43-year-old entrepreneurial, 100 billion market value, BOSS directly hired Zhao Peng: you have value, the world will reward you

Zhao Peng, who is it?

An entrepreneur, boss directly hired founder.

At the end of 2013, Zhao Peng, who was over 43 years old, began to start a business in the recruitment field; after seven years of hard work, BOSS directly hired more than 30 million monthly active users, which is already the largest Internet recruitment platform in China and has been listed on the NASDAQ in June this year.

43-year-old started a business, 51-year-old sent the company to the market, the market value of nearly 100 billion. It sounds like a "raise your eyebrows" business story, with a different kind of inspiration. After all, Zhao Peng's fellow travelers are Wang Xing, Zhang Yiming, Huang Zheng, these "young people" born around 1980.

But if you look closely at Zhao Peng's resume, you will find that to some extent, he is actually a teenager. At the age of 19, he was admitted to the Law Department of Peking University with the third place in the Shanxi Liberal Arts College Entrance Examination. After graduation, he entered the central government and became a cadre at the department level at the age of 29. The "College Students Volunteer Service West Program" as we know it today is what he participated in and initiated in those years.

Zhao Peng, a 35-year-old middle-aged man, is determined to leave the "system" and join an Internet recruitment company, Zhaopin Recruitment. Such a career still sounds incredible today: he spent 5 years, starting as a PR manager, working in all positions in the company except finance and technology, and finally becoming CEO.

The BOSS direct employment he later founded was a company that looked a little "different". As a service company, the company has repeatedly emphasized the word "industry" within the company, and even hired a large number of economists and scientists full-time.

It all revolves around a simple and universal business principle: creating value.

In the words of Zhao Peng, "If you have value, the world will reward you." He said his motivation was to do the right thing.

Li Xiang, the editor-in-chief, had two long talks with Zhao Peng. Zhao Peng shared in detail what he thought in the process of starting a business, covering topics such as business model, organizational management, career growth and human cognition. It was finally assembled into a book called "Detailed Discussion: Zhao Peng".

This article is excerpted and condensed from one of the series of books "Detailed Talk: Zhao Peng", which is authorized to be published by Zhenghe Island:

Interviewee: Zhao Peng BOSS directly hired founder

Interviewer: Li Xiang got the editor-in-chief

Editor: Yu Xinfeng

Source: Luo Ji Si, Zhenghe Island

01, there must be "ghosts" in this

Li Xiang: I want to start from scratch, when you started your business in 2013, what was your more serious motivation?

Zhao Peng: I want to do a serious thing.

……

Li Xiang: What standards meet the right thing you said?

Zhao Peng: If you want to do something serious, it is actually a feeling of not living in vain. A person in his 40s will have this feeling in his heart, but he does not want to fail, so it is inevitable that he will not be cooked or made a living. Thinking in reverse, it is really important that people want to eat and workers get what they eat.

So in fact, from the result of the reverse, this is a serious thing. If I were to abstractly say what is the right thing, it would probably mean that the more important things that are related to more people are the right things.

In our home (referring to its company), there is a black word to describe the process of consideration, called low temperature operation, that is, there is one thing that has not been thought out clearly, but it is not said that the brainstorming of closed 3 days can be thought out, and it needs to be slowly let grow out, this process we call "low temperature operation".

At that time, I really didn't have much planning for new things, and I was running at low temperatures for half a year. But running and running, probably pointing to the same thing, is to do a thing with a high probability of winning, and this thing is really important, and the heart recognizes it.

In 2011 or 2010, I met Motono of Ceyuan Ventures. In August 2013, Motono said that there should be something to be done in the recruitment field. I said I saw it that way.

He said, "If you want to do it, remember that in this era, 'mobile is everything', you don't understand it doesn't matter, just like the old farmer who took the bus to the county town for the first time, he didn't necessarily understand what the spark plug and carburetor of the bus were, but sitting on it was faster than walking."

Remember anyway, mobile is everything. If you want to, let's talk further."

In fact, it was this person who hit me with low temperature running.

Li Xiang: It is equivalent to giving activation.

Zhao Peng: It wasn't the people I went looking for, it was the people who came to encourage me and encouraged me fiercely.

Li Xiang: How did you tell people about this at that time?

Zhao Peng: I probably mean that the recruitment thing has to be done, and today's users and recruiters and companies have a number of places that are not satisfied and do not quench their thirst.

At the same time, the industry works hard, but does not make money. Such an important, such an industry of thousands of households, users are not very satisfied, the industry is not very profitable, there must be "ghosts" in it, catch the "ghosts". It's about a sense.

In addition, I am not sure how far my captain can drive, but the probability of overturning the ship is very low. Because I was an old captain, I had seen everything in the water. I'm probably that expression.

The expression is that you have to have a chance of winning, don't worry, have more money, burn slowly, and give you a usable quota of 7.2 million US dollars. Within a few days, it was written in black and white.

I think that adults can make this kind of friendship halfway, and later they can do business together, it should be that both sides have this kind of -- writing is called "body", and being a person is called "having a spectrum".

Spectrum is an abstraction of a person, this person has a spectrum without a spectrum, relying on unreliability. Management is called closed loop, everything is closed loop. That's how trust is built up. People read countless people, and they can also understand people. So it took us 3 years to build a friendship, and then he thought it was okay, and I thought it was okay, so we didn't need BP (business plan).

I said are you sure? Are you sure. Sign something, now register the company, now build a VIE structure, now talk to my technical product partners, say that this thing is probably a thing, they bravely started.

Li Xiang: So far, Motono should have communicated with you a lot, right?

