Chapter 5 Second Letter: From Good to Great

introduction After being transferred back to the Microsoft headquarters in August 2000, due to my busy schedule, I have not been able to spare time to have in-depth exchanges with Chinese students. In 2003, by chance, I returned to China to give several speeches.At that time, the sponsor of the speech wanted me to talk more about what motivates Chinese students and the latest developments in computer science.But in the process of preparation, I gradually realized that what most Chinese students need may not be specific knowledge and unilateral advice, but how to better improve themselves, how to cultivate their own literacy, and discover their potential.Because after my first letter to Chinese students was published, a large number of passionate readers’ letters made me deeply understand the Chinese students’ desire for correct values ​​and an excellent attitude towards life; some even said that the value of my open letter It far exceeds the contribution of some papers I have written in the scientific research field.

With this in mind, I see this talk as an opportunity to communicate with students and help them improve themselves.In the end, my speech revolved around several central topics such as personal quality, emotional intelligence and leadership. I used my true feelings and personal experience to infect countless college students in the audience, and received enthusiastic responses from the audience. A central topic of this speech is how to have excellent leadership skills and how to realize the leap from good to great.In fact, this is also a summary of my continuous experience and accumulation when I was working at Microsoft headquarters.At that time, I led a team of hundreds of people, constantly challenging the limits in new technology and product areas.This kind of leadership work experience made me truly understand that if you want to become an excellent leader, you must start from the student days and strive to cultivate your personal qualities and the ability to get along with others.In addition, I also had an in-depth communication and discussion with Jim Collins, the author of the two books "Good to Great" and "Built to Last".I took a lot of useful lessons from Collins' training and the two books he wrote, and incorporated them into my presentations.

Based on this speech, combined with the many viewpoints and ideas I have accumulated in discussing success and leadership with Chinese students over the past three years, I wrote "The Second Letter to Chinese Students" as an improvement on the first letter. And supplement, and published in the "China Youth Daily" and other media (later included in the book "Chinese Wisdom - Topics for the President of Microsoft Asia Research Institute" published by the Electronic Industry Press). After the publication of the second letter, countless students told me their thoughts by email, one of them said: "Mr. Energetic and full of courage to move forward!" In fact, I don't need higher praise or encouragement, as long as I can often hear the students' voices from the bottom of my heart, as long as I can often see Chinese students making continuous progress, I am very, very happy Satisfied.

When I left China three years ago, I discussed some topics of common concern with young students in "A Letter to Chinese Students", and combined with my own study and work experience, I discussed how young students deal with opportunities. , studies, work, others, myself and other issues, expounded my personal opinion.I propose that Chinese students should attach great importance to the personal qualities of honesty and integrity, initiative awareness, communication and communication, and striving for lifelong learning. In the past three years, many Chinese students have often asked me the question of "how to become a talent" through emails, Q&A after lectures, seminars, and other channels (such as in the TV program "Dialogue").Regarding this issue that everyone is concerned about, I have compiled a lot of materials and integrated this "Second Letter".

The personal qualities or "values" mentioned in the first letter are the necessary foundation for success.However, in addition to quality, success also requires leadership.Many people mistakenly think that the most important thing about leadership is talent, charisma, and management ability.However, according to my personal experience, and the conclusions of some recent studies, if you want to be a successful leader, the most important thing is not your intelligence quotient (IQ), but your emotional quotient (EQ).The most important thing is not to be a convincing leader, but to be a leader with "humility", "persistence" and "courage".

This "Second Letter to Chinese Students" is written for those who want to continuously improve themselves and learn the basic skills and leadership skills necessary for career success.The first part reiterates the topic of personal qualities discussed in "A Letter to Chinese Students"; the second part explains the most important emotional intelligence in leadership; the third part gives the necessary, Basic traits that are different from ordinary people. How to Improve Personal Qualities, Integrity and Integrity How a person's character directly determines the value of this person to society.Among the various factors related to character, integrity is the most important point.Microsoft places great emphasis on integrity when employing people, and we only hire the most trustworthy people.Last year, when Microsoft listed the "core values" expected of employees, integrity (honesty and integrity) was listed as one.

