, I feel that they are not paying enough attention to them.
This kind of acting style is very Tencent. After all, when doing ToC business, a small team of several people can get a big business when they are sitting at home. Everyone is a CEO.
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