Zhao Peng: He is a co-pilot. He doesn't talk to you, but you're driving, sleepy, talking for a while, and he's always there.

He won't say, turn left, turn right, notice that there's a traffic light in front of you, there's an enemy in front of you, no. He's 9 years younger than me, but he's a very calm guy. Very sincere and a very valuable friend of mine.

02, the founder should know: are you eating the young people's meal, or the young people are eating your meal

Li Xiang: In addition to starting to tell you to move first, did he give you any advice?

Zhao Peng: Do it slowly, don't worry, product 0 to 1 is your biggest risk, you must be extremely willing to share things to young people.

So we've been extremely willing. Our employee shareholding is greater than mine and will grow larger than mine.

Share with great courage and fierceness, sharing the company's most scarce things with everyone. That's what investors have been encouraging me to do.

Two reasons for this. The first reason is that it's true that getting a sharp internet product from 0 to 1 isn't something I'm good at. If you want me to abstract a framework, I can probably say it, because I still have insight into the industry and the user.

But you asked me to get this thing out, I can't get it out, this thing is a work stroke, my hands are not so stable, and I don't feel the color so much.

Founders need to know whether you're eating the food of those young people or whether the young people are eating your meal.

If it is a resource-based enterprise, for example, I can get this plot of land that year, and the hoarding will increase 5 times in 3 years, then it is very clear that everyone eats the food of the people who take the land, and it is unreasonable for you to divide it at this time. But some companies are clearly that you eat everyone's meal, like our company eats the production and research of the rice.

Then, whoever you eat should be worshipped. What to take? One is to take money, and the other is to take time. This is a very simple old farmer's truth. Yuan always said the question from 0 to 1, and I understand whose meal we are eating.

Is the founder important or not? Very important. But how important is it? I don't think it matters much. To figure out whose meal you eat, you organize the cattle people together, and make people feel happy, have a sense of growth, a sense of accomplishment, a sense of belonging, these are your strong points.

The founder is at best a tribal chieftain, do you have warriors who fight wars? Is there a big sister in picking? Jump a god and you can't jump the priest. You need a chief like you, but you can't be arrogant. The most self-respecting way is to divide the benefits, so we are brave enough to divide them. This is the main reason.

The secondary reason is that we are on a long road. Because in our space, either you make something that basically solves the user's problem by 80 points, or you are nothing, there is no middle way. 100 points I dare not blow, but to 80 points, this is bound to take time. In the process of spending your time, you have not figured out who you are, and others can figure it out?

Li Xiang: If you look back today, you will feel that the difficulty of 0 to 1 is where, why does Motono say that you may have problems at 0 to 1?

Zhao Peng: Path dependency.

Why did we choose the matching pattern so firmly afterwards? Because it is absolutely impossible to choose a job searcher, the whole industry has suffered for more than twenty years.

I can sketch, I probably know where the pain points of recruitment are, I know that searching is not working. I know that it's essential for the boss to find someone directly. HR just uses human flesh to reduce the labor intensity of the boss and create a scene for you that you can directly hire on both sides. This scene can be created with technology. We can see the nature of some of the problems so that we are not afraid.

As for recruiters coming out to talk directly, this is really not an innovation, this is life.

Liu Bei did not look for a headhunter to dig up Kong Ming; the Liao general captured a general Zhang San and asked him if he would surrender. He replied that he swore to kill Cao Thief, and if he wanted to kill him, he would kill him casually. At this time, Cao Cao said, don't kill, talent, let me talk to him. Cao Cao came to talk, one, two or three to talk down: Gu is actually a good person. Then the other party bowed his head and prayed. This has been the case since ancient times.

Now also, let's look at 3 types of phenomena:

First, the people who send recruitment information in the circle of friends, are there more managers, more startup owners, or more professional recruiters? Definitely the boss more;

Second, at the dinner table, I said, Oh, you recommended someone to me, I've been sad lately. Are there more entrepreneurs or more career recruiters? There must be more entrepreneurs;

Third, from the perspective of our platform, there are many more bosses who talk about cattle people on the first day of the first month.

So this is life, life is originally directly hired, that is, the big boss of a small company, the line manager of a large company (department manager, business director) to find someone by himself.

Who started a business and wasn't hired directly at the beginning? All entrepreneurs are hired directly at the startup stage. Yiming (referring to ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming) said that he had interviewed 2,000 people, and I don't think he was lying. Lei Jun said that more than 50% of the time in the entrepreneurial stage is looking for people, and I believe he is sincere. Robin (Baidu founder Robin Li) made a similar speech, saying that a CEO spends more than half of his time directly looking for someone.

So no matter how big the enterprise is, it is a home that relies on direct employment. And no matter how big it is later, it must be hired directly in key core positions. I can see the essence.

Then talk about a trend, the kind of people who wait for you every day, you don't give him an offer, he can't find a job, to be honest you don't necessarily want it, but whatever you seriously look at, it must also be sought after by everyone, this kind of person you don't follow up, do you really think you are Party A?

Any enterprise, no matter how branded today, how much can afford to give offers (bids), do not think of themselves as party A, as long as you want to chase the top 20% of the people, you are definitely not party A.

As soon as it is said that people are recruited, there are many people who should gather, and that era has long passed. 28 million people were born in 1990, and these people graduated from college in 2012; this year there are about 15 million new urban labor force that need to be employed. 15 million and 28 million people, the new labor force decreased by more than 10 million in 9 years.

A few days ago, there was a news that the director of a garment factory in a southern city set up a stall on the street to recruit people, basically using it to grab. Factory directors come out to recruit people, not because these factory directors suddenly understand how to respect employees, but because they really can't recruit people. This is a trend.