After I published the "First Letter", a classmate once asked me: Why should a company get involved in the morality of its employees?I replied: This is for the company's own benefit.For example, one candidate told me during an interview that if he could join Microsoft, he could bring over the inventions he had made at his previous company.For such a person, no matter what his skill level, I would not hire him.Since he can harm the interests of the previous company when he joins Microsoft, he will definitely harm the interests of Microsoft after joining Microsoft. Another classmate asked me after watching "Dialogue", why do I put honesty before wisdom?Are we going to measure the integrity of employees and their wisdom and give a higher proportion to integrity?In fact, our measurements are all based on direct work goals, and we do not directly measure integrity or wisdom.However, as the first "core value", integrity is our most basic requirement for employees.We simply don't hire people who don't have integrity.If a serious integrity problem occurs to an employee, he will be fired immediately.

When a company values ​​integrity so much, its employees must be more trustworthy.Therefore, the company can fully trust its employees and let them develop their talents.In Microsoft, managers at all levels of the company will give employees greater freedom and space to develop their careers, and fully trust, support and help employees in work and life.As long as he is hired by Microsoft, Microsoft will trust him 100%.Unlike some software companies who are always on guard against their employees, Microsoft employees can see a lot of source code and come into contact with a lot of technical or commercial secrets.Because of the trust of the company, Microsoft employees have a stronger sense of responsibility and a higher work enthusiasm for the company.

develop a sense of initiative Frankly speaking, most of the students and staff in China are relatively introverted, and they are not active enough in study and work.In school, students often need teachers to arrange learning tasks, or to do research projects according to the teacher's ideas.In companies, Chinese employees often have to wait for the boss to tell them what to do and how to do it before starting work.In addition, many Chinese are not good at selling and promoting themselves, which probably has a lot to do with China's cultural atmosphere of moderation since ancient times.

However, if you want to be successful in a modern enterprise, you must work hard to cultivate your own initiative: you must be brave enough to take responsibility in your work, take the initiative to set work goals for yourself, and continuously improve methods and methods; You must be good at expressing your own strengths in front of leaders or colleagues. After you have research results or technological innovations, you must share them with colleagues or peers through speeches, presentations, exchanges, papers, etc., and you must have the courage to admit mistakes in your work. .Only those who are proactive can succeed in the rapidly changing competitive environment, and only those who are good at showing themselves can get real opportunities at work.

