Chapter 24 Chapter 23 A-level talents are the most important

When the company started, Zhou Hongyi also spent a lot of time arguing and colliding with the team.He did it the same way Jobs did.People he doesn't like will not cooperate with them at all, and those who cooperate must be valued by him.Since he values ​​it, he hopes to constantly challenge the other party, discover problems, point out problems, and provide help so that the other party can improve. According to the procedures and practices of ordinary companies, since Qihoo gave up search, the search team should also lay off staff, reorganize or even leave, but Zhou Hongyi obviously did not do so.

Give up the search, he is willing to gamble and admit defeat, and then think of other ways if he loses, he can't hang himself on a tree.But he is also very guilty in his heart. First, he feels that it is difficult to explain to investors, and he is ashamed of them.During that time, investors from the United States came to visit him, and every time he had dinner with them, Zhou Hongyi felt particularly stressed. After all, many of the ideas that he boasted to the investors did not come to fruition.Although the investors are quite understanding and don't mention this topic every time they come, he still feels that it is necessary to keep a search team from the perspective of being responsible to investors, showing that he is still working.

Then there is his guilt towards his employees.At that time, many employees of Qihoo, especially the employees of the core search team, all followed the dream of search, hoping to do search that was different from Google, Baidu and others.If you tell them that Qihoo will stop doing search, it will be a big blow to the team, so Zhou Hongyi held several meetings with them, expressing the meaning: now is not the right time, let's save the spark of revolution first, and then take advantage of it in the future. Hope they can settle down. He gave the team two paths: the first one is for those who love search to continue to search, and the company will not ask them any more.In the past, everyone always complained that they were rushing to the progress every day. From now on, they can no longer rush to the progress. They can research as much as they want. It doesn't matter whether there are users or not. Anyway, let them concentrate on researching search technology.The second path is transformation.Zhou Hongyi said: "We should not define ourselves as a search company, but a company with search technology. We can do security while waiting for opportunities."

In this way, Zhou Hongyi thought at the time that the search should not be continued, and the facts proved that it should not be done at that time.It's very simple, 360 has not yet found a breakthrough point, and the idea of ​​​​"I search you to see" and "You ask me to answer" was too advanced at the time, and in fact there was no traffic.That is to say, the result of their innovation is not a strong demand.But he can't say so bluntly to the team that the team might collapse. Not to mention layoffs, he would regret even one person leaving.He feels that talents are the most precious, and they cannot be separated anyway.It is not easy to find a single talent, let alone such a team that understands technology, has ideals, and has deep feelings.

Fortunately, these people stayed.They are still playing an important role in important positions in the company today.Zhou Hongyi felt gratified that 360 did a search again later, and it was not counted as deceiving them. In fact, what Zhou Hongyi said at the time made sense: he defined Qihoo as a company with search technology.Although companies with search technology and search companies are two concepts, they are intrinsically linked.Search technology can be combined with many fields, and many other things can be done with search technology, such as using search technology to solve security problems.Later, there were indeed a group of people in this team who used search technology to do security, and only then did Qihoo 360 cloud security today.

The reason why Qihoo 360 is a latecomer in the field of security, but is far ahead, is because previous security companies are more focused on client-side technology, and do not have the so-called big data processing capabilities of servers, but Qihoo 360 has it.The first big data is actually a search engine. Search engines capture a lot of webpage data for analysis and processing to find content, so they become the first Internet company to process big data and use search capabilities to solve security problems. Then it was cloud security. The essence of cloud security is broken, but it is actually very simple. It is also a search engine in essence.

In the past, the behaviors of Trojan horses, malicious websites, viruses, and unknown programs were found, and all judgments were made in the computer.If the amount of data is large, the computer will be stuck very slowly, but now it is equivalent to a search engine for anti-virus. When the anti-virus encounters any situation, it will search, and 360 Cloud will tell the user whether the program is good or bad. Is it suspicious, the URL should not be visited. In any case, the team has stabilized, and this is really another village. Zhou Hongyi does not lack charisma, which has been shown since he started his business in university.To some extent, this stems from the sense of loyalty in him.

After entering high school, he mixed with people in the society for a while.Those people are really fighting, with weapons, like young and Dangerous.It stands to reason that students like him who are better at studying should stay away from them, but he chatted with them better, and naturally he got some buddy loyalty from them.He doesn't smoke now, but he actually got into it earlier than many people, and then quit. A classmate in a high school class felt that he was domineering and was not used to him, so he asked a few social youths from outside to beat him, but he avoided it.Later, he recruited a few classmates who were practicing judo together from other classes, and the man gathered a few more people, and had a group fight, a bit like the plot in the movie "Sunny Day".The fight actually terrified him. He was slapped twice and kicked in the stomach a few times.