Li Xiang: The talent market is changing from a buyer's market to a seller's market.

Zhao Peng: And this trend is not just emerging, we look at the birth in 1990, 2012 undergraduate graduates, is 28 million labor supply; if I remember correctly, the number of undergraduate students born in 1995 and working in 2017 is less than 20 million, about 18 million.

This trend leads to the boss to rob people, what way to use what method, do not sit there to think of a large company party A. The sooner anyone understands this, the more they adapt to the reversal of the buyer's market, the seller's market. So I think the direct hiring model is in line with life, in line with trends, and also in line with history.

What was it like for us who were born in the 1970s to go to job fairs in the early 1990s after graduating from college?

A table, the person in the middle is called the deputy chief of the labor section, which is equivalent to the current deputy general manager of the human resources department, next to the purchasing section, the marketing section of the deputy or the main post, the person who needs to recruit people comes, and the person who organizes personnel also comes. There is also a big sign, which says that we are Jiangnan Leather Factory, how to cattle, now recruit four major posts, how good treatment.

If you have the intention in mind, you can go over: Hello boss, this is my resume, you can take a look. He took this resume and will not say put it first, but snap it over, a little interesting, boy, let's talk, what do you think of our business? Seeing each other again must be a repeat.

If it doesn't make sense to see your resume, say: Okay, thank you, you put your resume here, and we'll contact you according to the procedure. So the job fair is a typical BOSS direct recruitment, it is impossible to recruit a labor section member to collect resumes, employers do not come, then you have to be how big a company to have this status.

Therefore, direct employment is not an invention at all, but it is a restoration of the scene of life.

Li Xiang: Like the points you just said, when did you come up with it? It's actually a model, especially as it would be written in BP.

Zhao Peng: I have a model of thinking, when a person tells me how important and great a thing is, I tend to think about whether there was such a thing in human society 30 years ago, 300 years ago, 300 years ago, 3000 years ago, or even 30,000 years ago.

If there had been such a thing at that time, the probability of it becoming a true proposition would be relatively high. The bottle may have changed, the wine may still be that wine, although the brewing process may have changed as well. So someone came to me and said something, how about this matter, then according to my limited historical knowledge and common sense, I probably think that this matter is a shadowless thing, then it is unreliable.

I think many of the great products, many of which are actually restored to what the idyllic era probably looked like.

Li Xiang: Well, Huashan has a saying called "back to the matrix", which is a bit similar.

Zhao Peng: I used the word pastoral era to learn the "three-body", that is, once the universe was not 3 dimensions, and the speed of light was not fixed at 300,000 kilometers per second. That era was called the Pastoral Era.

We use the method of "direct hiring" and also hope to try to restore the pastoral era of a boss to find a person, a job seeker to find a job process, it can be efficient and pleasant.

In the tribal era, a tribe of 150 people, there are 14 babies, all of them are 16 years old, draw a picture on the face, drink some wine, tattoo, this is an adult ceremony. Tomorrow you can have an independent life, you can have an independent career, and you can support yourself. These people do not need to write a resume, do not need to go through 8 rounds of interviews, turn regular period of 3 months, and jump ship after 1 year. This is the age when humans are very friendly to work.

We should strive to restore the original face of people looking for jobs, and then find reliable, stay at work for a long time, stay in line with the 10,000 hours law, and have a skill from now on.

Li Xiang: Restoration is really important.

Zhao Peng: A lot of innovation is actually the use of technology and products in the modern sense to give a scene that can be restored, simple and beautiful.

03, the closer to the result, the more valuable

Li Xiang: I read a previous report, when you started your business in 2013, you set three rules for yourself: do it cooked and don't make it raw, To C does not to B, and do the model that has been verified. Is this true?

Zhao Peng: That was my decision when I bought Fenzhi.com, and it reflected the weight and timidity of a middle-aged man. Fen Zhi is a company in Nanjing in 2008 co-founded by three children from Anhui , one from 1984 and two from 1985 . At the same time, Glassdoor was founded in the United States.

By 2014, Fenzhi had been working on this site for 6 years. I thought about it, I thought the company commented on this matter is a bit interesting, talked to people, and sold it to me.

When buying this station, there was really Lei Jun's suggestion. Lei Jun said that from your own saving traffic to you can have more than 100,000 UVs (independent visitors) a day, if you want to run by yourself, because it is not that era, 3 years to spend the same money can not run. He said I'll give you an assessment, you're doing this like a CEO's decision.

Li Xiang: Before buying?

Zhao Peng: Before buying, please ask someone else. All agree. Motono was even happier, and he said that this is called the attitude of being in harmony and victory. Because Glassdoor has been validated and is a basically viable model, more than half of Americans must go through Glassdoor to find a job and see how the company is. You have these hundreds of thousands of UVs in your hands today, which is to coincide, and then mobile Internet exploration to win odds.

Lei Jun's words are very simple, this is a big decision, just started a business, just finished the investment, direct acquisition, absolutely like a CEO to do. Speaking of which, those 3 sentences are just for this matter. To be honest, it is a bit naïve, and the already verified pattern is certainly not true.

Entrepreneurship should cherish life, away from the pattern, away from the top-level design, away from certainty, away from using deterministic methods to assess things.

Li Xiang: Isn't this contradictory to endgame thinking?

Zhao Peng: You are on the road, you don't know where to go, probably you want to go to the Western Heavens to learn the scriptures, this is the final thinking.

