This article comes from WeChat public account: Byte Faner (ID: Bytedancer) , the original title of “beating the eighth anniversary of bytes: Zhang Yiming announced the organization to upgrade in the future will focus on three key”, author: Zhang Yiming


On March 12, 2020, the official WeChat public account of Byte Beat Culture released an open letter from Zhang Yiming. In the letter, he announced three major directions for the future of bytebeat: reorganizing the organization, focusing on global markets, corporate CSR (Social Responsibility Value), and a new track that the company may bet on in the future.

Today is the 8th anniversary of the establishment of Byte Beat. Affected by the global epidemic, many ByteDancers are still working from home and cannot be celebrated as lively as in previous years. This year we are sticking to our respective positions to send our company the 8th anniversary blessing.

At this special time, Yiming wrote a full letter to employees around the world, sharing his new ideas. In the letter, he announced organizational upgrades to address the challenges of business change and organizational growth. Byte Beat has grown into a large platform that provides multiple products and services to global users. The size of global employees is expected to reach 100,000 by the end of the year. In addition to improving the global management team, Yiming will focus on three areas: management of very large global organizations, and thinking about new strategic directions such as how technology companies can create more social value and education. The following is the full version of Yiming’s full letter, which is shared with everyone here.

Hello everyone,

Today is the 8th anniversary of the company. In this new mode of remote office, I will chat with you online about new ideas.

I want to do a relatively large organizational upgrade at this time: Today, the company will appoint Zhang Lidong and Zhang Nan (Kelly) is the chairman and CEO of Byte Beat China, and is responsible for the development of Byte Beat China business. As the Global CEO of ByteDance, I will spend more time in Europe, America and other markets, and work with Alex to improve the global management team of ByteDance, and also help new colleagues such as Erich Andersen, Roland Cloutier and so on. Integration.

In the past 8 years, bytes have developed rapidly. We have grown from a small product to a large platform that provides multiple products and services to global users. The number of global employees will also reach 100,000 this year. As we grow, we face many challenges.

In order to cope with business changes, we have been continuously optimizing and adjusting the company’s organization and cooperation methods. For example, the CEO and management team that define the main business; establish virtual P & L for each business to help each business make better decisions; performance management and OKR tools are also constantly updated. But how to build a very large global organization is still a new issue for us.

As business grows, external effects continue to expand, and society has more expectations for us. In the past year, I have spent nearly 2/3 of my time in many places around the world. In addition to understanding the company’s business, I also communicate with many local colleagues and friends, do user research in the Delidi Hart market, visit friends in Paris, and go to museums in various places to learn about history. With a deeper understanding. We have businesses and users in many countries around the world. We need to think more about our relationship with the outside world and our contribution to the outside world.

More than that, in addition to our familiar information and content platform business, we have also begun to explore many new business directions. For us, this is a cross-border, but we don’t know enough about these new businesses.

These challenges require more changes in the organization of our company. In addition to improving the work of the global management team, I will free up energy from the company’s daily operations and focus on a few things:

1. Study how to better improve the management of very large global organizations

Frankly, it is not easy to manage a company with more than 60,000 employees in more than 180 cities in 30 countries. This does not include 5,000 foreign teachers in our education business in North America, outsourcing employees of the company’s administrative system, and so on. In the past year, we have seen a lot of management issues, and the most direct feedback is that employee engagement and satisfaction statistics have declined.

I strive to travel to all areas with offices in the next three years, learn about the company and learn the local culture. Our goal is not only to establish a global business, but also to establish a global, diverse and compatible organization. Through better organization, stimulate everyone’s potential and creativity to serve global users.

We always say develop a company as a product. Understanding what the essence of this product is is very important for improving management.

