Change starts with you and me.
Strategically, the first is Rectify the underinvestment problem.
We have put in a lot of money in the past few years, but we haven't invested enough. Every time people look at our financial report and say that our profit is 50%, when our business is still growing rapidly, we shouldn't quickly pursue net profit. We should invest more money in more new businesses and innovations.
In addition to the core business, enhance the enabler and protector!
In addition to our core business, we also need to invest in what things can enable users to use Baidu search more. For example, browsers. If you have a relatively large market share, you can guide search through users. We don't invest much in this regard.
You have such a good market position. If someone wants to grab it and can get it, there is a problem. You need to have something to protect yourself.
Willing to disrupt ourselves.
Some of our inherent advantages will be weakened over time and changes in the market, and it will be dangerous to resist market changes at this time. It is better to destroy our own lives. Since we have discovered that users 'search behavior has migrated from PCs to mobile, we should proactively guide users to migrate to wireless earlier, so that we can take advantage of the PC to make mobile, rather than desperately maintaining the status quo. Thinking of users staying on the PC, for example, in the field of sales, Our sales may well say that customers will spend money on search promotion, which will make them very profitable, but users 'usage habits are migrating. If we don't educate customers to migrate, the future will be very dangerous.
Managers need to understand the strategy at his/her level.
In the past, we thought that strategy was something at the CEO level, but it wasn't exactly. The biggest strategy is at the CEO level, but every product and every business have its own strategy. For the business and products you are responsible for, and even the functions you are responsible for, you must be clear about what its surrounding environment is and what its strategy is. You must know what should happen to such things as the market changes.
Encourage wolf nature and eliminate petty bourgeoisie
We also have a lot to change in implementation. We call Baidu culture simple and reliable, but as time goes by, how to make it simple and reliable is different. The problems I have observed now are two. One is that we need to encourage wolfness, and the other is to eliminate petty bourgeoisie. The word wolfness was invented by another company and borrowed it for use. I really have certain concerns when borrowing it, which seems to some people not to be a 100% positive word, or in the eyes of many people, it is inconsistent with Baidu culture and conflicts. But their three definitions of wolfness are very suitable for Baidu today: a keen sense of smell, an indomitable and desperate offensive spirit, and group struggle.
These three points are definitely positive and must be all Baidu should have. These three points do not conflict with our simple and reliable culture. We need to have a keen sense of smell, an indomitable and desperate offensive spirit, and a group struggle. In fact, this was the case in the early days of Baidu. You could not only do the best job in the company, but also do the best job in China and the best in the world. At that time, the difficulties were much more than now. Only when you left it to you would you be able to rely on it. How can you call it reliable if you didn't do a good job?
I talked about this PPT at the director's meeting. After talking about it, some Estaff and the director might have conveyed these things down. Later, HR also conducted some interviews, and I felt that everyone actually had a lot of controversy about this petty bourgeoisie. What is petty bourgeoisie? I define it as having a good background, fluent English, stable income, believing that work is just a part of life, not wanting to make progress, and pursuing the comfort of personal life is all.
What is particularly controversial is the first sentence, which is a good background and fluent English. They said, Robin, aren't you such a person? I said it's just because I am such a person that I dare to say that I want to eliminate this kind of person.
Everyone may think that after recent years of development, Baidu has become a very big company and a very superior company. It has recruited good people. It graduated from Peking University and Tsinghua University, has good conditions, and has a good experience in the world. But I tell you that this background is not necessarily an advantage for you, because your living environment is too comfortable, just like a dinosaur. After many years of age, you can't survive when the conditions become very harsh. On the contrary, those who come from rural areas have little money at home and work hard bit by bit through their own efforts are actually more viable. So after the director's meeting, everyone told me if Robin should change it? I said there is no need to change it. I just want these people to understand that these conditions are not your advantages, but may become your disadvantages. Because you've had a good life in the past, once the environment changes, once the competition changes, it's scary.
Including my children, I said you must endure hardship. You have never endured hardship and you will never be able to achieve anything in the future.
Therefore, eliminating petty bourgeoisie is calling for wolf nature, and calling for wolf nature is calling for carrot and stick. We must make all employees more clear that if they want to find a stable job where they don't seek merit but no mistakes, please leave now, otherwise our big ship will be dragged down.
Reduce management levels and improve efficiency
Reducing staff and increasing efficiency means reducing the number of people who simply do management, senior engineers need to write codes, and managers need to understand business. I have done a statistic that people above T5 write less code. T5 basically have two years to come in, and they stop writing after learning a code because they have to bring many new people with them and don't have time to write it themselves. Then we need to reduce the number of junior people. For those who don't work hard enough or have no passion, we will let them go. We will add the money saved to those employees who really want to work hard and achieve results.
Reduce meetings, make decisions in a timely manner, and have clear decision-makers for everything, deadlines, and people to follow up.
Mission and culture are above KPIs. In the past, I asked eStaff this, but later I asked every level of employees and every level of management. He often said that this thing was not the KPI of that department, so he did not work hard and was not in a hurry. Our entire company must advocate the concept that cultural mission is higher than KPI. You must do and cooperate with what is in line with our culture and mission.
So when I come back, I still have to say that the entire China Internet, the world Internet, or the entire market economy environment is actually in line with the law of natural selection for the fittest. I heard that a dinosaur stepped on a ladle, and it took a few hours for his brain to react, so no matter how old you grow, you will be extinct. And we cannot be dinosaurs. We must be strong, change our concepts, be a company with strong cloud and terminal, and use innovation and passion to achieve Baidu's second take-off.