But you said that on the third day of the first lunar month of the second year of Zhenguan, Tang Monk, Wukong, Sha Monk, Eight Precepts, and White Dragon Horse left the West Gate of Chang'an to go to the Western Heavens to learn the scriptures. At this time, someone suddenly came out and asked, Please ask Zhenguan 6th year, July 13, are you in the Shituo Kingdom or the Yellow Wind Ridge? What method are you going to use to get the iron fan princess? We will feel that this goods are sick.

Moreover, starting a business is that we have to go to the Western Heavens to learn the scriptures, not to come back from the Western Heavens to take the scriptures, you seal the battle to defeat the Buddha, you seal the altar messengers, you restore the official position, and the golden cicada becomes a Buddha. This is not the purpose, the purpose is to take back the True Scriptures, to purify all sentient beings. People reward us, this is called "sub-road acceptance", this should be clearly distinguished.

Endgame thinking I think is about value, but there is really no endgame thinking on the road.

Li Xiang: Right.

Zhao Peng: Aren't there also people on the road who often advise disbandment? You go back to Huaguo Mountain, I go back to Gao Laozhuang, the master has been washed and steamed by the goblin, forget it. It's the process, and the process is unknowable.

I have a point where you have to be in awe of impermanence, you have to believe that most things you don't know, but you have to know how to play your cards. You play chess with others, the horse has to go to the day, the elephant has to go to the field, the pawn has to go forward, the cannon has to play across the mountain, and this card should not be messed up. You can't have a pawn on the side of the horse, you just eat it horizontally, which is unreasonable, you don't talk about martial arts.

Entrepreneurship should be based on the card, for example, money is never enough, financing can not be stopped, in addition to loving the user, the other is nonsense, you eat whose meal you respect, you do not know whose meal to eat, or know that it is not respectful, that is the problem of early death and late death. This is all a card according to the card.

Including whether your users love you or not, you yourself know that your users do not love you, what is the point of hating competitors every day? Your users are the silent majority, and they won't come out and praise you on social media, but they do use their time, vote with their feet, and help you grow.

As long as these people still love you, your basic ticket warehouse must be there. Then don't be afraid of those who are loud every day diss, no enterprise is killed by loud diss, are the user offended, their own death.

So in summary, I think it is to play the cards according to the basic card theory, and the rest will be in awe of impermanence and embrace the unknowable. At the same time, the final thinking cannot be chaotic, we are born of value, we are dependent on others, and others reward us; when we are needed, people spit on us. There is no tip, there is no complaining about the enterprise, why does it exist? That's weird too.

Li Xiang: After you started to do the commercialization team in 2016, what explorations did you have? You can't go the same way.

Zhao Peng: I can't sell job releases, I can't sell advertisements, and I don't sell resume downloads.

Li Xiang: Can only charge?

Zhao Peng: Yes, I can only say that the closer to the result, the more valuable something is, calculated backwards from the result. The result is that people recruit people, how many interviews can recruit a person, how many pairs of double chats can have an interview, how many pairs of people you can let people talk about this month, how many double chats can be generated by how much exposure, and how many double chats can be calculated backwards.

Then start to consider places where there are too many job seekers, too few recruiters, or too few job seekers and too many recruiters, and use the price method to regulate. That was the beginning of our commercialization.

For example, the parking fee, the traffic flow is the number of recruiters, the parking lot resource is the number of job seekers, and the parking fee depends on the traffic flow. After the previous calculation, calculating a probability, this also happens to be in line with the commercialization model of our bilateral direct chat model. That's how it started.

Li Xiang: So it is a process of derivation, not a process of trial and error.

Zhao Peng: It is the process of derivation. We know that we don't do anything, we must not sell advertisements, we must not sell resume downloads, because practice has proved that that road will not work later.

It just sells the front layer of skin, as if people want to eat dumplings, you sell people two pounds of noodles, what is going on? You have to get closer and closer to the dumplings, even if you sell him dumpling skins and dumpling fillings and let people wrap them themselves.

This is actually based on lessons learned. In other words, why do you stand and earn money? Dumplings are delicious and sold standing up. Otherwise, people say two pounds of dumplings, you say ok, wait a minute. Half an hour later: This is white noodles, this is leeks, this is pork, this is green onions. It was already very polite for the man not to turn his face.

He can only give you 5 yuan, take it home, hire a bunch of recruiters, recruitment supervisors, sift their resumes, knead their own dough, make their own, and finally the dumplings are eaten to the mouth, but the main credit is his own, and the value you provide to him is no different from the market.

Li Xiang: But at the time it was supposed to be a ready-made and easiest model to make money, right?

Zhao Peng: We are resolute not to follow the old road.

04, some of the characteristics of "smart people"

Li Xiang: What type of people were the most difficult to find when you were looking for people in the early days?

Zhao Peng: I think it's all fine. In fact, it is difficult to dig up people with high transfer costs, because the cost of people's decision-making is too high, and this cost is often a chance cost. For example, if someone is already a factory with a high T, if you run to your home and fold it, it will become a stain on people's careers. This kind of person is more difficult.

But we don't really go to this group of people, we look more at the ability level, and then look at some skill level things, we don't look at the experience level. When you look at a person's work experience, you actually want to look at his skill and his knowleg and his knowledge.

Some people can't pile up skils and knowledges in 10 years, but in a large factory, "tired officials do not lose the state county". Be careful with any experience that can be bought for a long time. But the ability thing is a little powerful, a little talented thing is in it, and the skill depends on the true insight.

Li Xiang: Yes, ability is difficult to judge, so I look at it through experience.

