technology Archives

Jack Ma – The Magician that Conjured Alibaba

October 11, 2017/in Leadership/by Jon Windust

It seemed appropriate that after profiling Jeff Bezos I should take a look at Jack Ma, the Chairman and founder of China’s answer to Amazon, Alibaba.

Jack Ma (real name Ma Yun) started Alibaba in 1999 as a means to harness the power of the internet to link Chinese exporters to local and international business customers – including in the West.

A charismatic leader

It is harder to say which is bigger, Jack Ma’s bank balance (his personal worth is estimated at $29.5 billion¹) or his personality. He is a natural entertainer and you can’t help but be enthralled by his rags to riches tale of growing up in communist China as the son of poor musical storytellers. In his many speaking engagements, Ma inspires his audiences with his never give up attitude and boasts of being refused entrance by Harvard 10 times and rejected for dozens of jobs.

Globalisation and embracing the West

Ma’s intimate understanding of how to do business in his homeland has been a competitive advantage. But perhaps greater than his knowledge of China has been Jack’s curiosity about the West; starting when he was a teenager giving foreign visitors tours of his hometown Hangzhou in exchange for English lessons.

In my blog “How to build a future-ready workforce” I discussed the importance of cross-cultural competency. Jack Ma’s fascination with western culture has seen him build and leverage relationships with powerful people across the world and turned Alibaba into a global player.

Innovation through improvement not invention

Ma attributes his success to identifying and seizing opportunities that arise out of problems. On his very first encounter with the Internet, Ma searched on ‘beer’. When he saw that no Chinese beers turned up in his search, his instincts kicked into gear and he decided that China needed an Internet company.²

Ma has also shown that innovation is possible without personal expertise and without creating something entirely new. With no coding or computing skills to speak of, Ma adapted existing online retail concepts specifically for China by engaging staff with the technical skills and know how to carry out his vision.³

The employees who became millionaires overnight

Like other billionaire success stories, Jack has his own set of wisdoms and mantras which are chronicled in books and videos like “Jack Ma’s 10- Rules for Success”. One of his rules for success is to focus on the culture of the company.

Alibaba’s values are enshrined in something employees call the Six Vein Spirit Sword – a shout out to Jack’s favourite martial arts fiction writer. Half of an employee’s annual performance appraisal depends on how well they embody Jack’s ‘kung fu’ values.⁴

Camaraderie is at the heart of teamwork at Alibaba. Every employee adopts a nickname, and it is not unusual for staff to take a break during an intensive work day to swim, do handstands or play video games. During Jack Ma’s years as CEO, tens of thousands of employees and their families would also attend Alifest, a stadium sized annual employee talent show where workers would sing, dance and perform skits. Even Ma could be seen at these events in crazy wigs and costumes singing Chinese pop songs.⁵

But it would seem Alibaba took the saying ‘work hard, play hard’ to extremes in the early startup days. It is suggested that the first employees earned barely $50 per month and worked seven days a week, often sixteen hours a day. Reportedly Ma required employees to be on call at all times and implemented a policy that new hires were to live no more than 10 or 15 minutes from the office.⁶

That said, the hard work paid off for many employees when the company shares they had been given as bonuses turned them into instant millionaires after Alibaba’s IPO in 2014.⁷ Today, Alibaba continues to tie new employee remuneration to stock in the company as a means of linking individual pay to company performance. (Read more about the relationship between talent management and company share price in my article).

Diversity and the empowerment of underrepresented groups

While Silicon Valley remains male dominated, Jack Ma is a vocal advocate for women calling them his company’s “secret sauce.” ⁸ Women make up 48% of Alibaba’s workforce, around 34% of Alibaba’s high-level managers, and a third of its founding partners.

Jack Ma also promotes the importance of empowering young people – particularly with technology. He recently established a $26 million scholarship programme with the University of Newcastle; a merit based scheme favouring indigenous and disadvantaged students and emphasising global and social awareness.⁹

Connecting people

At Cognology our purpose is to bring people together and help them achieve great things. We understand that by harnessing technology, we can help people collaborate at work more seamlessly, productively and successfully.

In many ways, Ma’s goals are similar. Jack Ma believes that technology and the internet has no limits and has devoted his adult life to connecting people and businesses across the world to make it easier to do business anywhere.

Works Cited

“Jack Ma.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.
Stone, Charles Clark and Madeline. “The Incredible and Inspiring Life Story of Alibaba Founder Jack Ma, One of the Richest People in China.” Business Insider. Business Insider, 02 Mar. 2017. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.
Zakkour, Michael. “How Jack Ma’s ‘Crazy’ Management Style Built a Technology Empire.” Entrepreneur. 29 Sept. 2014. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.
“Magic Jack Ma and the Six Secrets behind the Success of Alibaba.” Financial Review. 21 June 2016. Web. 11 Apr. 2017.
RPT-The Alibaba Culture: Kung Fu Commerce with a Dash of Theatre.” Reuters. Thomson Reuters, 08 June 2014. Web. 11 Apr. 2017.
McFarland, Matt. “This CEO Banned His First Employees from Living More than 15 Minutes from Work.” The Washington Post. WP Company, 22 Apr. 2016. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.
Daily, China. “Alibaba IPO Creates Thousands of New Millionaires in China – The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com. 19 Sept. 2014. Web. 11 Apr. 2017.
Kokalitcheva, K. (2015) “Female Executives are Alibaba’s ‘Secret Sauce’” Fortune. 20 May 2015 . Web 10 April 2017
Low, Catie. “Alibaba’s Billionaire Founder Opens Australian Headquarters.” The Sydney Morning Herald. The Sydney Morning Herald, 03 Feb. 2017. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.
“TIME Person of the Year 2014 Runner-Up: Jack Ma.” Time. Time. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.
Barboza, David. “At Alibaba, the Founder Is Squarely in Charge.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 06 Sept. 2014. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Jack_Ma_2008.jpg

