Highlights of this article:
Zhou Shouzi, the CEO of the short video social platform TikTok (whose parent company is ByteDance), has once again brushed the screen with fans.
On March 23, at a hearing on TikTok's future and fate organized by the Energy and Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives of the US Congress, more than five hours of questioning from US lawmakers once again pushed him to the cusp. But he responded calmly and calmly, giving us a glimpse of the true sense of eliteism.
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Image: Source: Internet
Looking at Zhou Shouzi's life experience of more than 40 years, it is no exaggeration to call him someone else's child, and his development path perfectly interprets this.
Chow Shouzi was born in Singapore in 1983. Secondary school, attended Huaqiao Secondary School, Singapore's elite Chinese school, with excellent results. He joined the army at the age of 18 and was awarded the rank of captain before going on to study economics at the University of London, where he obtained a bachelor's degree.
After that, he successfully joined the famous investment bank Goldman Sachs and began to systematically learn investment knowledge. However, after only 2 years of work, he resolutely chose to quit and went to Harvard Business School to study for an MBA. After graduation, he joined the Russian investment giant DST by chance, changed careers to VC, and directly participated in the investment of many domestic Internet unicorn companies such as Xiaomi and JD.com.
From 2015 to 2020, after joining Xiaomi, he successfully realized the glory transformation from VC to CFO, becoming a veritable second person in Xiaomi.
After 2021, he continued his efforts, from CFO of ByteDance to the head of TikTok, so there was the scene of tongue fighting at the beginning of this article.
In Zhou Shouzi's selfie short video, he has repeatedly mentioned that he must have the courage to break his comfort zone, and his several successful experiences in the circle fully prove this.
But how easy is it to break the familiar environment you have become accustomed to and expand outward?
This period is fraught with fear of uncertainty and careful calculation of vested interests and sunk costs.
As a result, many people will be naked in the choice or not, seemingly without a solution.
But it's not.
1. Cognitive upgrading is the premise of breaking the comfort zone
The inability to break out of your comfort zone may be related to the cognition constructed by your usual patterns of thinking, behavior, and emotions. These inherent cognitions sometimes limit our thinking path to a particular problem to a certain extent, until it ultimately determines our choices - because the brain is sometimes very lazy, and when it is imprisoned by fixed thinking, people will give up the possibility of finding other ways out like boiled frogs.
But if we develop the habit of regular cognitive upgrades, or strive to shape our own growth mindset, we will have the opportunity to re-examine many of the previous things for granted, and we will also look at our strengths and weaknesses more rationally, and promote more comprehensive thinking. Once a new self-awareness is established, then our own realm and vision will change at any time, which will also produce different results.
Combined with the suggestions on cognitive upgrading in the teacher's book "Breaking the Circle", we may have a deeper understanding when we look back at Zhou Shouzi's experience of breaking the circle.
(1) Deep experience
From analysts, VCs, CFOs, partners to CEOs, Zhou Shouzi tries his best to seize every opportunity to choose and experience growth in every professional experience.
Whenever he encounters difficulties, he not only does not escape, but dares to face it and analyze it, so as to understand his blind spots and cognitive misunderstandings, desperately accumulate ability, and fully prepare for the next jump. Similarly, when he feels too comfortable or smooth in a certain professional experience, he will consciously add a little challenge to himself, test the flexibility and adaptability of his state, and challenge himself across lines to become common.
(2) Thorough thinking and in-depth practice
Zhou Shouzi is rational and has excellent judgment and execution, especially in the choice of track during his several lap breaks.
Back in 2009, when he was an MBA at Harvard Business School, he interned at Facebook, which was still a startup at the time. That internship experience allowed him to foresee the potential development momentum of the technology industry, which also laid an important foreshadowing for his subsequent investment in several domestic Internet giants in DST.
