Column 033 of The New Business Dialogue
Dictation | Zhou Hangwen | Floating lights
Audio Recording | Li Yan, duty editor, | First
Although 2020 has passed, many things are in its aftermath.
Because covid-19 has redefined the 21st century.
2020 is like a historical fault that requires much longer time and space to see its impact.
Zhou Hang said: "2020 is a Dao Chao outline. So what revelations and lessons have we learned in the process of answering a super-syllabus question?
The following is from an interview with Zhou Hang:
First, in the super-outline question,
Entrepreneurship is the most critical variable
Many people have gone through a bad 2020, not only facing the impact of the epidemic, but also the approaching digital transformation.
Many companies have no choice but to spend it, which is the mainstream.
But what are the most critical variables in the life and death, ups and downs of an enterprise? I think it's an entrepreneur.
There are several kinds of entrepreneurs, and at different stages, you can find some great qualities.
For example, when you're starting a business, being able to innovate and make something that's never been done before is a great entrepreneurial quality.
For example, in the crisis, in the case of everyone is not optimistic, he can still turn the crisis into safety, which is also a great entrepreneurial quality.
Just like Xiaomi, which encountered major setbacks in 2014, stagnated for 3 years, bottomed out and rebounded, which is very special and rare.
Another entrepreneurial quality is strong leadership.
People are like this, when they are good, talent comes in; when they are bad, the trees fall and scatter.
In the dilemma, whether an entrepreneur can bring everyone together, whether he can give everyone a belief, believe that we can overcome difficulties, we will not doubt ourselves, which can reflect the strong leadership of an entrepreneur.
For example, if Ali encounters a crisis, can Ali make people's hearts automatically condense, instead of thinking, am I going to byte better, or to fight more?
In a crisis, I think one of the most important entrepreneurial traits is to give everyone real faith and confidence, rather than shouting slogans and beating chicken blood, which is useless.
Even if people pull banners and shout slogans every day, this is not true.
The real thing is that he is willing to hold the same belief as you, whether he wants to believe in this company, and believe that no matter how many difficulties and obstacles we experience, we will be able to go on.
Entrepreneurs don't usually have to do anything, and they are not CEOs when they usually work.
He has only 2 important jobs:
First, help the company decide what to do;
Second, when the company encounters unprecedented challenges, stand up and say I will solve them.
That's what makes a good CEO.
Even if he didn't know what to do at first, he believed in himself mentally, and he had insights, and he could see the future that others couldn't see, even if it was only a vague direction.
This is a special quality of an entrepreneur.
A good leader should be:
When the company is particularly good, every day to pour cold water on everyone - we can't do this or that, we have this problem, that problem, and a huge crisis waiting for us in front.
When the company encountered a crisis, he told everyone: our mission is no problem, our user value has not changed, and it can even be better. So what should we do now? We have to reflect on what we have to do and see what happens next.
I think the entrepreneur, as the most critical variable in the company, should look like this.
Second, in the super-syllabus, we must learn to evolve
Why can the entrepreneur be the most critical variable?
First, because he has the conviction that he has a life-like love for his business.
If you don't have a life-like connection to the business, you become opportunity-oriented – where it's good, you go.
It's a watershed.
Managers and ordinary employees have very good qualities, are graduates of famous schools, large factory managers, very thoughtful, very smart.
But I think the watershed between them and entrepreneurs is whether they have a lifelike love for business.
Second, if a person has experienced the ups and downs of life, he does not feel that this is a catastrophe.
He would feel that this was just another challenge I had to face.
And even if it is solved this time, life is not all right, and it will not be long before the next challenge comes, but in another form.
In this way, in the face of the bad situation caused by the past, he will not complain about the world, will not feel desperate, but feel that I must face it, and I will certainly be able to deal with it.
Once a person has this belief, it feels completely different.
I think for a good entrepreneur, every crisis, every major setback, is a huge opportunity for self-purification and self-iteration.
Positive things won't let you evolve, you'll just go with the flow. Bad things, or so-called adversity, will allow you to evolve.
Third, the entrepreneur's own growth,
It should be slightly faster than the growth of the enterprise
In this process, the growth of the entrepreneur himself is also very important.
