The founder is "half out of the mountain", and the CEO is in the front.
During the Ali Yunqi Conference at the end of October this year, a ** was widely circulated: Ali's core management walked in Yunqi TownGroup Chairman Tsai Chongxin, Alibaba Cloud Founder Wang Jian and others walked in the front row, while Wu Yongming, Group CEO and Alibaba Cloud CEO, followed behind.
This ** has a certain symbolic meaning: the Apsara Conference has always been an occasion for Alibaba Cloud to "show its muscles", but Wu Yongming, who has just taken office, is not the protagonist of this year's conference. During the conference, Cai Chongxin, Wang Jian and Alibaba Cloud CTO Zhou Jingren spoke successively, but Wu Yongming did not speak on stage.
The low-key Wu Yongming is the epitome of the new changes in China's Internet circle in 2023:The founders who originally retired came out one after another, but for various reasons did not fully come to the stage, and those who gave orders in accordance with the will of the founders were the "shadow warriors" who were not familiar to the public.
Ma Yun, who returned to China in April this year, pushed Wu Yongming to the forefront. This Ali 004 employee, the first programmer, and the youngest "Eighteen Arhats", was appointed CEO of Alibaba Group in early September, and concurrently serves as the chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud. At the end of December, Wu Yongming was appointed as the CEO of Taotian Group. Prior to that, he had served as the chairman of Taotian Group.
Alibaba Cloud and Taotian are the most important business segments of the entire Alibaba. In the third quarter of this year, the two together contributed about 56% of the company's revenue. Wu Yongming, as the CEO of the group, leads the number one position of the two major businesses, and his management boundary is broader than that of his predecessor.
Wu Yongming
However, Wu Yongming, who brings together three key CEO positions, has not changed his humble posture. In addition to being willing to be a human during the Apsara Conference,His change for the entire Ali is also centered on the will of the founder.
In an internal letter released in September this year, Wu Yongming listed "user-first and AI-driven" as two strategic priorities, and planned to increase strategic investment in technology-driven Internet platform business, AI-driven technology business and global business network. These strategic initiatives are in line with Jack Ma's "return to the world, return to users, and return to the Internet", and echo with "AI e-commerce".
This also reflects that Wu Yongming, who holds the positions of the three major CEOs, does not hold Alibaba's "strategic first opportunity", but is more like the interpreter and executor of a series of strategies proposed by Ma Yun after his return.
Xu Ran, another CEO who has just taken office, is also a "shadow warrior".
In the past five years, Xu Ran, who had previously served as the CFO of JD.com Group, replaced Xu Lei and was promoted to CEO of the groupIn mid-November, he succeeded the veteran Xin Lijun as the CEO of JD Retail.
Similar to Wu Yongming, Xu Ran mastered the core business segment of JD.com, but did not put forward a reform plan with Xu's characteristics. At the 20th anniversary event of JD.com in late June, Xu Ran announced that he would lead all employees to study and formulate a roadmap and implement it around how to implement the "35711" dream.
"35711" was proposed by Liu Qiangdong in November 2020, including a series of development visions for the next 20 years, including 3 companies with revenues of more than one trillion yuan, net profits of more than 70 billion yuan, and 5 Fortune 500 companies. Liu Qiangdong is responsible for "dreaming", and Xu Ran is responsible for "dreaming", and the focus of his work falls on the implementation level.
In addition to the two e-commerce CEOs,There is also a relatively alternative "shadow warrior" in the Internet circle - Zhou Shouzi.
Zhang Yiming has always been eager to open up overseas markets, and launched the overseas versions of Toutiao and Watermelon** seven or eight years ago, and personally finalized the name of TikTok. But his Chinese identity and background have become one of the reasons why Byte has been questioned and embarrassed to go overseasIn addition, the commercialization of TikTok has been slow, and the senior management team needs to be restructured urgently.
From 2021 onwards, Singaporean Zhou Shouzi has become Zhang Yiming's "shadow warrior". In the past year, Zhou Shouzi has mediated with Indonesia in Southeast Asia and Indonesia, and finally allowed TikTok to escape the catastrophe in these two marketsAt the same time, the management of TikTok was purged, and the "old people" led by COO Pappas were out one after another, and TikTok was able to make breakthroughs in e-commerce and live broadcasting.
The appearance of "shadow warriors" such as Wu Yongming, Xu Ran and Zhou Shouzi isThe founders of large Internet companies have re-emerged and come to the forefront.
Despite being crowned as the CEO, the "Shadow Warrior" has a very different power position from the founder, and plays more of a role as an obedient and executor. The founder has real decision-making power, but due to internal and external reasons, it is inconvenient to take the helm directly, and he also needs a loyal "shadow warrior" to do it for him.