After graduating from business school, he "ventured" to join DST, changed careers to become a VC, and led the team to invest in many Chinese Internet companies such as JD.com, Alibaba, and Didi Dache, during which he was also able to meet business leaders such as Lei Jun and Zhang Yiming, creating the possibility of subsequent in-depth participation.
Since then, he has started a new track selection, stepped into the game, and successively joined the senior management teams of Xiaomi and TikTok, officially breaking new ground in the technology industry and rising rapidly.
In the final analysis, every seemingly perfect transformation is closely related to his thorough thinking and continuous practice, weighing the pros and cons, reasonably predicting, and stepping on the drum of the times at every step. In practice, constantly adjust their own strategy to achieve their own continuous improvement.
Image: Source: Internet
2. The ability to learn efficiently is
A guarantee to break the comfort zone
The cognitive upgrade alone only solves the strategic problem and ensures that the general direction of the circle-breaking track is correct; But when it comes to tactics, you still need some handy weapons. Among them, efficient learning ability can definitely rank in the top three.
In Zhou Shouzi's several circle-breaking experiences, he undoubtedly gave full play to the ability to learn efficiently.
For example, after joining DST, he spent a year meeting key partners of more than 20 top financial advisory firms in China, which quickly improved his investment capabilities and helped the company successfully invest in several leading Internet companies in China.
Another example: after joining Xiaomi, it only took him 5 years to grow rapidly from VC to partner, and he became the "second handsome of Xiaomi".
And Zhou Shouzi also repeatedly emphasized in the selfie short video that he actually does not understand investment, but only pushes himself out of his comfort zone through continuous hard work.
Learning from masters, learning by doing, and then achieving rapid growth are actually a significant embodiment of high learning ability, and it is also a guarantee of strength to break the comfort zone.
Image: Source: Internet
But in the age of artificial intelligence, perhaps we can do more.
The development of AI intelligent tools such as ChatGPT has brought more convenience to our independent and efficient learning.
Information that used to require laborious retrieval can now be quickly obtained through AI interactive Q&A. In addition, through deliberate feedback training, AI intelligent tools may become their own reliable common external brain in the future, thereby further improving the efficiency of learning and breaking the circle with ability.
3. Perseverance is an inexhaustible driving force to continue to break the circle
With a breakthrough in cognition, the ability to quickly absorb knowledge only solves the problem of "knowing", but to move from "knowing" to "doing", other will qualities are required.
American scholar Paul G. Stoltz (founder of the concept of "adverse quotient") has found in the process of studying and promoting adverse business education for more than 40 years that high adverse quotient does not necessarily directly lead to high achievements, but also affects whether people can achieve their pursuit of life goals due to traits related to perseverance. Especially when we face a complex and ever-changing external environment, perseverance is even more important to promote our own growth.
Zhou Shouzi's life credo is: "Everything has to be worked on." ”
During his time at Goldman Sachs, he confessed that he was very hard, for two years, he hardly took a day off, and even wrote a report on Christmas.
During his work at DST, in order to research entrepreneurial projects and observe the development of China's mobile Internet, he met with an average of 30 companies a week, 3500 a year, and then selected senior leaders of more than 20 top financial consulting companies for in-depth communication.
During his work at Xiaomi, Zhou Shouzi was still very hard. In 2018, when Xiaomi was preparing to list on the Hong Kong stock market, he posted a Weibo with a sentence on the picture: "In the coming year, even sleeping is a waste of time." And this sentence is a true portrayal of his life that year.
Whether at Goldman Sachs, at Xiaomi or TikTok's darkest moments in the United States, he has shown amazing perseverance at every stage, getting rid of the noise and inspiring more of his potential, which may be the core ability of his continuous circle breaking.
Perhaps it is precisely thanks to this kind of perseverance to achieve the set goals that allows him to stand by at a critical moment related to the company's future and destiny.
4. Write at the end
People's lives cannot be smooth sailing, there may be twists and turns, and even the darkest moments, and the ability to continue to break the circle may be the core competitiveness we should pursue.
[References]
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