Cheng Lei, CEO of this month's 100 Helping People Conference, shared the full text as follows:
Hello everyone, time flies very quickly, and it's time for the monthly meeting again. I just saw a lot of new people and new faces, and some of them performed well on stage, although they said that they were not good at words, but in fact they laughed a lot, and they were very successful orators.
In a month, I have experienced a lot of things, and I haven't traveled much this month, and I basically focus on internal things in the company. If I really want to sum up the feelings of this month in one word, I think that the most profound feeling may be "gap".
This gap starts with myself, I saw a news this month, one of our very good Internet celebrities announced that he was going to build a car, that is, Lei Jun. Over the years, I have had many opportunities to contact and communicate with Mr. Lei, and I can indeed see a lot of gaps in him that are worth learning. After the Chinese New Year this year, we went to Zhuhai, where his newly founded company Kingsoft is located, and also visited the current CEO of Kingsoft, which used to be his location. And he himself also started from a fresh college graduate, entered the enterprise from a grassroots development engineer, and then gradually came to such a position worthy of envy and respect for all of us today. As he himself said, this may be the last major decision in his life, it should be said that it is all in, and he is willing to gamble all his honor and wealth to fight the last battle. Being able to have such dreams and courage at such an age really makes us feel the gap. When I think back to myself, sometimes there are some new things that I still don't dare to take risks easily. Come to think of it, why did he have the courage to do it? He said at the time that his company had $100 billion in cash reserves in its account, and he decided to spend $10 billion to do it. Although it seems risky to take 70% of 100 billion cash to do one thing, it is actually within the scope of others' capabilities. That's why I say that everyone has to dream and have courage, but at the same time, you have to consider your own situation and do what you can do. These two points of view seem to be a bit contradictory, on the one hand, it is said that it is necessary to have courage, to continue to innovate, to dare to think and dare to do, on the other hand, to do things within the scope of one's ability, so many things you may not be able to do, what to do if you want to solve this problem? What do you think should be done to solve this problem? That is to let one's ability continue to improve, improve and expand the boundaries of one's ability, and let oneself have the ability to do more and bigger things. So from this point of view, it can be seen that there is a big gap between us.
For example, as far as I am concerned, I think the biggest problem in recent years is that we are in Ma'anshan, and our team has grown a little slowly, and now it is more than 100 people, and it is claimed that there are nearly 200 people, but the actual situation is more than 100 people, we said two or three years ago that the number of people should be increased, but the growth rate has been relatively slow. If anyone has ever been to Zhuhai, they should know that the status of the entire development scale of this city in Guangdong should be comparable to that of our Ma'anshan in Anhui, and even to some extent, the status of Ma'anshan in Anhui may be a little higher. But others can develop a nationally renowned Internet company in such an obscure town. Therefore, when we founded the company, we set a vision: we also want to make a nationally renowned Internet company in Ma'anshan. At the moment, we can't say that we can achieve such a sensational big enterprise as Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance, but I think it is still a bit possible to make a company like Kingsoft in Zhuhai. But at the moment, it seems that there is still a big gap. Even today, the part of Zhuhai Jinshan that remains in Zhuhai may still have thousands of people, and the company has been split into many different sections, and even the subsidiaries under it can start to go public independently, and the market value is very high. Everyone knows that Kingsoft Office, for a product like WPS, the current market value can even reach the scale of 100 billion, which is a terrible number, which also reflects that there is still a big gap in our ability to lead a team.
I think the root cause of this gap is a lack of leadership. Just now, we also had a newcomer say that he likes to watch the Fan Deng Reading Club, and mentioned one of the more representative works in the Fan Deng Reading Club, called "Replicable Leadership". Coincidentally, last month, during the process of senior management team building, I spent nearly two hours to share and train all the middle and senior management of the company on the book "Replicable Leadership". Many of us have read a lot of books, a lot of truth we understand, we invited a more professional training team to teach us last year, when the training teacher said a sentence, said that you memorize all the prescriptions, but never take medicine, what disease can not be cured, do you understand this meaning? We have grown up so big, and all of you here have received a variety of education, these basic education does not require you to have a high degree of education, and it is not necessary to have a master's degree or a doctorate to master some life principles, in fact, the principles that should be learned have been learned in primary and secondary schools, and it is not clear whether you have learned them. Some people will come up with a motto, but in fact, the motto is just a motto, whether it can guide you, restrain you, and become the standard for all kinds of actions you take every day. It is precisely because a person knows his own gap and knows the goal direction of his life development that he can be self-disciplined about how he should be self-disciplined, know what he can do and what he can't do, and he can continue to find his own gap and fill it. If you don't really understand these truths in depth, then you just pay lip service. The growth of any person, for a long time, is actually extremely difficult.
Personally, I have been following the development of the team and learning a lot in this area, but there is still a big gap between us today. I think I still lack leadership in the team, because there are many middle-level cadres in our team, and we have not completely absorbed and implemented the leadership and execution ability of our enterprise management.