We've found that if you really want to do something well, the scarcest resource is not money, not policies, but entrepreneurial resources.
But entrepreneurs are not achieved overnight, everyone is from a small white, grow into an entrepreneur.
Therefore, in the process of the growth of an enterprise, it must be accompanied by a topic, that is, the growth of the entrepreneur himself.
It is hard to imagine an entrepreneur who can make a highly growing business without growing on his own.
Even many times, the growth of the entrepreneur himself is slightly faster, you can drive the growth of the enterprise, otherwise you will become the bottleneck of the enterprise.
So I'm very concerned when I make investments: Does an entrepreneur have the potential to grow?
Even if he is a small white, he does not understand any business knowledge, it does not matter, we do not need to start very high, but to observe his growth.
It's a big subject, and I'm learning about it.
1. What kind of people have high growth?
So, what kind of people have high growth?
We often say: investment is investment.
But how to vote? What aspects of a person do you look at? This is a very complicated topic.
Everyone who comes to talk about financing has been specially packaged — they may have rehearsed it many times in the house, and PPT has beautified it many times.
So, what you see must be a person who is packaged and even customized by an image consultant.
That's not enough, he's talked to 100 investors before that and knows what you want to hear.
So the person you meet may be a person who has painted heavy makeup. This is the reality we face.
At the same time, your contact time is very short, from the initial contact with a stranger, to the final investment in him, you will not meet more than 10 times. Each time may be as short as half an hour, as long as one afternoon.
So, your real contact with a person is actually short-lived, and what you see must be very positive, especially if you want to invest in him.
This is a big challenge.
When we face him, he is performing, of course, there is no way to observe his growth.
So I think, if you look at these situations, think in reverse, what do you want to see?
2. Growth is reflected in specific decisions
First, you need to put him in a process to investigate.
The reason why Geek Park and I ran a founder's workshop was to put observation and judgment into a process to see what changed during that time.
Second, look at his feedback in the face of negative reviews.
In the face of negative evaluations, he argues, explains, dismisses, or absorbs something from it.
You don't have to look at what he says to you, just look at what he does, which is a very critical quality.
For example, I said: I don't vote for you, you're terrible. You see how he deals with it, which is a good reflection of a person's growth.
If the person is well self-protected, resists all the negative things, and is constantly proving that he is right, then his growth is obvious.
Third, look at his self-perception in a specific situation.
The specific situation means that you need to make some trade-offs and be willing to give up something.
Generally speaking, people who are focused and dare to resist temptation will be better.
But that's not the case for the vast majority of people, and most people are especially willing to embrace opportunities — especially when you do a little better and countless resources start to pool to you.
Someone always says to you: I have something I want to cooperate with you, what resources do I have, what resources do you have, once we do it, this thing can be done.
You are particularly willing to do it, especially unwilling to give up any opportunity.
Problems tend to go wrong at such times.
Looking back, I was often touched by some particularly good entrepreneurs, that is, when I was discussing something with him, he said that I would not do it.
"Because first, I used to be very good at that, I want to do my own thing well enough, big enough, and there is a lot of room for development."
Second, I don't do what I'm not good at, I'm an engineer, you have to let me do the supply chain, I'm not good at it. What I'm good at isn't done well, and I'm not good at what I'm not good at. ”
If you compare two different voices, which entrepreneur do you think is better?
If a focused person is willing to reflect and accept this negative feedback, you can clearly feel in the process that he is different this month and last month, and that his communication is different from the last communication.
This is the person who has growth.
I always feel this change in a lot of entrepreneurs.
On the contrary, if an entrepreneur is saying the same thing every time, every time he is saying that he is good, every time he is telling you that there are new possibilities, I think such a person is scattered, just like practicing, there are many tricks, but the body method is scattered.
Fourth, if you want to answer the super-outline questions, first practice the basic skills
In fact, in the great changes in 2020, one of our most important inspirations is that those who do better are not doing what is right now, but what they did right in the previous two years.
For example, you usually exercise, your body is great, suddenly a cold winter comes, others have a cold, your body is still leveraged.
So today's performance is not because of what he did right today, but because of what he did right in the past. That's how I see it.
The second inspiration is that the basic skills must be done solidly on a daily basis.