Zhao Peng: Because we have not been very admiring who is an official in a certain factory, how long or whatever, but we are willing to look at the essence, such as whether it is a sincere person, whether it is sincere to ourselves, whether it is sincere to friendship, and whether it is sincere to responsibility and career. It's something at the level ofability.

For example, this buddy is not very curious, when encountering things, he will always say that I have seen this before, or that this thing is interesting, let me get two clicks. Or two or three months after the same question, tell me, I'll give you an insight, that's actually the case. You just gather all these people who meet your criteria.

Li Xiang: Of course, many people will say that they are looking for people because they want to look at ability, not experience and background, but because looking at ability is a difficult thing to judge...

Zhao Peng: Let me tell you about the explanation of our family's smart, honest, hard-working, and self-motivated "local food stamps." First of all, smart, we once specifically grabbed a bunch of people in the company's conference room, writing on the glass panel, what do you think smart is. Wrote a wall.

Enterprises want to find smart people, it is natural, but what is smart in industry? Strong memory, one example and three examples, one hundred and one, integrated, this is called smart, there is nothing wrong. But what is cleverness in industrial production? We pondered and didn't have an answer.

One night I read Leviathan, and the guy gave a short explanation of cleverness, which I annotated and took back to define our industrial cleverness:

First, always understand what people mean;

Second, always let people understand what they mean;

Third, when encountering a problem, it can be solved relatively quickly by forming ideas;

Fourth, we must always be able to stabilize on the key points, not opportunistic, and not deviate.

In summary, in an industrial production environment is a smart person. There will be opportunities to iterate again in the future.

What is integrity is also the wisdom of the benevolent and the wise. When we talk about industrial integrity, we mean that this classmate is instinctively and naturally a person with a consistent heart. In the work environment, his most comfortable posture is to be one with words and deeds, then he is a decent role in the organization.

But if he habitually has different opinions, he may be a very powerful person, but it is difficult to become an organic part of an organization, and if he is not careful, he will hurt many people. So there are some standards of operation that we compare to earthy, specific environments. Otherwise you go and explain what is smart, finished, no consensus.

Li Xiang: When you are looking for these people, or digging people, do you think they have any common characteristics?

Zhao Peng: I think the people we can walk together have a very strong quality, that is, simple and gorgeous. I don't recognize the word simplicity, and the brilliance will certainly be revealed unless you are blind. It is not simple and has a flower, its hua cannot last long, and its hua may not be true.

It's about age. When I was young, I was jumpy, my brain was faster, and my vision was wider. I am alive and well, and I feel that simplicity and brilliance are particularly good realms. Youhua is often given by the father and the luck; the simple part is given by the father, and most of them have to rely on themselves.

There is sometimes a contradiction between simplicity and simplicity, simplicity does not lead to no hua, and there is often a way to hurt simplicity. One has to look after oneself. At my age, I am now feeling more and more down-to-earth, and my heart is getting quieter and quieter.

Zhao Peng: It's not difficult, it's not difficult with my eyes. (Laughs) When you look at each other with your eyes, you can still see more.

Li Xiang: None of these things can be measured, can they?

Zhao Peng: The word sincerity comes from "University", and it is sincere. Is a person really sincere about himself? Is a person really sincere about friendship? Is a person really sincere about this game? Is one really sincere about one's vision? People with sincerity can feel it. People in our family have different personalities, but sincerity is something that can be felt by each other.

Li Xiang: I found that you like to use the word "our family" to refer to your company.

Zhao Peng: We are a factory, we are not home, we are a factory.

Li Xiang: By the way, what do you think of Netflix's famous statement, the company is not a home, it is a sports team, because if you are home, you need to take care of everyone, and the sports team is who is stronger and who is on.

Zhao Peng: There were a few more advanced sentences in the Jinshang culture at that time, which was quite interesting. The first sentence is called "use the countryside without relatives." It is the Jinshang treasurer who went to Baotou to open a leather goods store, the leather freight returned, the grain was transported over, and when people were invited to operate, it was called "using the countryside without relatives". The township is the villager, and the relative is related by blood, and there are no five services.

This sentence is very interesting and important. Why use a hometown? This person's entry cost is low, the so-called township, it is easy to inquire out, not internal push is also half an internal push, the essence of internal push is not an endorsement of talent, but an endorsement of character. Therefore, using the township is to find two people to inquire, two degrees of networking, you can know what kind of person this is.

Why not use pro? The cost of withdrawing with a pro is too high, can you fire your nephew? Therefore, the use of hometown without relatives is actually a negation of family culture, which was denied at the end of the Ming Dynasty, especially the family culture in China, which is often interpreted as a parent culture by people carelessly, which is not interesting. A business is a business.

The use of nostalgia in Jinshang culture is the best explanation I have heard about corporate culture. Relatives can not be put in the company, classmates to the company should also be careful, because a dormitory brother, and brothers are not much different, you get one to the company, it is not OK.

Li Xiang: Many of the early partners of the company were people in the same dormitory.

Zhao Peng: I'm just saying my personal opinion. Because human nature is to do less and get more, no one says that I should do more and get less. You have to be careful about this humanity. So who can do less and get more? People close to you.

It's good that people have been together for a long time, but when your feelings have reached the point where they are going to fight against your rules, then you have to take a step back. From comrades-in-arms to friends to relatives and friends, it is a very good life, and it may be troublesome in reverse. These are all experiences that we have explored.

05, the founder of this kind of "ghost thing", in fact, is very dangerous

Li Xiang: There is a not very appropriate analogy, someone told me before that when Huawei started a business, Ren Zhengfei and most of the people in the team had an age difference. From the beginning, Ren Zong had an elderly authority at Huawei. I don't know, will your team feel this way?

