Author: Gong Jinhui
After 7 months as president of Jingdong Group, Xu Lei finally went further in his career and was promoted to CEO of Jingdong Group, while Liu Qiangdong, who stepped down as CEO of Jingdong Group, continued to serve as the chairman of the board of directors of Jingdong Group, which represents the official change of coach of Jingdong Group with hundreds of thousands of employees.
It is reported that Xu Lei will be responsible for the daily operations of Jingdong Group in the future and continue to report to Liu Qiangdong, and Liu Qiangdong will devote more energy to long-term strategic design, major strategic decision-making and deployment, young leading talent training and rural revitalization. In my opinion, the personnel change of JD.com sends two clear signals:
First, Liu Qiangdong deliberately cultivated Xu Lei. To train him as his successor, Xu Lei's tenure as president of Jingdong Group is not only a transitional period, but also an inspection period that will eventually rise to a higher level in time, and it is also an inspection period, which Liu Qiangdong uses to examine whether Xu Lei can shoulder heavy responsibilities. Facts have proved that as a veteran of Jingdong with outstanding contributions, Xu Lei successfully withstood the test and won the trust of Liu Qiangdong, so he will willingly give up his position and let him succeed him as the CEO of Jingdong Group.
Second, Liu Qiangdong did not completely let go. Xu Lei succeeded Liu Qiangdong as the CEO of Jingdong Group, representing that Liu Qiangdong will no longer stand on the front line to manage specific businesses and focus on long-term strategy, while Xu Lei has become a leader who asks about JD.com's big things and small feelings. However, this does not represent the weakening of Liu Qiangdong's voice in Jingdong. On the one hand, the equity held by Liu Qiangdong determines that Liu Qiangdong is indispensable in JD.com; on the other hand, Liu Qiangdong attaches great importance to the control of JD.com, once saying, "If you can't control JD.com, you'd rather sell it!" ”。
Perhaps, xu Lei, the new CEO of Jingdong Group, is not as well-known as Liu Qiangdong, but he has made great achievements for Jingdong and is an indispensable right-hand man for Liu Qiangdong. Over the past three years, both in terms of driving performance growth and internal management, it has performed very well and has been unanimously recognized inside and outside the company. Of course, what Xu Lei often arouses heated discussion in the outside world is not his ability to lead soldiers to fight, but his own personality and unusual path.
Wearing stud earrings, tattoos, love rock and roll, love to play football, Xu Lei rarely wears formal clothes, always wears a fashion brand, which is incompatible with the common Internet company executive Fan Ge. From another point of view, being different is his unique charm. Xu Lei, who came from marketing, single-handedly created the Jingdong 618 marketing campaign, and now Jingdong 618 has become one of the landmark events of the Chinese economy every year, with far-reaching influence.
I don't know if you found it, with Liu Qiangdong stepping down as CEO of Jingdong Group, the founders of the three giants of domestic e-commerce have collectively left the front line, Ali's Ma Yun and Pinduoduo's Huang Zheng have retreated behind the scenes, and Daniel Zhang and Chen Lei have led Ali and Pinduoduo to fight the world. In other words, the past fight between Ma Yun, Huang Zheng and Liu Qiangdong has evolved into a new situation of war between Daniel Zhang, Chen Lei and Xu Lei, who are the commanders of their respective companies.
Interestingly, the backgrounds of the three leaders are very different, they are finance, technology, marketing, and have served as CFOs, CTOs, and CMOs. If Xu Lei is the "father of Jingdong 618", then Daniel Zhang is the "father of Tmall Double 11", he personally designed and led Tmall Double 11, after more than ten years of development, it has become a well-known year-end promotion carnival.
Daniel Zhang once admitted that he only thought that e-commerce was a sunrise industry, and only came to Ali, "After encountering many opportunities and challenges, unconsciously, I may have become a 'creator', these three words are my most cherished titles in Ali." He added, "Mr. Ma (Jack Ma) once said that 'CFO can't become CEO', and I believe this is the reason why he broke his vows. ”
Chen Lei is an uncompromising technical school, bluntly saying that the rapid development of Pinduoduo is inseparable from technical support. When he was the CTO of Pinduoduo, he has always advocated the use of technology to bring new changes to e-commerce and the industry, and tasted the sweetness. After becoming the head of Pinduoduo, Chen Lei not only continued Pinduoduo's consistent heavy investment strategy for agriculture, but also increased the overall ecological technology investment and strategic investment, including heavy technology investment in agriculture.
Not long ago, Chen Lei handed over his first annual report card after taking charge of Pinduoduo in an all-round way, and his performance was remarkable. Among them, the decline in marketing expenses and the increase in research and development expenses are particularly eye-catching. According to the financial report, the proportion of Pinduoduo's marketing expenses to operating income in 2021 has dropped to less than 50%, and research and development expenses have increased by 30% year-on-year to 8.99 billion yuan. It is not difficult to see that Chen Lei is committed to building Pinduoduo into a "new agricultural science and technology enterprise".
It is foreseeable that in the future, Ali, Pinduoduo, and Jingdong are doomed to chase after me and each other, Daniel Zhang, Chen Lei, xu Lei will stage a head-on confrontation, competition will inevitably intensify, the three major successors will fight, who are you more optimistic about?