After this incident, he knew that the world is not easy to mess with, and he didn't want to be a hero in the world, so he gradually restrained himself.But because of this stage, values ​​have been hooked up with martial arts novels: judging people, focusing on righteousness and not righteousness, whether you can stand up for friends, etc. Being a bit of a quack is indeed very attractive, but there is a price to be paid for being different. Two things happened to him.One is that when I first entered college, the relationship between my classmates was quite chaotic. One day, for some unknown reason, a senior sports student who lived across from them came in and slapped a classmate.Sleeping on the upper bunk and seeing his classmate being beaten, Zhou Hongyi felt that this was a great shame, so he went to help ask for an explanation, and finally insisted on asking the other party to apologize.

The second is that a student in the juvenile class kept begging for meal tickets from his classmates, like a little robber.He couldn't stand it, so he beat the child to tears.Unexpectedly, the kid was worse than he imagined, and he asked two real hooligans in society to block him in the dormitory and beat him up violently.Two wine bottles were opened on his head, and he was stabbed with a sharp knife in the waist, and later suffered a slight concussion.He didn't call the police. At that time, he felt that according to the morality of the world, he should solve it by himself to save face, and he didn't ask the teacher.This incident taught him a big lesson: there are hidden dragons and crouching tigers in the outside world.

What's worse is that the kid complained first, and the school wanted to expel him.Zhou Hongyi quickly went to the school to admit his mistake, and after the school's investigation was over, both parties reported the punishment as punishment.Had he reported the crime earlier, the outcome might have been different. Fortunately, Zhou Hongyi is a person who is good at summarizing and reflecting. After feeling that there is a big difference between the self in his own eyes and the self in the eyes of others, he gradually changed little by little.Although he was still aggressive, he began to pay attention to the method, and after learning lessons again and again, he understood the importance of persistence to the bottom line and rationality.When he left Yahoo China, he was relatively mature at this point. Zhou Hongyi rejected Yahoo's plan of "buying a team at the expense of investors' interests", which won him a good reputation in the investment circle, and later many venture capitals were willing to invest in him. Then Zhou Hongyi, he and his team did another thing that would cause controversy in the future. Usually, when a company is acquired, it is the shareholders who share the money, but Zhou Hongyi took part of the company's acquisition funds and distributed them to the employees.It is said that the old employees who worked for three or four years at that time, including the company's front desk and customer service, all received 100,000 yuan in shareholder gifts, and many more senior middle-level managers received million-level gifts.It is said that the total amount of this money is as high as tens of millions.This has won Zhou Hongyi a good reputation among some old employees. This is why from 3721 to now 360 security guards, there are still a handful of old employees who follow him loyally.Later, when Tian Jian used the money distributed to the employees to talk about things, Zhou Hongyi became a little outrageous.He thought Tian Jian was confusing right and wrong.The logic of his anger is simple-Yahoo headquarters is not even willing to invest more in Chinese companies, how could it be possible to distribute a sum of tens of millions of dollars to Chinese employees?The result is: after Zhou Hongyi left, at least half of the employees left with him. Before he became the fifth head of Yahoo China, his biggest crime was "rogue"; after he became the fifth head of Yahoo China, more people used the word "barbaric fighter" to describe him stand up.In fact, whether it is barbarism or fighter, there is helplessness behind it. At that time, behind the many teasing and ridiculing analyzes inside and outside the industry, there were many people watching the excitement, but few people truly believed that he could mediate the complicated relationship between the Asia-Pacific region and the headquarters.As soon as the appointment was made, Yahoo China left from the vice president to the department manager in a short period of time. The reason was that one culture was completely incompatible with the other. Zhou Hongyi is indeed a somewhat "dominant" person. This dogmatic style is a double-edged sword, and the courage and aura it shows are often irresistible, so those who like him are always loyal.Of course, there are many people who don't like him.The employees who left Yahoo China after he took office were quite critical of him.He also admitted that he is willing to take risks, even a little radical. "I understand the Chinese market, and I advocate results when doing things, be fast, and not be afraid of making mistakes." In fact, the workaholic with a tough personality but full of entrepreneurial passion is the root of the US headquarters' trust in him. "The Internet is where fast fish eat slow fish. If Yahoo does not engage in localization in China, it will be a dead end." The absolute autonomy that Zhou Hongyi constantly emphasized to the headquarters is also the reason why Yahoo China's performance has grown by leaps and bounds in less than a year.Less than half a year after taking over, Zhou Hongyi insisted on changing the finance and personnel that were not very suitable for his work and were directly managed vertically by the headquarters.He has a bad temper, but he always likes to lead the team to fight on the front line when doing things. "I used to scold employees when they were wrong, but now I know that it is a big deal to criticize people in public abroad, and I have begun to pay attention to my attitude and occasion when I speak." Zhou Hongyi said. Understanding followers is a required course for leaders. The 30 years of modern leadership are based on such a proposition - the leader is very important, the follower does not matter.There are countless training courses, seminars, books and articles on how to develop great leadership.Everyone studies charismatic leaders, outgoing leaders, and even treacherous leaders. However, few people study followership. Probably after 2004, there was a craze for "thick black studies" in China, combining thick black studies with leaders and leadership.This is actually extremely irresponsible.Chinese people have