For example, for the mobile phone industry, innovation, quality, and channels need to be done well in peacetime.
Just like OPPO and vivo in 2014, if there is no channel foundation laid in 20 years, it will not be able to harvest this wave of so-called offline channel dividends.
Another example is millet, the first wave to go overseas, planted a big pit in India, but did not stop there, but more resolutely internationalized, so it harvested overseas dividends.
That's how the world is constantly changing.
The interesting thing about the business world is that it never has a single standard answer, it's always changing. So I'm less and less afraid to assert anything, and as for what's right, I don't think so.
If you insist on doing your own set of kung fu, the result will always get better.
The key is whether you can insist on being yourself, don't learn Ali for a while, learn Huawei for a while, learn Meituan for a while, you have learned from advanced companies all over the world, and you find that you are still nothing.
Our current enterprise is not so learn from the advanced everywhere, everywhere to give people praise, then who are you? Four is not like. Even if we learn from everywhere, we cannot become advanced.
Fifth, the times are always out of the outline,
But we need to maintain our strategic focus
Although the environment has changed dramatically, I believe that the essence of business has not changed.
Let's not talk about the new rules of survival in the digital age, there are no new rules of survival, the essence of business is the same.
First, without user value, there is no talk about everything.
User value, that is to say, your product, hardware, software, service, to c, to b, is there any user value?
The user value is 1, the model innovation is 1, and it can be followed by several 0 problems. Without user value, the latter things cannot be talked about.
Second, I still believe in concentration.
I don't believe in infinite games, nor do I believe in business without borders.
I still think that a company that focuses on doing the ultimate in its own field is of great value.
What is a borderless, infinite game, those are just a change of packaging, essentially a pluralism of changing the law.
In every era, what is the internal impulse of enterprise development?
When resource-driven, it is necessary to occupy more resources.
When driven by users, it is eager to provide all the needs of all the scenes at all times.
You first occupy the user's time, the user's mobile phone, the user's mind, you have the ability to provide all the services for him?
I don't think so.
But one challenge here is that digital businesses have an instinct to expand.
On the one hand, companies themselves uncontrollably want to expand; on the other hand, they are forced to expand by the secondary market. Without expansion, valuations are gone.
Of course, I understand very well that valuation means that people have great expectations of you. Quarterly reports are issued every quarter, and they must be in line with this expected growth.
This leads to a self-cycle, self-justification path. Is this an inner roll? Or does he not want restraint?
At this time, to achieve concentration, you need to maintain your strategic focus.
Third, companies should pursue deep capabilities.
Capital markets, especially those of managers, are always expected by short-term gains. Because the margin and options at the end of the year are positively correlated with the stock price.
So it's easy for them to think about how to release some positive information, the kind that has an immediate effect, and then they don't dare to invest in the long term.
Conversely, why do some founders dare to invest in the long term, even if the short-term impact on the stock price? Because the enterprise is as important to him as life, as to whether the enterprise is worth 1 billion or 10 billion today, it is not so important.
In this way, he will eliminate interference — you don't praise me, I don't care; you don't care about me, I don't care, I simply privatize the business.
Such enterprises can often come back to life.
I think that the entrepreneur is like ordinary people, you can't stand on a moral high ground to ask and accuse him, he is also like ordinary people, with seven passions, six desires, fear or joy.
What we need to reflect on may be that whether in the past environment or in the new environment now, small businesses are looking for opportunities, nutrients, and resources.
But for all grown-up businesses, there should be a business philosophy to think about. When you have users, data, money, and talents, when you feel that you can do everything, you must consider doing nothing, and you should pursue deep ability in the field that you are extremely focused on.
Sixth, the thinking behind the super-syllabus question:
Entrepreneurship is always born to die
The destination of entrepreneurship is always to die, just like human life. In particular, if you are an innovation-driven enterprise, the end game must be failure and death.
But I think the human instinct is to live to die.
Death is a compulsory course for every entrepreneur and entrepreneur.
Although the entrepreneurial process is full of crises and pains, and the destination is still death, we still pursue the joy of entrepreneurship.
It's like we all have to face the diseases, pains, and setbacks of life, but we still live quite energetically, and we still want to live longer and let ourselves suffer for a few more years.