Specific to each department, this month I have done more work in the department, first of all, I have been working in the operation for a long time, I feel that there is still a gap in our operation, this gap is actually our basic work combing, of course, today's carding is not a new combing, but after so many years after n iterations and another drastic upgrade. To be able to have such an upgrade shows that we have begun to face up to our gaps, knowing that we have developed to this day, if we want this project to go further, we may need to undergo a major operation, and the month of major surgery makes me feel a little slower, and we still need to be more attentive to all of us here, all of us involved.
Speaking of my second direct management department, the site department, which is also the cornerstone of the company's collection department, the reason why this company can have such a foundation today is definitely the deepest relationship with the development of our site department. Because our root is not how many channels we have, but that we have many, many channels, we have hundreds of such channels, so that the channels and customers are dispersed enough to ensure that the company can survive in peace today. You say that you have a very large channel, in case a large channel does not cooperate with you, the company may disappear in an instant, but you have many channels, and a large channel accounts for a small proportion of your entire business, if these large channels do not cooperate with you, it will definitely have an impact, but it will not die. I can feel that this department has been relatively loose and relatively low-level for a long time, and it has to be renovated, and then I found that the progress is very slow. There is one thing that I talked about for more than a month and almost two months, and I told their supervisor about it in an interview after the New Year, and he nodded when he said it, and remembered it very well, but he didn't implement it after I went back. Half a month later, when I remembered this, I talked to him again, and he kept nodding his head and felt that he was going to do it, but it was delayed again and again, and he has not done it until now. That night was a meeting at more than 9 o'clock, I really couldn't bear it, and began to deduct points, after deducting points, he said that he would do it tomorrow and leave it to me, what I said tomorrow, I will do it tonight, and if I don't do it well, I won't use it tomorrow. As a result, at 12 o'clock that night, he was ready, and he did it well, he completely understood what I meant, and what he made was completely in accordance with the requirements. They later began to implement the plan, and found that it did work, and yesterday I saw ** mentioned that they were out on a business trip, and they have begun to bear fruit, and they have also experienced that this is the right thing to do, as long as they do so, they are confident. Sometimes we can still see the gap, I hope that each of our departments also needs to see this gap, and today these gaps are gradually being filled, sometimes it is not that we are not able to fill the gap, but the lack of confidence, do you have a good attitude, the willingness to really want to do this. A lot of things will be done tomorrow at every turn, saying that it is tomorrow, tomorrow I will not be there, tomorrow I happen to have something, I don't pay attention to it, it will not be there. There are some things that I can't bear to bear, I usually rarely ask people to do things after 9 o'clock in the evening, this is really one of the few things over the years, but I have told it many times, two months have passed, a very small thing, something that should have been done two months ago, and it has only been done now, and then I asked for it, and it took three hours to do it in the evening, and it was done very well.
Are there many times when we are really incompetent? It is we ourselves who are making reasons and excuses for ourselves. All of our departments should be reading the book "No Excuses", I read very few books, but I read more carefully, I will basically read the books I have read several times, if I think the book is good, I will take it out and read it again every other day. For example, as I said earlier, I read "Reproducible Leadership" twice, and on the second time, I began to copy some good chapters in it to make PPT, and I may have to check it again to see the main content and some stories that quote classics. And this PPT was actually done last year, and I also read this book last year, and I also wanted to find an opportunity to give our senior management team training last year, but then I didn't meet the right opportunity, and it was delayed until this month, and when I wanted to do training this month, I had to read it again in advance, that is to say, I read this book at least three times or more, and then took it out for everyone to do training. Doing anything, if you don't have adequate preparation, it's impossible to do it well, and I like to either don't do it or do it to the extreme, it's a habit.
There will also be some gaps in our other departments, for example, after we finished the New Year this year, our marketing department is still doing well, and the data growth is more obvious. Marketing and site are two departments of revenue, at the end of last year to do the annual planning, the marketing department's data is only about two-thirds of the site, according to the plan to reach two-thirds is enough, but the actual situation is that this year has comprehensively surpassed the performance of the site department in all aspects, and may even slowly become two-thirds of the marketing, it is conceivable that the growth of this department is still relatively obvious, which is indeed inseparable from the hard work of everyone here. On the one hand, we can see the gap between the site and marketing, and on the other hand, this month we also learned that we have a competitor company that is doing the same marketing work, but they are spending twice as much on the Internet as us. Our department is actually doing very well this year, but we found that there is a company in the market that consumes twice as much as us, and this gap has come again. While we encourage our own achievements, we must see the gaps, and only when there are gaps can we have motivation and direction. We still have a long way to go, and the external environment and competitors we are facing are not weak.
