Before the conversation began, I asked Zhang Yiming to do the "Wu Xiaobo Questionnaire". He did it quickly on his phone. Question 1: What do you think wealth means to you? His answer was two words: freedom.
——Wu Xiaobo
Wen / Ba Jiu Ling
Old readers of Wu Xiaobo's channel should have the impression that we have a column of Teacher Wu talking about entrepreneurs - "Wu Xiaobo Afternoon Tea".
Every time they talked, Teacher Wu would let them do a "Wu Xiaobo Questionnaire".
Inspired by the Proust Questionnaire, the questionnaire is named after Marcel Proust, author of Remembrance of the Lost Years, and its main purpose is to investigate the personal lifestyle, values, and life experiences of the respondents.
Based on this, Teacher Wu revised an entrepreneurial version of the "Wu Xiaobo Questionnaire".
This version of the questionnaire has a total of 18 questions, from an entrepreneur's perception of wealth, motto, and solitude habits, to the peer evaluations he longs for, family evaluations, and the most satisfied and dissatisfied points about himself.
The first person to answer this questionnaire was Wu Wenhui of the Reading Group at that time, and in the following years, Zhang Yiming of ByteDance, Yang Yuanqing of Lenovo Group, and Ye Guofu of Mingchuang Excellent Products all made this questionnaire.
Through the entrepreneurs' answers, we were able to explore some of their personality traits.
It's interesting to look back at the answers to the questionnaires of these entrepreneurs five or six years ago, and then think about where they are today.
Take Zhang Yiming.
Zhang Yiming did the "Wu Xiaobo Questionnaire" in 2015, and according to Teacher Wu's recollection, he quickly completed all the questions on his mobile phone.
That year, the brightest product in his hands was "Today's Headlines", which had just beaten Tencent News in the mobile news client war with a per capita visit time of 32 minutes, and won the first place in the sub-category.
In a year, his star product will be replaced from headlines with "Douyin"; in another year, TikTok, the overseas version of Douyin, will go to the world and become the most successful product of Chinese Internet companies in history.
The questionnaire asked him, "If you could do it all over again, what would you most like to do?" ”
Yang Yuanqing of Lenovo Group said that he might write novels, Ye Guofu of Mingchuang Excellent Product said that he would do design, Wu Wenhui of Reading Group said he would become a freelance traveler, and Zhang Yiming was one of the few entrepreneurs who thought that "he would still do this".
He explained in the questionnaire: "Because what I'm doing right now is something that I'm interested in, and [for me too] is challenging. ”
In the past decade, ByteDance has been known for its "App Factory" and "Explosive Manufacturing", perhaps thanks to Zhang Yiming's hobby.
However, in May 2021, he announced his resignation as CEO of ByteDance, and in the email of all employees announcing the news, he told everyone that he wanted to put aside his daily management work and focus on long-term important issues such as vision strategy, corporate culture and social responsibility.
He believes that he has fallen into the "negative scale effect" of THE CEO: when the business and organization become more complex and the scale becomes larger, the CEO as the central node is easy to fall into passivity, and the daily trivial reporting and approval will also lead to internal perspectives, and the knowledge structure will be updated slowly.
The media subtly likened it to "retreat."
From "Challenger Zhang Yiming" to "Hermit Zhang Yiming", after comparing his answers in "Wu Xiaobo's Questionnaire", such a leap is not surprising.
He revealed in the questionnaire that when a person is alone, he likes to "stare and learn" and enjoys the process very much:
My daze is not to think about things, but to imagine. Imagination is a way to expand human life and vision. I read a lot of books, which are not necessarily directly related to my life and work.
Based on this, in the "2022 Spring Festival List" planned by Wu Xiaobo Channel, I slightly modified this questionnaire, removed the questions that were too aimed at entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, and sorted out a special edition of the Spring Festival of "Wu Xiaobo Questionnaire", a total of 13 topics, and sent it to everyone.
We believe that everyone can use this to torture themselves. Then quietly wait for a few years, look back from time to time, to see if you still maintain your original intention, whether you have kept pace with the times.
I don't want you to rush to write the answer to every question, each of them is worth pondering.
Of course, this article also added some small Easter eggs, after each question, we attached the answers of several entrepreneurs that year, clicking on the picture many times to see, these answers for you to "gossip" and learn from during the Spring Festival.
Author | And the wind moon half | When the value is edited | He Mengfei
Responsible Editor | He Mengfei | Editor-in-Chief | Zheng Yuanmei | Image source | VCG