Objective and direct communication and communication Open and honest communication and communication are the most important aspects of teamwork.Secretive, insincere, or even societal practices between people will seriously damage the working atmosphere in the team, hinder the normal communication among team members, and ultimately lead to the failure of projects or business operations. For example, when discussing issues at a meeting, all the participants should exchange views frankly so that correct decisions can be made.If a person is afraid to express his point of view at a meeting because of some other factors (such as unwillingness to refute the opinions of superiors), blindly submissive, and then go to the bathroom after the meeting and say to others, "Actually, I disagree with him." This kind of person who wears a mask to work will not only be unable to stick to his own point of view, but will also destroy the company's internal communication and communication channels, which will have a negative impact on the work. Microsoft has a very good culture called "open communication (Open communication)", which requires all employees to open their hearts and fully express their views in any communication or communication occasion.When meeting at Microsoft, if everyone disagrees, they must express it, otherwise the company may miss the opportunity.When the Internet first started, many Microsoft leaders did not understand and did not approve of spending too much energy on this "no money" technology.But there are a few technical personnel, they constantly put forward their opinions and suggestions, although their superiors didn't understand, they still support their right to "open exchange".Later, their voices quickly reached Bill Gates' ears, prompting Bill to change the direction of the company and completely support the Internet.From this example, we can see that this open communication environment is very important for Microsoft to maintain its corporate vitality and innovation capabilities. There are downsides to radically open communication, too.Open communication can sometimes lead to heated debates and even quarrels, and getting angry can sometimes lead to disrespectful language that can damage relationships.Therefore, Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft, proposed in Microsoft's core values ​​last year that we should improve this open communication culture to "open and respectful (Open and respectful)".This requires that we fully respect each other when communicating with each other.When we disagree with each other, we must use constructive language. Challenge yourself and learn endlessly From a college student to a programmer, and then to a manager, in the growth process of software talents, learning is never-ending.During college, we should lay a solid foundation and cultivate our own qualities and abilities in all aspects; after work, we should strive to learn new technologies and accumulate relevant experience in practical work; even if we take up a management position, we should continue to learn , Continuously improve yourself.The software industry itself is an industry full of vitality and creativity, where new technologies and concepts are born every day.As practitioners in the software industry, if we only know how to build a car behind closed doors and stick to the handicap, we will inevitably fall behind and be eliminated by the market. Many Chinese students like to compete with others, but this kind of competition is more of a "zero-sum game" and cannot really improve themselves and others.I suggest that it is best for everyone to constantly compete with themselves-don't always think about being better than others, but try to surpass yourself and constantly improve at your own level. In the process of learning, laying a good foundation is the most important.From the perspective of the demand for talents in the software industry, we must learn the two basic subjects of mathematics and English well.Mathematics is the foundation of all engineering sciences. Whether it is the development of software products or the research of software technology, mathematical methods and principles must be used extensively.English is the international common language in the software industry. If you want to understand the development trend of international software technology, master the latest research results, or conduct technical exchanges with foreign counterparts, you must master English listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Able to use English proficiently to solve problems at work. Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Students all hope to improve their leadership skills (leadership).From my experience and some recent research, it seems that the most important leadership skill is what is called "emotional intelligence" (EQ). Intelligence quotient (IQ) reflects a person's intelligence level, while EQ reflects a person's self-control and coordination ability in terms of emotion and emotion.In high-tech enterprises, everyone knows the importance of intelligence, but the importance of EQ even surpasses IQ.I have read an article in which the author surveyed 188 companies. He used psychological methods to test the IQ and EQ of each employee in these companies, and linked the test results with the employee's performance at work. Analyze together.After research, the authors of the article found that EQ is twice as powerful as IQ in influencing an individual's job performance.In addition, he also specifically analyzed the senior managers in the company.He found that among senior executives, emotional intelligence was nine times more important than IQ for personal success or failure.This shows that people with a slightly lower IQ can also be successful if they have a higher EQ index; on the contrary, people with high IQ but low EQ lack "leadership skills", and it is difficult to become a successful leader. %%% What is emotional intelligence? In modern society, if