Before 2016, I saw a lot of things, I also had a lot of thoughts, and I practiced them in our company management. The frankness and clarity in Bytefan comes from my attempt to understand Jack Welch’s repeated strong emphasis in “Win”-frankness reduces organizational transaction costs. “Everyone is a manager in a knowledge organization.” This is Drucker’s redefinition of managers. His thinking on management by objectives has inspired our emphasis on organizational effectiveness and the practice of OKR. His and Coase’s ideas prompted me to think about the boundaries of the enterprise and how to measure the transaction costs within the organization from an external perspective. Our philosophy of “context, not control” is directly influenced by Netflix. Of course, it is also largely related to Hayek’s argument about rational conceit. I recognize the importance of transparent information, distributed decision-making, and innovation.

The changes in the organization of technology companies will bring many new changes, which are reflected in business, finance, and manpower. Financially, how to introduce LTV in UG into internal financial statements, and how to settle costs between various businesses. In terms of human resources, how to organize talents under the intersection of three dimensions of function, business and market. Correspondingly, internal tools of the enterprise also need new R & D optimization. For us, in the past two years, we have actually thought more about problems and less. I will spend more time studying and researching, and also discuss improvement with ES colleagues.

2. Research on how technology companies create more social value

Beginning in the second half of last year, my management team and I re- seriously discussed what the essence of the company is. We started with the most basic issues. What is technology and what is a technology company? Why do tech companies need to take more social responsibility? Technology refers to the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry (for practical purposes, especially in industry,With scientific knowledge) , the basic condition for becoming a technology company is continuous learning scientific knowledge (Scientific Knowledge) . If technology companies can continuously improve their cognitive improvement methods, their leverage will become larger and larger, and the head companies’ proportion in the economy will become higher and higher, and their impact on people’s lives will become greater and greater. Regulatory concerns.

From the outside, public expectations are getting higher and higher. From the inside, employees also need a stronger sense of mission to take on greater responsibilities. To provide users with innovative, high-quality and efficient products and services is the basic social responsibility of the enterprise. But technology companies also need to think about how to face their own external effects and actively cooperate with external parties to create social value.

In the past two years, we have done a lot of work in the direction of corporate social responsibility, including the establishment of public welfare departments, requiring each business to have CSR goals and plans, and being aligned with user goals and business goals. Several projects, such as tracing people, helping doctors, and helping the poor, have been successful, but overall I feel that they are far from enough, especially compared with our goal of achieving a higher level globally.

I will communicate with more colleagues and external parties. On the one hand, I will better understand the current problems in the world, and on the other hand, I will explore how to establish better mechanisms within the company to take on more social responsibilities.

3. New strategic directions such as thinking and planning education

Education is a new business direction that companies try across borders. Everyone should understand that I have always attached great importance to talent recruitment, and I am full of expectations for personal potential. I agree with Drucker. For the company, the meaning of the company’s existence is to realize people’s creativity through the company. I will add another sentence-let everyone have richer and more meaningful experiences and experiences. Yes, it is the same as the mission of our user products: inspire creativity, enrich life.

For some time in 2016, I found that many of the company’s outstanding algorithm talents came from the ACM class of Shanghai Jiaotong University. I went to Shanghai to visit Yu Yong. From the completion rate of the ACM class of Jiaotong University, and later research on Minerva University, I directly realized that education is very important to stimulate people’s potential, and that education itself has huge potential. This is a starting point for me to seriously consider the education business. In the past two years, I have interviewed many teachers and students, including experiencing different teaching effects in different classrooms, but because of limited time and energy, they are not sustainable enough. Next,I will resume the interview and observation of education.

The online tutoring market is very hot recently, and many people ask about my company’s business progress. In fact, I am not anxious and have patience. I think it is still very early. The education business must have more fundamental innovations, of course, provided we have a deeper understanding. Especially for a company that already has a successful business, starting a new business is not easy, there is inertia and inertia. Bold attempts in new fields are an important sign of always starting a business.

On the occasion of the eighth anniversary, I wish you all: you can look back on the past, and you need to focus now, and the future is worth looking forward to.

Zhang Yiming

2020.03.12

This article comes from WeChat public account: Byte Faner (ID: Bytedancer) , the original title of “beating the eighth anniversary of bytes: Zhang Yiming announced the organization to upgrade in the future will focus on three key”, author: Zhang Yiming