Zhao Peng: I can't say no, but I have some rules of the game to overcome the disadvantages of this thing.

To give two examples of the rules of the game, first, our family is not authorized management, authorized management is "playing hooligans", our family is a typical "separation of powers", basically whose business is decided, this is from the perspective of my division of labor with those of us.

Second, it is reflected in the approval flow, which is called if it can not be approved, and the approval flow is also discussed specifically.

We divide the approval flow into real and fake batches. What does true batch mean? This superior knows better than you, and it makes sense for someone who understands you better than you to help you approve, he knows how to approve, batch or not.

If this person does not know more than you, need to listen to you do 30 minutes of briefing (briefing), learn 60% of your knowledge, or hinder the face of the batch, or lazy approval, this is a fake batch, it is best not to have. Fake approval is an important beginning of an enterprise's entropy increase.

Moreover, even if he understands better than him, the product center, the algorithm engineering center, the market center, these groups work, we do not approve. This is the situation in which each rule is ruled by each side, each performing its own responsibilities, and each doing its own thing.

What to overcome with this? In 2016, they would say, "What did the pentecosteen (referring to Zhao Peng) say recently", and they must overcome this kind of thing.

In the final analysis, the cadres above the team leader can not be promoted, whether they can raise money, whether to issue stocks, how many stocks to issue, or you are making decisions. So there must be something else to check and balance.

This "ghost thing" of the founder is actually very dangerous. Why? The founder of a company is theoretically fearless, except that the national law can not be violated, and the board of directors said good not to touch, who else cares about you? If you are not careful, no one will take care of you. A company of 200 people feels like a god-like being, which is the founder of this species.

Therefore, corporate culture and corporate rules must not be considered to be used to manage employees, must be used to manage the founder, clearly say good, paste on the wall, do not go to offend. Power is a very harmful thing. The founder is a powerful position, so don't control yourself.

We have an OKR (Goals and Key Outcomes) in our home that makes users happy. My three provinces themselves, my users are satisfied? Are the users I serve today satisfied? How can the users who complain about me today be satisfied?

Under this, at least the cadres above the team leader know how many headscounts they have (the total number of employees), how much can they spend this year, and then often ask themselves how many "are not there" (if this group of innovations fails, ask our company is still there?). This group of innovations has failed, but is your vigor still there? This group of innovations failed, and the sense of honor of the team is still there? ）。 In summary, you can manage yourself.

Li Xiang: The rules of the game like decentralization came out when you started looking for people from the founding team?

Zhao Peng: In fact, it is based on my rational judgment. Our colleagues around the world have been doing this for 17 years, and the only way to live is to create, and if you don't create, there is no way to live.

And the essence of creating this thing is that it must have been stepped on. So you have to make sure that how to help everyone to step on the pit, you have to make sure that before stepping on the pit to answer 3 "in or out", you can only do this.

Researching how to create from the top down in a corporate organization is often a hooligan. Because it violates the law. Creation is the result of Brownian motion. Before you create it, you know what you want to create, it's all nonsense, and you'll lose a lot of discovery.

Therefore, if we want to have a way to live, we have to create, creation must be Brownian motion, Brownian motion must be a small organization, the group must have its own decision, the biggest risk is 3 "in or out", the answer is clear, this is our creation methodology.

Li Xiang: Has starting a business change you?

Zhao Peng: I understand more and more that I am an organizational creature, and I feel that I was born to serve our kind, and I have found my ultimate proposition.

I was aware of this before, but in the process of positive feedback from this practice, I no longer go to the ultimate question of why I am alive- this ultimate question, if not, as if I have not read a book, but there is always no answer, it is very painful.

And we investors ask me, what do you think are your strengths? What are you? What are your characteristics? You say you're a sales organization manager for more than a decade, you're a CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) who may be able to rank in the top few, and these are skills for half a day.

I said I was a leader, and my greatest sense of accomplishment didn't come from how I was, but from how my team members were, and I enjoyed it all day.

Li Xiang: It's over, such a person can't retire. [Laughs]

Zhao Peng: I may be able to lead something else. If I have the money and the conditions, and you ask me to help a dying river survive, I can do it. [Laughs]

Organizers are actually very laborious, and I think it is enough for me to see the growth of the organization, the growth of others, and the growing life of the brothers in the process of exerting my energy, so I have received positive feedback.

Otherwise, if you are just consuming your own electricity, no one can insist. You're old and bleeding, how do you insist on it? Not only did I not lose blood in the process, but I also grew blood, so I would.

Li Xiang: Are there some things that you didn't like or want to do, but did it for the sake of the company?

Zhao Peng: There is a sentence called "talking and laughing with Hongru, and there is no white Ding in exchanges", that is, concise and concise, you said the first half of the sentence, the other party frequently nodded, you don't have to say the second half of the sentence, a ride away from the dust, after a while there is a good report in front of you, how good is this, who doesn't like it?

But sometimes because of the short time, the personality difference is relatively large, or the depth of the involvement in the organization is not enough, it takes two hours to talk about things that would otherwise only take 20 minutes. Who wants to do this? I don't want to do it, but I have to do it.

Some things are common sense to me, but for him they are outside of common sense. You have to think about why he is doing this, from which angle you can talk to him. I say this because in our family, as a chat intensive, I am always chatting with all kinds of people, for example, analogy, and pulling.

Li Xiang: This is also a skill. [Laughs]

Zhao Peng: I also don't like to repeat and talk to a person about one thing over and over again. I like that I played it, and people immediately knew what kind of song it was, and they suddenly had a sense of understanding. But this process is going to be formed slowly, and you can't ask others to do that.

