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The original intention of writing this article

In the next ten years, two things will not change for Didi:

• Business will become more diversified and global;

• Technology will irresistibly become the core engine of value creation and the core barrier against competition.
  

  Didi needs to establish a system to continue to cultivate outstanding CTOs who can act independently and deliver them to various businesses. In my opinion, every technical classmate is the CTO in the direction of his post, so today I write this article, hoping to share my summary and reflections on the CTO practice in the past seven years, and I would like to share with you Continuously improve in your own post. These thoughts are still iterating. There must be many imperfections. Please also read critically and speculatively.

  Reading guide for this article

  “Sutra” core: 1 circle and 16 words

  “Surgery”: how to do things

  “Tao”: How to be a human

  Summary message

  CTO: The core of cultivation: 1 circle and 16 words

  CTO The core of the cultivation path, I summarize it as follows. The upper semicircle is “Science”, which tells how to do things. It is summarized as “value traction, technology-driven”. What needs to be cultivated is the connection between the value domain and the technical domain. The lower semicircle is “Dao”. “Achieve others,” what needs to be cultivated is the connection between the core of the business and the capabilities of the people.

  

  “Surgery” articles: value traction, technology drive, practice of doing things

  “How to measure whether a CTO is qualified?” I have been thinking about this question for the past seven years, and the current summary is “value traction, technology-driven”. What CTO needs to continue to cultivate is to have a deep insight into user value and business value, at the same time know the development trend of science and technology, do a good job of connecting the value domain to the technology domain, and be able to use appropriate technology to efficiently create business value user value.

  Why is it “value drive, technology drive”? First, I think creating user value andBusiness value is not isolated. For commercial enterprises, we need long-term sustainable development, and we need to create user value with commercial value. The ultimate goal of the CTO is also here, and technology is the most powerful “weapon” to achieve this goal. As the scale increases, the investment in science and technology will not increase linearly with the scale, and the more efficient the technology will create value. This is the value that our product technicians should play.

  As a CTO, how to achieve “value traction and technology drive”?

  In-depth understanding of technology

  The advantage of students with a technical background is that they can understand the boundaries of technology correctly. Students who do not have a deep understanding of science and technology, the easy mistake is “strongly overestimating the value of science and technology in the short term and underestimating the value of technology in the long term”.

  The basic quality of a CTO is: a deep understanding of the boundaries of technology and the productivity it can bring in the short, medium and long term. Too optimistic may make the company prematurely invest in a technology that is not profitable for a long time and waste resources. For example, Xerox in the 1970s invested 10 years. It was the first invention of personal PC in human history, but business Unsuccessful transformation; being too pessimistic may make the company unable to keep up with a wave of technology, and there is danger of being overturned, such as Nokia in the era of smart phones; Kodak in the era of digital photography.

  At present, the world is still in a period of rapid development of science and technology. In the past eight years, mobile Internet and AI have created two productivity forces, creating Didi, Meituan, Toutiao and other companies that create great new value. In the next ten years, as General The development of technologies such as AI, 5G, IOT, and VR is likely to have new pattern changes. As a CTO, we need to keep learning and keenly aware of the development trend of science and technology and the successful application of science and technology in industry.

  Have a deep understanding of user value and business value, and do a good job of connecting the value domain to the technical domain

  The CTO of Alibaba Group, in an interview, said in an interview that there are two types of CTOs in the world. One is to look at technology from a business perspective and the other is to look at technology from a technical perspective.

  I very much agree that technical students, the very easy mistake to make is to find a nail with a hammer. I have an advanced technology, and I take it for granted that it will be commercially successful. For example, there are many startups that try to install cameras in shopping malls and use computer vision technology to record behavior data such as the length of time each customer stays in front of them. They try to optimize the placement of goods in shopping malls through big data analysis. To increase GMV.

  Logically, this assumption is very reasonable. On the e-commerce platform, by recording the user’s browsing and transaction behavior, and then making related recommendations, it has generated great value. However, in the past, many companies in this direction have closed down or transformed. The reason behind this is: in the mall scene, there is no way toIt is good to adjust the position of the product in real time. Even with this data, the merchant usually adjusts the position of the product once a month. With or without customer behavior data, the incremental value generated by the transaction GMV is not too large. This is a typical “taken for granted” error from the technical domain to the value domain. The assumption that “with computer vision technology and user behavior data, we can definitely produce value for transactions” may not hold true in real life.

  How to connect the value domain to the technology domain, the method I recommend is:

  

  Many hypotheses must be practiced to know whether they are correct. Talented or experienced people will assume a higher degree of reliability. They may succeed once after five trials and may succeed once after 50 trials. However, the order of quick verification and ALL in cannot be wrong. Many people often make the mistake of skipping quick verification to ALL in directly. The risk of failure is high and the cost is very high. Many companies go out of business. The review is very important. If the verification is successful, summarize the reasons. If the verification is not successful, summarize the lessons and increase the probability of success of the next hypothesis.

  “Tao” articles: Achievement of business, achievement of others, and cultivation of others

  The Tao article is about the motivation of the CTO to do everything. “Achieve business, achieve others”, these eight words have been on my office wall for a long time, which is also what I have always asked of myself. These eight words seem to me to be the ultimate source of leadership.