you only know IQ but not EQ, you are at least consciously outdated.Many psychologists have already clearly pointed out that simply using the standard of IQ to examine a person's performance in terms of intelligence is not enough to accurately predict the person's possible career achievements.In order to comprehensively examine personal abilities, especially the ability to adapt and create in social life, psychologists have proposed the concept of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence mainly refers to those personal abilities related to self-knowledge, controlling emotions, motivating oneself, and dealing with interpersonal relationships.Among the various ability factors described by emotional intelligence, consciousness, empathy, self-discipline and interpersonal relationship are the four key factors that play a decisive role in the success or failure of modern people's careers. IQ is innately endowed, but EQ can be cultivated.Take the time to understand and apply these four key elements of emotional intelligence.In addition, because EQ cannot be seen clearly by oneself, I suggest that you can understand other people's views on you and absorb more opinions from others (especially those with high EQ). conscious The Chinese often say that a man is worthy of self-knowledge.This actually means that everyone in social life should have a clear understanding of their own qualities, potentials, strengths, defects, experience and other basic abilities, and have a clear understanding of the role they may play in social work and life. clear positioning.Psychology refers to this ability of self-knowledge as "self-consciousness", which usually includes awareness of the influence of one's emotions on words and deeds, understanding and correct evaluation of one's own qualifications, abilities and limitations, and belief in one's own value and ability, etc. . Among my subordinates, there is a person with obvious lack of self-awareness: although he has some abilities, he thinks highly of himself, is always dissatisfied with his current position, brags himself anytime and anywhere, and is always dissatisfied with the status quo.Some time ago, he thought that I didn't know my talents and didn't reuse him. He decided to leave my group and hoped to find another job in other Microsoft groups.However, he finally found that not only could he not find a better job, but his colleagues in the company also criticized him, thinking that he lacked self-knowledge and that expectations were too far from reality.Recently, he left the company in frustration.The person who replaced him is a person with strong ability and a very "self-consciousness".Although this person was not very successful in his previous position, he understands that he was promoted too quickly and is willing to step down to do this job so that he can lay a good foundation.He's doing really well right now. Simply put, a person can neither overjudge his own abilities nor easily underestimate his own potential.People who judge themselves too high tend to be impetuous and aggressive, and are not good at cooperating with others. When their careers suffer setbacks, they have a large psychological gap, and it is difficult to calmly deal with objective facts; people who underestimate their abilities tend to be timid at work , Hesitation, no courage to take responsibility and shoulder heavy burdens, and no enthusiasm to take the initiative to ask for a job.No matter which of the above situations, the potential of the individual cannot be fully utilized, and it is impossible for the personal career to achieve the greatest success. People with self-knowledge can show their strengths in front of others, and they will not deliberately cover up their shortcomings.Talking about your own shortcomings and asking others for advice will not lower yourself, but can show your humility and self-confidence and win the favor of others.For example, when a leader says to an employee, "You are an expert in technology, I am not as good as you, and I want to learn more from you", the employee will not only think that the leader is very humble, but will also have more trust in the leader, because He understands his abilities. At Microsoft, everyone helps and learns from each other in technology, and encourages each other in work. No one puts on a domineering air every day, and no one feels like a dwarf. This naturally creates a frank and open working atmosphere. . People with self-knowledge will not talk about failure lightly when they encounter setbacks at work, and they will not be complacent when they achieve results at work.The ability to know oneself and accurately locate self-worth can not only help individuals find their own suitable space and development direction, but also help enterprises establish excellent teams that perform their duties and work together.A self-aware person makes people feel that he is a confident, humble, and sincere person. empathy Empathy (Empathy) is a relatively abstract psychological concept, but it is very simple to explain: empathy refers to the practice of putting yourself in the shoes of others and comparing your heart with your heart.That is to say, when a conflict or misunderstanding occurs, if the parties can put themselves in the situation of the other party and think about it, it may be easier to understand the original intention of the other party and eliminate the misunderstanding.We often say in life that "people have the same heart, and the heart has the same reason", which is the truth. There is no fixed formula to follow in the relationship between people. We must start from the perspective of caring for and understanding others, leave space and room for others when doing things, think of others when misunderstandings occur, actively reflect on our own mistakes, and be brave. Take responsibility.As long as we have empathy, we can avoid many complaints, blame, ridicule and sarcasm in work and life, and everyone can work and live