a lot of thoughts and cultures on leadership issues that need to be deeply reflected.In the past, we paid more attention to the skills, methods, strategies and thickness of leaders, instead of studying how to interact with each other, how to truly deal with real challenges, and how to formulate a reasonable incentive mechanism, which is incompatible with the real global environment The leadership required below is the opposite. Followers are lower in rank and have less power, prestige, and influence than their superiors.Followers are often submissive, especially when dealing with higher-ranking people.In the company, they submit to what they say they have to do to preserve their salary or status.In the community, they go with the flow, hoping to maintain the stability and security of the collective. Yet history tells us that followers don't always follow suit. In a relatively large concept of "natural human rights", followers and leaders are equal.Followers improve their judgment and cognition of managers, and also increase their own power in the process of negotiation and game. The social and political riots that erupted against authority in the United States and elsewhere in the 1960s and 1970s are examples of this. Likewise, power at the top of the corporate world has gradually become decentralized as a result of changes in corporate culture and structure, as well as technological advances.The CEO shares power and influence with the board, regulators, active shareholders, and more.In particular, the role of knowledge workers is growing. Management guru Peter Drucker has a point of view - in an era dominated by knowledge workers rather than manual workers, professional knowledge is more indicative of who is the real leader than position.Therefore, Zhou Hongyi hopes that he and his partners can be like Jobs said, a team that can make noise and grind out beautiful stones. Jobs said that when he was a child, a widowed 80-year-old man on the street paid him to help mow the lawn.One day the old man asked him to go to the garage and pulled out an old stone grinder to show him.The stand of the stone grinder has nothing but a motor, coffee can, and the belt that connects the two. They went to the backyard to pick up some stones, some unremarkable stones, threw the stones into the jar, poured some water, added some coarse sand, and covered the jar.The old man turned on the motor and said to come back tomorrow. Unexpectedly, when he came back the next day, he opened the jar and saw amazing and beautiful stones! Jobs always kept in mind that ordinary stones, which were originally just ordinary stones, turned into beautiful and smooth stones after rubbing against each other and making a little noise.Zhou Hongyi also remembered.In his mind, this metaphor best represents a team striving for ideals.Gather a group of talented partners and let them bump into each other, argue, and even fight. Produces beautiful stones. "360 used to have this kind of atmosphere, but now it is less. Of course, I still have this style. I hope my team and employees can accept this kind of tempering process. This is a typical good corporate culture. Even in the United States, As vigilant as Jobs is, there are also many companies that are harmonious and have no disputes, and finally decline, because the leadership has no idea what is going wrong underneath. It is impossible to produce good products and good results in the end without good products and good results.” Jobs said that for A-level talents, they don't need to take too much care of their self-esteem.Because they know they're really good, and what really matters is performance and perfect results.In fact, since Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, even if he has become more mature, there has been little change in this regard.Because in his opinion, the most important thing a leader can do is to tell their partners what is not good enough, and to say it very clearly, explain why, and then pull them back on track.Moreover, leaders must speak in a way that does not make subordinates feel that you are questioning their abilities, without leaving them too much space and time to hesitate. This is difficult, so Jobs has always used the most direct method.Most of the time, he points out that they're far from good enough, but sometimes, he'll even scold someone's work for nothing.But those who are truly outstanding, find it beneficial to be straightforward.Of course, some people do hate this approach. When the company started, Zhou Hongyi also spent a lot of time arguing and colliding with the team.He did it the same way Jobs did.People he doesn't like will not cooperate with them at all, and those who cooperate must be valued by him.Since he values ​​it, he hopes to constantly challenge the other party, discover problems, point out problems, and provide help so that the other party can improve.But there are indeed some people who can't accept this approach. They think this method is simple and rude, and they can't bear it in terms of face.They still want to encourage communication. Zhou Hongyi believes that those who are capable and confident enough are not afraid of challenges from others.But in reality, it will vary from person to person, and American and Chinese cultures are also different.Americans may communicate more openly and frankly with each other, but Chinese people don't like face-to-face conflicts because of their concepts and habits.Especially for some technicians, their nerves are really not strong enough to bear this kind of challenge. As a business leader, Zhou Hongyi is as critical as Jobs.This kind of nitpicking can indeed lead to good results, but it does make many people feel painful.This is one of the problems he is currently facing.As the company gets bigger, many people ask you to become "mature": speak more appropriately, treat people more politely, and motivate the team more.He said that he actually wanted to motivate the team, but on this point he agreed with Jobs' point of view-challenges and collisions are the best incentives. Everyone's ultimate goal is the same, which is to achieve a perfect result, and finally the product will go to the market and compete with other companies or teams.The result may be happy, but the process may be painful.Of course, there are also happy processes and results, but that is not the norm after all, and it is more ideal. Perfecting oneself is a lifelong proposition, including the leader Jobs.Over the years, Zhou Hongyi has also tried his best to control his emotions, but there is still a long way to go, and sometimes when he can't control his anger, he also hopes that his partners can understand his difficulties. After all, he is right about things and not people.