What people don't know is that people's blind spots, at this time I should be the guide dog. Who wants to be a guide dog every day? [Laughs]

Li Xiang: How did you draw the lines of your three views?

Zhao Peng: For individuals, I think the so-called three views are those few words that parents chanted when I was a child. You have to be an upright person, you have to be sincere with yourself, to the organization, to your friends, and then you have to help the weak, don't bully the weak, make money through hard work, don't cheat money, you have to be consistent, don't coax people, you have to be consistent with words and deeds, and you have to do things that promise others, isn't that it?

There are a few peers chatting a year, some people praised me and said, big brother, you are older, know a lot, we often encounter such and such strange things in business, sometimes some coping, some strategies, do not know which is right, the war has been fighting for a long time, it is chaotic, do you have a little bottom-line advice to me?

I said, gee, you're asking me, I'm so many years older than you, I can really answer that question. I think there are two boundaries. The first is that I did this thing, one day my father and my mother know, he will not be afraid of someone poking his backbone, saying that your son actually earned such money, your son bought you a gold ring, bought you a house, but do you know how your son earns money? Think about this thing well.

Second, in case you have a baby in the future, you will not be afraid of the baby walking on the street, others point out and say, hey, what money does his father earn? I said you will keep these two lines, do not harm your parents, do not harm your children, and earn this money. Therefore, the three views are actually very simple, and they are all grassroots things of the common people.

06, based on the "10,000 hours" law, to plan a career

Li Xiang: From the perspective of a senior career planner, do you think your career experience is a good career path?

Zhao Peng: I could have come out of the system a little earlier, three or four years earlier, which might be a better arrangement. But there was nothing to regret, because I couldn't make up my mind at that time, and I just made this decision and pondered this matter for two or three years.

So in fact, there was no clear career plan in those years. But the essence of career planning is that a person should develop, live bigger and live higher, in other words, to see a larger world, to stand on a higher floor to see the world, to see a more essential world. Isn't it beautiful that people live a lifetime and can understand these things more and more?

Li Xiang: If a relative's child had just graduated from college, would you give him any career planning advice?

Zhao Peng: This should be taught according to his aptitude, depending on which piece of material he is. My first advice to all college-born kids is that you should find something you like, and it's the daily routine of the thing that you like, not the result of it.

For example, some people say that they get you to an island, lock you up for 30 years, and finally give you $100 million. You'd rather make $100 million, but do you really want your 30 years of daily life? This is the first recommendation. Then you have to spend four or five months, talk carefully, and find a direct boss with whom you are willing to work for 4 years.

Li Xiang: The first job takes 4 years?

Zhao Peng: Right. So if the above two conditions can be met, your child will definitely go right. Why look for a favorite? I think that middle-aged people in their forties and fifties are driven by responsibility, so I can grit my teeth and encounter setbacks, difficulties, and incomprehensions, because of responsibility, responsibility, and self-discipline, I can cross this hurdle.

But the child is naïve, can not ask for such a strong responsibility and responsibility, when he encounters the kan'er, encounter difficulties, incomprehension, encounter a sense of achievement or positive feedback is insufficient, the real lasting support for him is the drive of interest, and it must be the interest drive of the daily.

So the essence of two things, whether it is with a boss for 4 years, or interest-driven, is to be stable in one thing long enough to verify the "10,000 hours rule".

Spending 10,000 hours on one thing can give a child a skill, at least a little insight into an issue. Instead of saying that it has been done here for half a year, there for 4 months, saying that everything is known, what is not working, this is a great irresponsibility to people, but also the greatest waste of people.

So my advice to children is very clear, the origin is the 10,000 hours law, in order to achieve this law, to be interest-driven, interest in the daily, not in the results, and then this boss, the master wants to take you, so spend enough time to find a person you are willing to talk to him for 4 years. If, 4 years after graduating from undergraduate, at the age of 26, you can achieve the 10,000-hour rule, you can rest assured that there will be people rushing to get you everywhere.

Li Xiang: Are the big factories and small factories not important?

Zhao Peng: When people talk about big factories, they actually talk about 3 sentences:

The first is to have enough money to pay salaries. Regarding this sentence, I would like to ask rhetorically, are you now a career harvest period or a career growth period? In the growth period of career, do not look too much at the so-called high wages of large factories.

The second is face, where I work. Then I have to ask, is this face so important for a young man? Do you want face or do you want a face now?

The third is the training growth system, which we must give serious affirmation to the big factories. But in the same way, this person was originally an Ali P8, and now works as a technical director at a startup and can personally take you. When you go to the big factory, do you have the equivalent of Ali P8 to bring? So instead of acknowledging a training and growth system, you should admit the impact of following the right master on your life.

Finally, there is another point, which is actually the easiest to break, called security. Is it really safe to work in a big factory? What is security? The real sense of security is not that you go swimming in a water with no water waves, but that your swimming skills can cope with a variety of waters. Is it rare for people in the big factory innovation business line to crackle and fall? Experienced recruiters look at the employees of the big factories and will definitely look at where he is.

Therefore, when we talk about big factories, we are talking about income, face, training, and security, and these startups can talk about everything, and they may talk better. So I don't think young people have to choose the so-called big factory.

Li Xiang: In that ten years of experience (in the central department), what skills and cognitions did you acquire that can be reused today?