Why would anyone do this? What is the charm of life?
I would like to add a little, I think why do people live so long?
First, we are always looking for something to transcend or overcome death.
In addition to our animal instinct to be afraid of death, we have a different place from animals, that is, we are always trying to find something to overcome death.
I think that people who can solve the topic of death are very rare in themselves.
I have also asked myself, why am I afraid of death?
I once had a small surgery, a small operation, but it required general anesthesia.
The moment I woke up from general anesthesia, my first reaction was that it was fine not to wake up, and there was nothing terrible about sleeping forever.
This was the first physiological response at the time.
But why am I afraid of death? Because I don't know what state it is after death.
You see all of our religions give a definitive answer to death—whether it's going to heaven or reincarnation—anyway, giving you a very positive, definite answer that helps us get rid of the fear of the unknown, that's one thing I understand.
Second, we are afraid of the process of life-and-death transition.
Because this process is usually accompanied by great pain, whether it is illness or accident, it is something we are not willing to face.
Usually, if a 100-year-old person dies naturally in a deep sleep, we will feel that this is a complete end - no pain, go in sleep, plus live to a hundred years old, life without regrets.
So what we're afraid of is this process of life-and-death transformation, which is my understanding.
No matter how painful life is, it is also certain, I have experienced it, I know what is going on, but for death, I do not know.
Of course, people still have the impulse to continue their lives and continue their genes.
I think the same is true of enterprises, when we hear that our business has encountered a crisis, no money, to compete, the first reaction is still an instinctive impulse - to live, to find people, to find money, to find relationships, to let themselves live, this is an instinctive reaction.
In fact, whether it is the process of life or the process of doing business, we rarely have time to think about death, more often, we are doing our best to think about how to live.
In fact, from the perspective of the larger historical process, we will all disappear.
The destination of entrepreneurship is death, and entrepreneurship itself is a process of life to death. The process itself is painful.
So when will a person be liberated? I think it's time to get rid of the shackles of success or failure.
When what you pursue is a process, you enjoy the process itself, you enjoy the growth you get from it, not the result, we may not be bound by those external things.
In fact, life is also like this.
In the greater course of history,
Super-syllabus questions are also regular questions
If you look at the present from a larger historical process, for example, the same thing, from the perspective of the fate of the enterprise, and from the perspective of industry changes, you may see things that are not the same.
As our vision changes, so does our sense of meaning.
I remembered that when I used to sweep the tomb, I would look at other tombstones and calculate the age of the tomb owner.
If this were an early child, I would feel unfortunate. If this person lived to be 78 years old, he would feel okay, but for his children, it is still a sad thing.
This is from the perspective of the individual.
Another time, I saw a million wildebeest crossing rivers in Africa.
There are crocodiles in the river, but they must migrate to the other side before the race can continue to reproduce.
A few percent of the wildebeest in the wildebeest herd will be killed by crocodiles, and the remaining ninety percent will cross the river to the other side.
Races continue in this alternation, and industries develop in this alternation.
On the one hand, we are saying that every entrepreneur has the instinct to struggle to survive, but on the other hand, the average life expectancy of Chinese companies may be 3-5 years old, and even fewer can successfully transform.
In the midst of drastic changes, we are also very reluctant to have our own company being the one whose funds are broken, but if it really happens, we may first accept this matter from the mentality and probability.
It's like when you're in a helicopter in the air and watching wildebeest cross the river, you haven't grieve over the fate of an individual.
There is actually a question of time span involved here.
Change itself is a matter of time.
You can look at it in one year, you can also look at it in the past 20 years of Internet development, put it in the 40 years of reform and opening up, 70 years of the founding of the People's Republic of China, or even put it at the level of China's modern history.
In different time spans, you see different things.
In the short term, you may first see the fate of individuals; a little higher, see the changes in the industry; a little higher, it may be the whole society; a little higher, see human beings.
At this time, the super-outline question will also become a regular question.
This thing will be more complicated to say, but most importantly, we cannot give up this transcendence of thought. Whether you're in a good situation or an adversity, whether your achievements are big or small, you need to jump out of yourself and see something bigger.
*The article is the author's independent opinion and does not represent the position of the note-taker.