  Achieve business, understand business core

  CTO’s motivation for doing things is to create user value and business value to make the business successful. Only when the business is successful can we gather a group of like-minded and outstanding talents. No one will be willing to follow the general who always defeats the battle. Didi this way is also because the battle that must be won must be won before we can go today and gather so many like-minded talents.

  How to make a business? The key is in-depth insight into the business. Everything is simple. If you think a thing is complicated, it is because you haven’t seen it through. If you have seen it through, you can make a fortune. We often see some people or teams that are busy but the results are not good. The core reason is here. Share a few cases here.

  1) Business core of “good product”

  I met Yu Jun for the first time in Canada and I asked him “What is the methodology for making a good product?” The answer given by Yu Jun is: user value = new experience-old experience-migration cost, the new experience is generally related to money, time, physical and psychologicalFour factors are related. We both listed various successful and failed cases and found that both can be well explained by this formula.

  2) Kernel of enterprise security

  The first time I met Bu Yi in the United States, he was already a well-known entrepreneur and leader in the security field. I asked him how to do good corporate security, which is a very abstract question. I have asked many top and second leaders responsible for security in various companies before. Most of the answers are that the office network security system and production system security system, each system has eight modules. The answer that Bu Yi gave me was “feeling, controllable, and business first”, and then spent ten minutes to introduce the specific meaning. Our two conversations on how to do corporate security are over. I think this answer is very complete.

  Achieve others, and connect the business core to people

  To achieve others, the first thing you need to cultivate is your mind. Success doesn’t have to be with me. The core of leadership is that because of your presence, you can make the people around you (subordinates, Peer, superiors, etc.) better. Help others succeed from the bottom of your heart, and you will become a more successful person. How many people you can achieve, and how many higher-ranking people, can determine your leadership. Throughout Didi’s career for the past seven years, I have always upheld and insisted on the concept of achieving others. I have hired many high-level scientists and engineers, and I have also cultivated many potential engineers. Many of them are now in important positions. Some students have left Didi to become the backbone of many technology companies.

  In terms of methodology, we examine and cultivate talents from two dimensions: motivation and potential:

  1) Motivation

  Everyone when I recruit, I will seriously ask them: how is your career successful? What are your unfinished wishes? Not all talents can succeed in your business. The higher the talent’s ability model matches the business core, the more likely it is to succeed. This analysis process is similar to the work of a product manager. The essence is business value and human value Exchange, to achieve a win-win situation through exchange.

  2) Potential

  No one is perfect. Managers should not pin their hopes on finding the perfect person, but use imperfect but potential people to make things as perfect as possible. At the same time, in the process of doing things, Make everyone better. It is very important for managers to find good seedlings with potential and put them in positions suitable for their exercise.

  How to judge a person’s growth potential, my own summary is the triangle below.

  

  The bottom layer is the two cornerstones of human nature: morality and intelligence. These two aspects are related to everyone’s growth experience and family background. It is not easy to change. The main work we can do is to screen. Morality is whether this person’s motivation to do things is mission-driven, whether he always adheres to the overall interests, and flawed people can no longer use their abilities. Smart is the ability to see the essence of people and things. My judgment method is to see The amount of information he exchanges per unit of time when he communicates with you. Smart people know very well what you want to ask (the ability to see people), and they are also very clear about the core of the thought they want to express, and describe it in simple and understandable language. Come out (the ability to see things).

  The middle layer has four elements related to growth: opening the eyes, reviewing, thinking deeply, and integrating knowledge with action. Kaitian Eye is learned through the experience of others. Each person is limited by time and experience. There are limited people and things that can be experienced directly. Through Kaitian Eye, the scope of cognition can be greatly expanded. Many things are connected at the kernel level. ; Reviewing is to learn through your own experience. After each thing is done, through thinking, what are the shortcomings of this thing from the most perfect state, if there is a repeat, what can be improved, people who are good at reviewing People who are not good at reexamination experience the same thing, the growth rate is different; deep thinking, open eyes and reexamination are all information input, through deep thinking, find the core of it; the unity of knowledge and action, any theory must be placed Test in practice, then return to the cycle of review and deep thinking, and iterative optimization. These four factors related to growth can be cultivated to a certain extent, but if this person is more conceited or ego is too strong, it will affect the open eyes and re-examination, compressing the space for further growth, this kind of person should be carefully appointed.

  The top layer is experience. If a person has a solid foundation in the lower two layers and has reached a relatively high level in some fields in the past, let him enter a completely new field, and generally become an expert within six months. It will become a senior expert within one year, but the past experience in this field is not very important.

  The importance of the three levels decreases from bottom to top.

  Concluding remarks

  Being human is fundamental. If the motivation is impure, unrighteous, and selfish, the good people around you will definitely feel that they will stay away, no matter how good the technique is, it will not be implemented. The practice of CTO is very difficult. Many times, I have to suffer loneliness, pressure, and not being understood. Many students ask me that the value of technology sometimes takes a certain amount of time to be seen. In the process, many people do not understand or even question ,How to do. I want to tell you that this is normal, insist on doing the right thing, and strive to communicate for more understanding, tolerate some degree of misunderstanding or even misunderstanding, time will correct all values. This process requires mental training.

  The above article is my thinking and summary of the work of CTO in the past seven years. I know that I am away from an excellent CTO has a long way to go. I hope to work with my classmates and become a better myself!