happily in an environment full of encouragement, understanding, support and respect. For managers in software companies, the most important thing to show empathy is to understand and value the ideas of employees, and make employees feel that you are a leader who cares about them very much.Take myself as an example, I will not blindly praise my subordinates at work, and I will not give general comments such as "very good", "good" and "great" to the staff, but I will do it when the staff really do it. When the results are achieved, promptly and specifically point out his contribution to the company, and make his performance public.For example, I will send an e-mail to all employees in the department saying that an employee has achieved excellent results in the work of the previous week, detailing his work results, listing the important value of his work to the company, and giving specific details. commendation comments.This way of motivating employees can really win the trust and support of employees, and can have a huge impact on the cohesion of the enterprise. Empathy is also a powerful way to learn about and get to know other people.When I was transferred to a leadership position in a new department, there were more than 400 employees in the department, none of whom I knew.So, I selected 10 employees every week and had lunch with them.At lunch, I learned more about each person's name, resume, job status, and their suggestions for the work of the department.This information is very important for a department head.Immediately after the lunch meeting, I arranged the deployment related work according to the suggestions of the 10 employees to the department, and sent feedback to the 10 employees one by one, telling them my handling method.My plan is to know and understand every employee in the department in a short period of time, and arrange the work reasonably on the basis of fully listening to the opinions of the employees. self-discipline Self-Regulation refers to the ability of self-control and self-regulation.This includes self-control of restless emotions or impulses, maintaining a clear mind in the face of stress, earning trust with honesty, and always understanding clearly that your actions will affect others. Self-discipline is even more important for leaders.As a leader of a software company, if you want to manage others and convince your subordinates, you must start with yourself.This is because the leader's approach is usually the goal and example of everyone doing things. Every gesture of the leader will leave a deep impression on the subordinates. If it is not handled properly, it may have a negative impact.Especially when the company or team is in a critical moment and needs a leader to lead everyone to overcome difficulties and break out of the tight encirclement, if the leader is more impatient than the staff, and can’t make up his mind over and over again, everyone will lose confidence in the leader, and the company or team will also lose confidence. It will lead to failure. Once, I saw two groups in the company were about to be merged.The manager of the first group lacked self-discipline. During the meeting, he told his team that the merger was not his decision, and he himself did not know what to do next.The manager has no confidence in the future and speculates that his team may be laid off.After the merger, the manager of the second group told his team the benefits of the merger to the company.He also frankly said that he does not have all the information, but he promised to remind his superiors to make a decision as soon as possible.Moreover, the second manager also told everyone that he would do his best to help every employee arrange the most reasonable and fair way out.The end result was that the first group quickly disbanded, their manager left the company, and the manager of the second group took over the combined agency. Self-discipline must be based on honesty.In order to show the so-called "self-discipline", it is very inadvisable to whitewash and cover up one's shortcomings in front of others. It is very undesirable to deliberately perform.Only on the basis of winning the trust of others, can we truly gain the respect and approval of others by being strict with ourselves and being lenient to others. interpersonal relationship Interpersonal relationship includes the influence in social interaction, the ability to listen and communicate, the ability to deal with conflicts, the ability to build relationships, the ability to cooperate and coordinate, the ability to persuade and influence, and so on. Some people are inherently influential in interpersonal communication. When they attend a reception or celebration, they can make friends with everyone in a short time.But there are also some people who do not have such a gift. They are often reserved in social activities, preferring to hide in a corner alone rather than initiate a conversation with others. Personally, I have a lack of interpersonal tendencies.Before, I didn't think there was anything wrong with it until I met a very personal manager.The manager didn't have superhuman intelligence, but he claimed to know almost every capable person in the company and became very good friends with many of them.I don't know how he did it, but I quickly discovered that his ability was very useful for the company.For example, when I need to select some employees within the company to work in my department, I can get a lot of detailed information about the employee from him; when coordinating with other departments of the company, his personal relationship network can also play a very important role. role.From then on, I found that the ability to deal with interpersonal relationships is very important for a person, especially a leader, and I began to pay special attention to cultivating my influence in interpersonal relationships. The ability to communicate and persuade is also critical when it comes to technology research and development.For