One month after he proposed to resign, Ren Geng, president of Alibaba Cloud China, who was on Weibo’s hot search twice, finally chose to stay in Alibaba Cloud.
The toss and bounds made this departure quite dramatic.
After all, after approving Ren Geng’s resignation, Alibaba Cloud made corresponding organizational structure adjustments, and made a grand official announcement at the internal meeting on the evening of April 12: Huang Haiqing, vice president of China, will replace Ren Geng’s president of China. bit.
However, Leifeng.com recently learned from multiple sources that Ren Geng communicated with members of the Ali General Office during the leave after his resignation and decided to continue to stay in Ali. As for the specific position, it is not yet known.
The rumors that Ren Geng joined Baidu Cloud, which had been circulated in the circle before, surfaced with the news of Ren Geng staying on Alibaba Cloud, and the dust settled on Baidu’s major organizational structure adjustment last week.
It is true that Ren Geng did not join Baidu Cloud, but it is not false that he had “fighting” with Baidu Cloud before.
Ren Geng is not compatible with Baidu Cloud
Baidu announced a major adjustment to its organizational structure last week, and Shen Dou took over the banner of the person in charge of Baidu Cloud from CTO Wang Haifeng. This basically shows that the possibility of additionally introducing Ren Geng to Baidu Cloud tends to zero.
At this time, Baidu Cloud already has Group Executive Vice President Shen Dou and Group Vice President Hou Zhenyu. If Ren Geng joins, according to the logic of talent flow between Alibaba and Baidu, the reasonable position is Senior Vice President of the Group.
Gathering so many VPs is quite rare in other departments of Baidu, and it seems that there are many small Buddhas in the temple.
Secondly, Shen Dou himself can also make up for the lack of Baidu Cloud in sales, and it is not necessary to introduce Ren Geng to make up for this shortcoming in sales.
In addition, in the eyes of Baidu and Ali insiders, even if Baidu did not make this adjustment, Ren Geng might not have adapted to Baidu Cloud before.
Sources told Leifeng.com that the demands of Baidu Cloud and Ren Geng seem to be quite complementary on the cards.
After Yin Shiming and Zhang Zhiqi resigned, Baidu Cloud has been short of executives who lead the sales system. For Ren Geng, his role is exactly what Baidu Cloud lacks. Joining such a growing organization also means that he will gain more power to fire.
But the reality is that there are two big mountains in front of them, one is the competition agreement, and the other is Baidu’s limited compatibility with airborne executives.
The difficulty of compatibility of airborne executives is more prominent in the to B business of Internet giants.
In “Intercepting Alibaba and Tencent’s Cloud Giants” , Lei Feng.com wrote that Yin Shiming, the former general manager of Baidu Cloud, is a typical to B sales senior talent. He also brought Zhang Zhiqi and Jing Wei, vice presidents of SAP China, etc. People, they brought a lot of big customers as soon as they arrived at Baidu Cloud, which impressed the early employees of Baidu Cloud.
But as time passed, Yin Shiming also encountered many difficulties.
In the context of Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei and other big companies attacking cloud computing, his proposition is that “Baidu Cloud should give priority to expanding its share” and “do it even if it loses”. This kind of aggressive play on the sales side is bound to bring losses.
More importantly, in Baidu’s internal to B business, when technical figures are the absolute mainstream, “relying on technology to win the market” is obviously more suitable for this group’s values than “relying on losses in exchange for the market” . Culture is out of tune.
If Ren Geng really joins Baidu Cloud, it is difficult to guarantee that he will not repeat the mistakes of Yin Shiming.
A similar phenomenon of the Airborne faction being out of tune with the native culture has also occurred in other Internet giants, even in more extreme forms.
Whether it is the early Alibaba Cloud or the current Tencent Cloud, there are many high-level and backbone to C backgrounds.
The landing of B-end executives with backgrounds like Ren Geng will inevitably bring two types of conflicts to organizations with a stronger to C flavor: one is the conflict at the affairs level, and the other is the conflict at the interpersonal level caused by the conflict at the affairs level.
Transaction layer conflicts, as the name suggests, conflicts arise because of things.