Finally, I will talk about a gap, last week I went to Hefei to participate in a commendation meeting, in previous years, I felt more glory to participate in the commendation meeting, but this time I felt more of the gap, in the past, I may only feel the gap in Beijing, Shanghai, but this time I also felt the gap in Hefei. In 2019, I was fortunate to participate in a symposium of private entrepreneurs chaired by Li Jinbin, Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee, and only 8 entrepreneur representatives were invited as speakers, and then 50 entrepreneur representatives sat in the back as delegates, and the main leaders of various departments in the province were all present at that time. At that time, I made a speech as a representative, and I was more impressed by Secretary Jinbin's speech at that time, saying that the development of the private economy in our province is still relatively not so advanced, and it is in a state that needs to be improved. At that time, there were only a handful of private enterprises in the province with revenues of more than 10 billion, which was in his own words. At that time, 2019 was talking about 2018 data, and this year 2021 was talking about 2020 data. There is 1 private enterprise in our province with a revenue of more than 100 billion yuan, and more than 30 private enterprises with a revenue of more than 50 billion yuan. In the past, we may have felt that Anhui and Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai are relatively close, and our eyes are always staring at Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, so we always feel that our Anhui is relatively backward, but in this short period of two years, our province has undergone such great changes, and I was extremely shocked after listening to this data. Although I was fortunate to be elected by Ma'anshan as one of the 10 commendations to receive the award from the beginning to the end of the 100 entrepreneurs, what I felt from beginning to end was not glory, but gap. I thought to myself that if we continue like this, we may not have the opportunity to participate in this event in the future. In the past, I could only feel this way in Beijing, but I really didn't expect to feel this way in the province today. Several representatives who arrived in advance the night before the meeting, we got together for a while, together with Pan Baochun, the chairman of Royalstar, who is a representative of the National People's Congress, I asked them how many people there are in the company, and he said that there are more than 10,000 people; There is also a company that does the Internet, that is, Bozhou's Blade Network, which is our customer, and in the past two years, due to the epidemic, the amount of data has skyrocketed, for two consecutive years, it has tripled every year, several times a year, and paid taxes 1 a year last year300 million, I don't want to say more about other data, maybe a lot of data is even ten times that of us, such an exaggerated data, this is the enterprise in our province. So both internally and externally, I do see a lot of gaps on a regular basis. Many people may not understand, we have done a good job in Ma'anshan, and we have done a lot of things, why do we still work so hard every day. I often go to events in the city because I'm the president of a lot of business associations, and then when we have a meeting of the presidents, they all say you don't have to fight so hard. I often go to dinner at night, I don't arrive until half past six or seven, and they say why are you so late, they arrive at four o'clock, and they have been playing cards for hours. I said I had just gotten off work, and they said the boss was still at work? They thought it was incredible, but I really didn't feel like I had enough time.
I said that my leadership is not enough today, and I am the only one who feels the gap, and I can't do anything alone, if we want to multiply it 10 times, what can I do alone? What we need is the efforts of the whole team, if a person can make this enterprise achieve today's achievements, but want to go further, then more people, all the people here can see our current gap, clear our goals, in the heart to really see this goal, and then pay for it, and this action is not a day or two of action, it takes a relatively long time to accumulate and persist. It's not terrible to have a gap, it's terrible not to know that you have a gap, and when you see the gap, that is to say, we have begun to clarify our goals, and we know what to do.
So in the current situation, we also see the crisis of the organic, that is to say, the entire ecology, has begun to have all walks of life leading enterprises began to emerge, we think that the outside of the mourning is everywhere, in fact, it is indeed mourning, but why in just two years there have been some enterprises have become so strong, development so fast, what do you think? Let me tell you, the more in the midst of change, some small and medium-sized enterprises over, but this market exists objectively, and these markets will eventually pour into what enterprises, that is, the head enterprises. At this time, you will find that the more leading enterprises, the faster they have developed in the past two years. Of course, some companies may have taken advantage of the general trend, such as the game industry, which has doubled several times in the past, of course, this will not be a normal phenomenon, but to a certain extent, isn't the Internet industry where we are also taking advantage of the general trend, the general trend of the past 20 years. So what we can see at the moment is that in the coming time, we will usher in a very good development situation. China's entire market is booming, China's market has begun to gradually mature, some of the head enterprises, the future will get greater opportunities, and we happen to be the head of the field of software services, we should be able to develop bigger, so at this stage, we should work harder. This year, in terms of the whole strategy, we put more emphasis on adding people, increasing the number of people, increasing salaries, and increasing the average salary. The average salary of all our members who became regular last year and worked for a whole year has reached 210,000 yuan, of course, including social security, five insurances and one housing fund, year-end bonuses, and dividends, I think it may be higher this year. Because when most of us joined the company this year, they even exceeded 10,000 yuan per month, our basic salary is 14 months, and the supervisor is based on 16 months' salary. We need to increase the number of people, we want to increase everyone's salary, and we need to attract more and better people to join the team.
We have to put the wealth we have accumulated in the past few years, our ability, just like Mr. Lei, we have begun to have the ability to do more and bigger things, and then we must have our ability to do more and bigger things that belong to us. Although I have the courage to do more, but we also need everyone to work together, we have to work together, each of our departments to find their own gaps, whether internal or external, to find their own benchmarks, after finding the gaps, we will set higher and newer goals, go all out, work together. We believe that in Ma'anshan, we can take advantage of the general trend of development like Hefei and those excellent enterprises all over the country to usher in our better tomorrow in the next five to ten years.