example, we have developed an advanced technology and want to turn it into a company product.This must first convince the company's decision-makers.We must carefully prepare our product proposals, and through wonderful speeches and on-site demonstrations, we must convince leaders that the technology we have developed is of great benefit to the company, and let decision-makers believe that the products to be developed can be successful in the market.These jobs require us to have the ability to deal with interpersonal relationships, show ourselves, and influence others. good to great In the book "From Good to Great" (CITIC Publishing House, 2002) by Jim Collins, a famous business management scientist, the author discusses and analyzes a company or a company leader through a large number of case studies and statistics How did it rise from Good to Great.Collins and his research team spent 10.5 personal years, read and systematically sorted out more than 6,000 articles, recorded more than 2,000 pages of interviews, conducted questionnaire surveys on 1,435 companies, and collected data from 28 companies in the past 50 years or more. Based on the earliest information, a wide range of qualitative and quantitative analysis has been conducted to obtain amazing and exciting answers on how to make the company and the company's managers make the leap from good to great. According to the conclusion drawn by Jim Collins, there are many excellent companies and excellent leaders, and many companies can achieve good performance in their respective industries.But if the performance of companies and individuals is measured by the standard of excellence, there are very few companies that can maintain sustained and healthy growth and leaders who can continue to achieve success in their careers.On the basis of success, if a leader of an enterprise wants to further improve himself, keep his enterprise growing continuously, and make his personal ability move from excellence to excellence, he must work hard to cultivate himself in "humility" and "perseverance". and "courage" these three qualities. Modesty makes progress.Many leaders are self-centered in their work, unable to listen to others’ advice, and unable to tolerate others who disagree with themselves. These leaders who do not know how to be modest and prudent may achieve temporary success, but they cannot continue to progress in their careers and reach a state of excellence .This is because a person's power is limited after all. In the rapidly changing business environment, leaders must continue to learn and be good at synthesizing the opinions of others, otherwise they will fall into the quagmire of going their own way and be eliminated by the market.Bill? Gates is a very humble person.For example, after each speech, he asked the person who wrote the speech to analyze the shortcomings of his speech for improvement next time. Persistence refers to our unwavering determination and will to stick to the right direction.No matter whether it is a company or an individual, once you have identified the direction of your work, you must work hard under the guidance of this direction.No real success can be achieved by giving up lightly or playing fast and loose at work.After Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system achieved great success, Bill Gates still insisted on developing enterprise-level Windows NT and Windows 2000 operating systems.This is because he sees the broad prospects of the enterprise market and Microsoft's huge potential in this regard.After several years of development, Microsoft's enterprise-level operating system has finally succeeded in the market originally dominated by Unix. Now, all Windows products, including personal operating systems, have been built on the more secure and reliable Windows On top of the NT architecture. Successful people need to have enough courage to face challenges.Achievement in any career is not easy to achieve.If a person wants to excel at work, he must face all kinds of difficulties and obstacles, and must face up to setbacks and failures in his career.Only those who have the courage to face up to the reality and meet the challenge can truly achieve the goal of surpassing themselves and reach the realm of excellence.As Mark Twain said: "Courage is not the lack of fear, but the ability to resist and control fear." in conclusion Many people believe that in IT and other high-tech fields, Westerners perform better, so the Chinese can only gain a place by absorbing Western corporate culture.Indeed, there are indeed differences between some new viewpoints and concepts in the IT industry and ancient Chinese oriental culture (for example, the straightforward communication and awareness of active participation in Western culture). However, from this article, it is not difficult to find that some of the most important and basic qualities required for success are mostly traditional Chinese virtues.In the Forbidden City, I saw the plaque of "upright and bright", which means "integrity and integrity"; They are all moral values ​​that China has always advocated; interpersonal relationship is the secret of success in China recognized by Westerners; and the most important three points of "humility", "persistence" and "courage" are the direct manifestation of Chinese traditional culture.Therefore, I think that the EQ of Chinese people is by no means lower than that of Westerners, and I am extremely optimistic about the outstanding talents in China. In today's era full of opportunities and challenges, in the field of rapid development and continuous innovation of the software industry, only those who make unremitting efforts, are good at grasping themselves, and have the courage to meet challenges can achieve real success.Personally, I sincerely hope that China's high-tech industry can flourish in the new century, and that Chinese talents can continue to achieve success in their careers and realize the leap from excellence to excellence.