“Internet to C veterans lead the to B business, the biggest problem is to bring the thinking model of to C to the to B market for operation. It is like throwing a giant python that snakes on land into the sea. Because the python is not used to floating In the water, simply sink to the bottom of the sea and let yourself walk on the familiar surface. This is obviously a self-destruction. How can the surface of the seabed be the same as the land?” said Wang Yang, who was born in to B.
He and a number of cloud computing executives have talked to Leifeng.com that it is inevitable to continue and apply the thinking inertia of to C. After all, the professional training that these senior executives have received for more than 20 years is based on to C, and muscle memory has long been formed.
When encountering anything unknown, he will subconsciously apply past experience, and always find a theory to make his own logic of moving to C to to B self-consistent.
Misplaced thinking inertia sometimes leads the business into the abyss. If you can’t find the optimal solution, you can only struggle at the bottom of the sea.
“Executives from the B-side airborne will focus on making the python (team) adapt to the seawater environment and learn to swim. The C-side executives will try to make the team land on the seabed, and then consider how to walk. If a team of five high In the tube, four of them are native submarine walkers, and one is an airborne swimmer. You don’t need to think about how much the latter will be crowded out.” Wang Yang further explained.
This is how transaction layer conflicts come about.
When “airborne B with weak power” and “old Cs who hold real power” have different thinking, strategies and methodologies, Airborne B is hindered in the budget and headcount acquisition at the upper level, and it is difficult for the C faction team to cooperate with it. effective cooperation.
“Imagine, if Ren Geng’s sales culture of ‘red and blue confrontation, big training, standard actions, four-seeing, three-determining and five-clear’ sales culture would be brought to Baidu or Tencent, how inconsistent it would be. ” A vice president said with emotion. .
Genes are different, and then we talk about compatibility, which shows how difficult it is.
“Humans, like animals, happen to like to find people with similar concepts to hold a group together. The orientation is similar to the smell, and it is also reflected in the recruitment of talents. They tend to search for talents with similar backgrounds to themselves. Over time, top-down and Bottom-up factions gradually formed, such as SAP faction, Huawei faction, etc.”
The formation of factions will make the conflict at the affairs level gradually evolve into a conflict at the interpersonal level.
Modern management believes that appropriate conflict at the affairs level is conducive to stimulating the vitality of the organization. Once the conflict is out of control and escalates to the conflict at the interpersonal level, it will be overwhelmed.
Interpersonal conflict, which is what we often say “to people and not to things”.
The consequence of the conflict at the transaction level is the resistance to collaboration between the two groups. The consequence of interpersonal conflict is to maliciously prevent the other party from achieving their goals.
After that, let’s look back at Baidu. As Leifeng.com previously analyzed in “Interpretation of Baidu’s Great Personnel Changes” , it is undoubtedly beneficial to Shen Dou, Wang Haifeng, Baidu Cloud, and MEG to make the veteran Shen Dou the head of Baidu Cloud.
And whether it is Ren Geng to Baidu, or Baidu to Ren Geng, it is not the optimal solution for the other party.
Of course, finding the balance between to C and to B is also in front of the “shen shakers”.
Insecure to C executives, Alibaba Cloud who jumped out of the comfort zone
Leifeng.com talked with many middle-level managers in many cloud giants. They report upward to executives, and they need to lead the team to perform execution. The roles in the middle often experience the conflict of organizational culture. most profound.
The consensus among them is that the degree of cooperation and attitudes of cooperation between departments of various companies varies greatly.
Clouds with many To C executives have a very strong sense of insecurity in the leadership team: on the one hand, it comes from “do not understand”, and on the other hand, they are worried that the airborne to B middle and high-level managers will shake their position, so they are more wary of the airborne to B talents. powerful.
The superiors’ vigilance against subordinates is reflected in rejecting their plans, card budgets, and not giving Headcount.
“I once talked about a big eight-figure project, and proudly went to the Headcount, where the leader asked for ten more people, but was slapped in the face by reality, the application was not approved, and finally I had to borrow from other departments. The team, but the leader of the other party is also very clear: it is okay for people, but it is very difficult for me to count the majority of revenue on their department. If this kind of list is placed in traditional IT vendors, I can get excellent employees. Awarded.” Wang Lang, who was an airborne person, said helplessly to Leifeng.com.
The level-to-level vigilance is manifested in the lack of cooperation and openness, and the lack of cooperation and cooperation.