Ma Yun, Liu Qiangdong and Zhang Yiming are firmly behind the scenes, using "shadow warriors" to govern the company. Aggressive - a bold refresh of the personnel structure and change the direction of the company;Retreat can be defended - "Shadow Warrior" "If the performance is mediocre and difficult to convince the public, you can change the commander again."
Jack Ma
However, if the "Shadow Warrior" can faithfully implement the will of the founder, translate the latter's strategic guidance into a business method that can be implemented, and finally lead the company to break the ceiling and return to the growth track, it may not be impossible to be promoted to the new No. 1 position.
2023 is the year when the founders of Internet companies return to the foreground, tooThe founder and the shadow warrior dance hand in hand, two-headed governanceof the year. Ali and other large Internet companies have been trying to establish a sustainable order;However, in the face of the great changes in the Internet, the founder can only temporarily put down the idyll, return to the commercial rivers and lakes, and launch the "Shadow Warrior" to fight on his behalf.
The common characteristic of the "shadow warriors" sent by the founders of an Internet company is that they are detached most of the timeIt has nothing to do with the old line of the predecessor's business.
Some "shadow warriors" have been away from the company's operation for a long time, and they are behind the scenes and willing to be green leaves.
For example, Wu Yongming has been in charge of the technology sector of **, Alipay, Alimama and other businesses, and has been the chairman of Ali Health for 5 years. In 2015, Wu Yongming faded out of Ali and established Yuanjing Capital, which invested in many entrepreneurial projects of Ali people.
There are also "shadow warriors" who come from a financial background and are not too involved in the southern and northern wars of specific business.
Xu Ran first worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers and joined JD.com in 2018, first as JD.com's retail CFO, and two years later was promoted to group CFOZhou Shouzi previously worked for the Russian venture capital DST, and was subsequently selected by Lei Jun as the CFO of Xiaomi, and his first title after joining Byte in 2021 was also CFO.
Xu Ran
With a technical and financial background, the "Shadow Warrior" is a leader in terms of brains, knowledge, and experienceWhat's more, compared to veterans who have been immersed in specific businesses for a long timeIt is easier for the "shadow warrior" to break away from the old line of the previous manager, look at the company from an outsider's perspective, find the real problems, and find the real answers.
In addition, the "Shadow Warrior" is not very involved in specific business, and it is not easy to form an intertwined descendant ecology, and when it touches the existing interests of different teams, there are fewer worries and entanglements, so that they can act faster and more powerfully. That's what the founders are putting them on the front of the stage.
In contrast, the former ministers of the former dynasty who made great military achievements are easy to fall into the dilemma of self-transformation "in this mountain". Taking Ali as an example, in recent years, its organizational structure has been frequently adjusted, and the management has been repeatedly replaced, although it has achieved certain results, but it has not fundamentally completed the "aircraft carrier U-turn", the performance growth is slow, and the market value has been surpassed by Pinduoduo.
After Wu Yongming took the throne, Ali's transformation suddenly accelerated. Especially at the end of December this year, only two days after Wu Yongming took over as CEO of Taotian, he announced a large-scale adjustment of middle-level managers, involving multiple business departments such as **, Tmall, **live broadcast, and Alimama.
Wu Yongming put forward a request in an internal letter: "Face up to the status quo and start a new business." This rather harsh wording, coupled with the thunderous means of personnel changes, was not common in Taotian or even the entire Ali before.
The founder's replacement of the "Shadow Warrior" is itself a way to convey dissatisfaction and pressure to the current management.
At the end of last year, Liu Qiangdong whipped at an internal meeting, opening the prelude to JD.com's great changes. Since the beginning of this year, Jingdong has made a big fuss about low prices, including launching a subsidy channel of 10 billion yuan, lowering the threshold for free shipping, buying expensive double compensation, and setting the theme of Double 11 as "really cheap".Xin Lijun, CEO of Jingdong Retail, also proposed "four battles to win", and the first battle is the sinking market.
Liu Qiangdong
But the results were not immediate. In the third quarter, JD Retail's revenue increased by only 006%, stopped. Almost at the same time as the release of the financial report, Xu Ran replaced Xin Lijun and became the new CEO of JD Retail.
Other times,The "Shadow Warrior" needs to wield the "Shang Fang Sword" on the battlefield beyond the reach of the founder's whip to clear the situation and turn the tide.
Before 2021, TikTok successively appointed two managers: former Disney executive Mayer, and former YouTube executive Pappas. Two executives from the content industry have made TikTok as Douyin in terms of user base, but they have been slow to commercialize.