Zhao Peng: I write relatively simple, write emails one-two-three-four-five, big vernacular, which I trained in those years. I used to write four or six sentences, but basically not so that people could read it. [Laughs]

The words of the official documents should not be harmful to the meaning of the text, the text should be simple and not complicated, it should be appropriate to use simple words and not to use the classic, if you can say it directly, don't go around it, and if you can say it, don't say it in a row, this is trained.

Writing clearly is trained, except for training in language classes, that is, training by work. Who university seriously gives you Chinese listening, speaking, reading and writing training? So often someone writes an email and you go crazy and you don't know what he's talking about.

Li Xiang: So he is a good hand at writing open letters and internal letters.

Zhao Peng: At that time, the boss told us that you came in to write things for two years, and the highest evaluation called your text a basis for change. At that time, I was very unhappy, I was also a liberal arts student, the college entrance examination is also very strong, how to call there is a basis for change? The highest rating after 10 years is to call this person's writing clean. I wrote for 10 years and got the word "clean."

To the leader to do manuscript services, after writing a good article, take off the manuscript can be said, not memorized, because this thing is very smooth, reasonable is the truth of smooth, said knowledge is shallow knowledge. It is not so much text training as it is thinking training and logic training.

Another one is to talk about empathy. Sometimes in the enterprise, a person with more power, inflated, and says "you are fired" at every turn. To tell the truth, it sounds like the officials and universities in the organs are crushing people to death, but I have never heard of the section chief dismissing the section chief. Have you ever seen a six-pin in ancient and modern China and abroad say "you are fired" to a seven-pin? What a sin he had to commit.

Therefore, many times, it is not so much that the official level suppresses people to death, but rather that everyone is discussing work, especially in the central organs. I have 5 people in a department, who are I expelled? People are really upset with me, I really don't have a temper. So you have to have strong empathy, you have to understand this person strongly, and then work in harmony with him. You have to really unite the four or five people in the department and do things together.

This empathy, I think, is something particularly important for a leader. Now some young managers think that he is exercising management because of power, which is a big misunderstanding. Whether you reward a person or punish a person is ultimately because of the rules. You are a watchman and enforcer of rules, not someone who can use rules at will to strike at anyone.

At that time, there was such a saying that a division chief could lead a department well, and everyone could make meritorious achievements and do things together, unity and harmony without contradictions, relying on what? The boss told me, rely on leadership, your leadership as the director.

Quite simply, one look at the level, do you have a level? You study a question four or six out of tune, how do people serve you? Second, look at feelings, do you have feelings for people? Worried? Do people have feelings for you? Do you care how you feel? So when you are the director, one looks at the level, the other looks at the feelings, and it is gone.

Why doesn't he say you have power? In fact, there is no absolute power in the organs, and whoever works is the same, that is, by empathy to unite everyone.

07, "Those who are old and do not go away, for them are also thieves"

Li Xiang: Who would you be more curious about? Among entrepreneurs, what companies do he does, what do he do, how he thinks?

Zhao Peng: Elon Musk. I was particularly curious, so I inquired about the information in many ways and inquired about the time allocation of others, and I felt that it was very rewarding. He studied physics first, then a business subject, and studied first principles, which inspired us to open up an elemental level of thinking in our field.

Including employing people, recognizing people, and judging people, advocating that growth should be seen, and the impact of this paper should be careful, and more should see the power of a person's inner growth.

I also relayed his complaint in the WeChat circle of friends, saying that entrepreneurship is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss. What a literary and artistic one. A person who studies physics is so literary. I was particularly curious about him and admired him.

Li Xiang: You said in 2016 that you were willing to donate all your money to him.

Zhao Peng: When I have money, I will donate a little, not all. I will also have something worth spending money on. Even if the company IPOs, how many founders have you seen?

Either I find myself as a ceiling, and the value brought by my guards has been less than the damage caused, then I should shout a word, the old and not gone, for the thief also, gladly flashed. In that case, it makes sense for me to subtract something.

Either I'm not the ceiling, I'm caretaker of value and can work with this organization in an increasingly rational pattern. I was probably the one who was going to watch the sunset later.

Li Xiang: Watching the sunset?

Zhao Peng: Yes, you want a technology company, from which point of view there is no evergreen, right? Is the probability of evergreen too low? So whether it's a moat or a barrier, I sound like how to stop the progress of the industry. Who does the moat protect? Who are the barriers? All big Macs are innovative and entrepreneurial people.

Li Xiang: This is actually related to the understanding of the purpose of the company's existence in the past few decades. If you think it wants to create value and benefits for shareholders, of course you have to stop it.

Zhao Peng: I create value for users. Iron hit users, shareholders of flowing water. The user is always there, as long as you create value for the world and for the user. Shareholders come to go, 10 yuan to come, 1000 yuan to go, very happy. If people don't go, it's not cost-effective to go, and they have confidence in you, and it's better to put this money in other people's place than to put it here; it is people's freedom to go.

So if I look at this question, I think that the organization of the enterprise, which respects certain characteristics of human nature, implements the mechanism of distributing benefits by working more and getting more, and can rely on a certain culture and rules to enable people to achieve their own freedom of will and personal development, so that they can organize a group of people to do a big thing together. Then it must have its rise, its ups and downs.

Where are the technology companies that have flourished for 50 years? We are not a resource-based enterprise. I don't think a tech company wants to build a 50-year-long ideal, which may be the performance of the dragon slayer teenager finally growing a body of scales.

I don't like the word barrier. Our mentality today is that of an entrepreneur, what do you not want to do, do not do to others, what do you do with so many barriers?

If the greatest value of an enterprise's existence is to make its hundreds of thousands of people live better than China's billion people, then this value is not supported by the world.

If the world works to support this sort of thing, go to Mars with Elon Musk.