“To paraphrase a famous saying in “Little Times”, to B without cooperation is like a plate of loose sand, without the wind blowing, it will be scattered in two steps.”
The high-level executives of the To C background even still use the horse racing mechanism in the cloud track, which is completely ineffective in the marathon to B track.
The horse racing mechanism is essentially a “singles mode” with a small team as a unit, and it is “anti-collaboration” in its bones.
The collaboration of to B involves hundreds of people at every turn, spanning multiple departments, and it is a process of scientific management.
It is human nature to resist complex collaboration. The establishment of complex collaboration relies on tactics in basketball and football fields, and process management in business operations. Chinese Internet companies are accustomed to the small group individual combat mode of fighting for speed, and there is a natural lack of process management.
“Huawei and Alibaba have done a good job in this regard. Huawei, to a certain extent, is the local IT company with the best process management. After Alibaba Cloud has successively introduced a large number of executives with to B backgrounds, the importance attached to process management To far surpass Tencent, Baidu, JD Cloud and the like, and jump out of the comfort zone. This is a very positive signal.” said Jiang Che, a cloud executive.
Alibaba Cloud has repeatedly emphasized delegating power internally. Compared with other Internet companies, Alibaba Cloud has a relatively greater tolerance and openness in the appointment of to B senior talents. In the face of the ever-changing market environment and the old and new struggles within the organization, in the previous personnel adjustments, we have the courage to give enough power to professional people. Much admired by peers.
“Compared to Tencent and Baidu, Alibaba Cloud prefers airborne leadership. The purpose is to break the old system, let the elderly get out of their comfort zone, and encourage them to learn from others’ strengths and do things in a way that is more in line with the laws of the market.”
The old-fashioned veterans of to C, who insist on to C empiricism, are hoping to open up a road that has not been traveled by predecessors: after sinking into the sea, they can evolve their lungs into gills, so that they can walk freely on the surface of the sea. At that time, it will undoubtedly be a dimensionality reduction attack for other opponents.
In layman’s terms, it is to find the master key that turns C to drive B.
In response to the discussion on this topic, in Leifeng.com’s “Cloud Computing Disruptors in the Red Sea” , former executives of Alibaba and Tencent described relevant cases.
“During the 930 revolution, Pony proposed the strategy of using C to drive B. With the help of traffic advantages, it can directly grow and acquire customers for customers, and reduce dimensionality to attack other clouds. This strategy is perfect, but it stops at cross-organizational collaboration. Why should first-level departments such as WeChat and QQ open unlimited traffic and privileges to CSIG, let him soar into the sky, and then affect the experience of their own products? If they can’t find a point that can balance the interests of all parties, then cloud The mainstream tactics can only be like other companies, completely B-end, and can’t make a big move to seal the throat.”
Ali is in a similar awkward situation. “I originally thought that with the help of the powerful entrance of e-commerce, the new retail and retail cloud would be able to compete with each other, but I didn’t expect that the gap between reality and ideals would be huge. Even though the head of retail cloud at that time was Assistant Xiaoyaozi, in the cross-border The department had a considerable right to fire in resource mobilization, and it was difficult to transfer the advantages of C-end e-commerce to the retail cloud.”
Grafting the advantages of C-end ace products to cloud products seems to be becoming a false proposition in the eyes of many people.
This also forces various Internet manufacturers to cut the mismatched to C experience and teams in recent years, and pursue a purer to B method. This move is more conducive to unified thinking, unified front, unified play, and decisive battle to B.
Alibaba Cloud, which introduced Cai Yinghua, basically declared that it had made a perfect cut between B and C.
At the same time, Ren Geng’s retention, although dramatic, is obviously a good thing for both parties at this stage.
Whether it is a matter or a person, the flexibility, inclusivity, strategic determination and execution of Alibaba Cloud at the organizational level have enabled Alibaba and Alibaba Cloud to turn talent flow into organizational dividends, and in the process of continuous self-renewal , to promote various businesses to continuously break through the ceiling overhead.
“So we are optimistic about Alibaba Cloud.” Friends and businessmen commented this way.
If you have wonderful stories to share, you can contact the author of this article Xiaofei, WeChat: xf123a
Note: At the request of the interviewee, Wang Yang, Wang Lang, Jiang Che and others in the article are all pseudonyms.
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