Previously, it was reported that in 2022, Byte's revenue in China will be $69 billion, and the revenue of overseas businesses, including TikTok, will be $16 billionThe daily active users of the two businesses are 8500 million and 8400 million. In the case of the same number of users, TikTok's revenue scale is far inferior to Douyin.
In May 2021, Zhou Shouzi was appointed CEO of TikTok, and Pappas, who was COO at the time, was in an awkward position. Zhou Shouzi asked the latter to show the input-output ratio of creator incentive activities, and at the same time invest more resources in live streaming and e-commerce business. Eventually, Pappas announced his departure in June of this year.
At the same time, TikTok e-commerce entered the fast lane. The business started in 2021 with a GMV of about US$1 billion that year, US$4.4 billion in Southeast Asia alone in 2022, US$20 billion in 2023, and US$50 billion next year.
Zhang Yiming was limited by his identity and could not personally rectify the personnel;"Shadow Warrior" Zhou Shouzi was ordered to come, and it took less than two years to sweep away the influence of Mayer, Pappas and others, and take TikTok to a new track. TikTok has made a major breakthrough in business monetization, and Zhou Shouzi, who has an iron fist to "clean up the portal", should be the first to work.
b A few years ago, the founders of large Internet companies successively chose to let go and hand over the power to the elite soldiers who had been cultivated for a long time. The latter has led the company through the cycle and maintained growth, but it has also fallen into new bottlenecks in the past year or two.
In this case, Ma Yun and others re-emerged. But the return of the founder does not mean that he has re-taken the burden of CEO.
Ma Yun, Liu Qiangdong, Zhang Yiming, etc. still have a keen sense of smell and strategic insight into the Internet. For example, Ma Yun proposed "three returns", and Liu Qiangdong proposed that "low price is the only basic **", both of which are accurate insights overlooking the overall situation. But at a finer level of business granularity, they may not be the best candidates to lead the company into battle.
For various reasons, Jack Ma and others have been away from the front line of business for a long time: Jack Ma has ceased to be the CEO of Alibaba Group since 2013 and stepped down as chairman of the board of directors in 2019;Liu Qiangdong has been "invisible" for a long time after the Mingzhou incident in September 2018;Zhang Yiming stepped down as CEO of Byte at the end of 2021 and turned his energy to public welfare projects such as education public welfare, brain diseases, and digitization of ancient books.
According to Ren Zhengfei's theory,They all belong to the group of people who "can't hear the sound of cannons".It is okay to grasp the corporate strategy, but it is inevitable to be slow to make specific judgment decisions. Even if you are the founder and have the appeal to respond to every call, it is not suitable for them to take office again, and it is more reasonable to let the "shadow warrior" who is more familiar with the business as the CEO.
Ren Zhengfei
On the other hand, over the past two decades, Chinese Internet companies have continued to explore modern corporate governance paradigms, and leading companies such as Alibaba have gradually formed a culture of intergenerational inheritance of management. This culture helps ensure longevity and prevents founders from stepping down and becoming CEOs on their own terms.
Based on internal cultivation and intergenerational inheritance of the fittestIt helps Internet companies to maintain efficient and transparent decision-making, minimize the founder's own surprises, and protect the interests of enterprises, employees and investors. The basic logic is that after the company reaches a certain stage of development, the founder relinquishes his management position and retreats into the backgroundThe tempered professional manager stepped into the C position and became the new helmsman.
Ali has done the most fully and farthest in this regard, and the results are obvious to all.
Ali's last "No. 1 position" was Daniel Zhang. He led Alibaba to cultivate Double 11 into the largest e-commerce IP on the entire network, promoted Tmall to become a new pillar of Alibaba's e-commerce sector, and completed the mobile transformationIn 2015 and 2019, Daniel Zhang took over as CEO and chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group, and led Alibaba to defend the country in the following years.
Daniel Zhang
Cooperate with the ** system is the Ali partner system. Under this system, Mr. Ma decentralizes his power as founder to more than two dozen partners, who are mainly composed of Alibaba's core management. According to Alibaba's prospectus, the move will not only maintain the values built by the company's founders, but also take into account the renewal of partners after retirement"Replacing individual founders with a group of partners makes it easier to carry on the business. ”
Although the intergenerational inheritance mechanism of other companies is not as complete as Alibaba, it has also made arrangements for the founder's successful retirement in advance.
After the Mingzhou incident, Liu Qiangdong was "hidden", and Xu Lei came to the forefront. Before being appointed in danger, Xu Lei was already Liu Qiangdong's right-hand man, in charge of marketing, corporate sales, public relations and other sectorsIn the following two years, Xu Lei successively took over the positions of president and CEO of JD.com. Liu Qiangdong even shouted internally, "Whoever disagrees with Xu Lei is disobedient to me." ”
In terms of bytes, Zhang Yiming handed over the CEO position to Liang Rubo at the end of 2021, and the latter immediately started to adjust the organizational structure, dividing it into six major sections: Douyin, Dali Education, Feishu, Volcano Engine, Chaoxi Lightyear and TikTok;Zhang Nan, Chen Lin, Zhou Shouzi and other business leaders all reported to Liang Rubo. The large, wide-ranging, and rapid implementation of this personnel adjustment is not something that Liang Rubo can promote in a single thought.
The intergenerational inheritance mechanism is the crystallization of the long-term experience of Internet enterprises. When the company's development hits a bottleneck,If the founder were to become the CEO of a group or a business again, it would inevitably cause disruption to the intergenerational succession. Expectations of career advancement across the company were shattered;The change of management will also regress from being rule-based to being dominated by the personal will of the founders.
At this time, the founder managed the company as a "shadow warrior", and was able to practice his will to the greatest extent while maintaining a reasonable flow of management and succession as much as possible. The continuity of corporate governance and the adherence to the boundaries of behaviour after the founder's retirement is no less important than the company's business development.
After C came to power, the "Shadow Warrior" was manipulated by the invisible hand of the founder. As professional managers, they manage the big and small things of the company, and form a "two-headed governance" pattern with the founders;But they don't really grasp the direction of the enterprise, and they are not really the anchor of the sea.
However, Internet companies have a tradition of "shadow warriors" on the top.
For example, Alibaba's Daniel Zhang, after joining in 2007, promoted the company's transformation to the mobile Internet, pioneered Double 11, cultivated Tmall as the core of Tao e-commerce, built a "small front desk, large middle platform" organizational structure, acquired AutoNavi, Ele.me, etc., and made great achievements, which became Ali's second helmsman after Ma Yun.
JD.com's Xu Lei had a similar experience. After joining JD.com in 2009, Xu Lei was responsible for sales, marketing, branding, platform operations and other positions, and was appointed as the president and CEO of JD.com Group after the Mingzhou incident.
Xu Lei
Judging from past experience, the founders chose "Shadow Warriors", in addition to sharing their daily work, but also to inspect and train them as ** people. This can be seen as part of the intergenerational succession of business management.
But in the new situation, the founder's attitude towards the "Shadow Warrior" has changed subtly:They no longer retreat in stride and delegate power on a large scale, but help them get on their horses, give them a ride, and even hold on to their journeys for a long time.
In the vast majority of Internet companies, the founders have accumulated strong qualifications and popularity in the stage of fighting the world. Even if they resign from management positions and no longer hold a controlling stake, they are still able to exert a powerful influence on the company in unconventional ways.
Interacting with employees in the company's internal forums is the founder's latest way to "flex his muscles". In the past two months, Ma Yun replied to employees on the intranet, saying that he "firmly believes that Ali will change", and also congratulated his competitor Pinduoduo;Liu Qiangdong's rhetoric became more intense, saying that "we must change, otherwise we have no way out", and directly pointed out the chronic disease of "a large, bloated and inefficient organization".
The founder threw off the reporting level and directly developed the enterprise with the grassroots employees, in fact, he was taking the opportunity to convey his attitude to the management and the entire company. It helps to refresh the spirit of the enterprise as quickly as possible, but it also puts more pressure on the "shadow warriors".
The founder's resignation is a natural shackle that the "shadow warriors" have to face, and it is also a stubborn disease that is always difficult to overcome in China's corporate governance.
Under the two-headed governance mechanism, the founder made trade-offs and concessions in his position by sending "shadow warriors". However, when the "shadow warrior" feats and wings grow, enterprises will still face the problem of intergenerational inheritance, and may face new fluctuations. Whether the founders can break the "retreat without stopping" and truly decentralize power will determine the duration and scope of this fluctuation.
References:
Shendu Cross, "Lively Yunqi Conference, Quiet Wu Yongming".
36kr, "TikTok e-commerce next year's GMV target is 50 billion US dollars, Southeast Asia and the United States go hand in hand".
Yan Xi, "Ali Jiao**: Scenery Retreats, Tracks Drive Forward".
Tencent Technology, "Attack on Zhou Shouzi: Decisive Killing, Forcing Out TikTok American Female Executives, Bet on E-commerce and Live Broadcasting".
Photon Planet, "Wu Yongming, Jack Ma's "Shadow"".
Start planning for my 2024