Elon Musk – Leading a quest to save the future

August 10, 2017/in Leadership/by Jon Windust

Zhang Ruimin – the would-be unknown leader

June 29, 2017/in Leadership/by Jon Windust

Zhang Ruimin took the helm of a struggling refrigerator manufacturer in 1984 when he was just 25. As a leader he won the confidence and goodwill of his workers and reversed the company’s dismal quality record. Since then, Zhang has turned the Haier Group into the world’s fastest growing appliance maker with the largest market share in white goods world wide. ¹

Management without bosses

“A leader whose existence is unknown to his subordinates is really the most brilliant one.”
(Ruimin, Zhang)²

Prior to 2005, Haier’s 80,000 or so employees worked in traditional functions like manufacturing, sales and marketing. However with the advent of the internet, Zhang knew that the existing departmental/functional/silo organisation would be too slow to respond to customer needs into the future. So he began reorganising the way employees worked. ³

Zhang believed that if the company wanted to intimately understand and meet consumer needs, staff needed to be directly connected with the customer. Instead of complying with rules and following a manager, he decided that workers should have the freedom to make decisions led by the users of the things they make – the consumer. ²

ZZJYT’s

No, I’m not cursing in code.

Zhang split staff up into self-managed work units call ZZJYT’s (zi zhu jing ying ti – which roughly translates to independent operating unit) and by 2012 had almost done away with middle management completely. Today each ZZJYT comprises 7-10 people from various functional roles.

These microenterprises operate as independent ventures. Each is responsible for its own hiring, procurement, strategy, production and ultimately profit and loss.

The ZZJYT’s are not permanently assigned to a particular product or role. Instead they are formed through internal competition. If an employee identifies an opportunity for a new product or service, they are free to propose their idea. A vote involving employees, customers and suppliers determines whether the project goes ahead. The winner becomes the project leader.

Once a leader is appointed they can independently handpick a team and find their own manufacturers and distributors (either internally or externally) to produce and sell their product. ³

Beware the catfish

The project leader must work hard to stay ahead of the catfish. That is what the firm calls the person with a rival idea with the second highest number of votes. ³ Once a leader is in place, his or her team appraises the leader’s performance every quarter and votes whether they want to keep them in the position or replace them. ⁴

Zhang believes this structure creates competition in the organisation while also fuelling entrepreneurship. ³

Remuneration

Zhang believes that employees in traditional organisations tend to focus too much on what their bosses say or think because their pay is determined by them. This is why there is no position-related remuneration at Haier. ⁵ Instead employees are paid solely based on performance and the results their team achieves.

Ecosystem of talent

In the new generation Haier, talent is provided through an open labour market. Each ZZJYT is given the freedom to innovate by reaching out to customers, prospective employees, collaborators and even competitors.

Employees are free to leave or join ZZJYT’s, however a unit will dissolve after the project is over and talent goes back to the marketplace.

Whilst many businesses will find this concept foreign and unmanageable, for industries like Hollywood, bringing skilled workers together for the length of a project is nothing new. (See https://cognology.com.au/are-terms-like-hollywood-and-gig-spelling-the-end-for-the-traditional-employment-model)

The platform

Instead of offering jobs, Zhang says Haier offers everyone a continuing series of opportunities to find jobs via an entrepreneurial platform.⁴

By definition, platform companies form ecosystems by partnering with, and incorporating technology from multiple corporations to drive innovation and performance. Haier’s powerful internet platform enables limitless collaboration with suppliers, customers, universities, competitors, and other stakeholders.

According to Zhang, eventually there won’t be employees at all. There will only be a platform. ¹ (I feel like Keanu Reeves might pop up any second now….)

A natural evolution in the internet age

Zhang Ruimin has been lauded for his accomplishments in management innovation, and yet by some he is still seen as a radical. Haier’s goal of becoming a facilitative platform without traditional employees seems consistent with broader global trends towards open collaboration, greater connectivity and on-demand workforces. I wrote about this last year in my blog https://cognology.com.au/what-skills-will-be-most-in-demand-in-2025

We are seeing the dawning of a new age of organisational agility and innovation. Employers and skilled workers alike have much to gain from embracing new ways of working. But it will take a willingness to change and adapt.

References

Kleiner, Art. “China’s Philosopher-CEO Zhang Ruimin.” Strategy Business. 10 Nov. 2014. Web. 08 May 2017
Ruimin, Zhang. “Raising Haier.” Harvard Business Review. 31 July 2014. Web. 08 May 2017.
“Haier and Higher.” The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, 11 Oct. 2013. Web. 08 May 2017.
Mahajan, Neelima. “How CEO Zhang Ruimin Reinvented Haier – Three Times Over.” CKGSB Knowledge. 28 Sept. 2015. Web. 08 May 2017.
“Haier CEO Zhang Ruimin: Challenge Yourself, Overcome Yourself.” Founding Fuel. 18 Oct. 2015. Web. 08 May 2017.
Fischer, Bill, Umberto Lago, and Fang Liu. “The Haier Road to Growth.” Strategy Business. 27 Apr. 2015. Web. 08 May 2017.
“Zhang Ruimin: Driving Haier’s Innovation.” Zhang Ruimin: Driving Haier’s Innovation | CEIBS. Web. 08 May 2017.

13 validated findings on the power of technology in performance management

March 24, 2015/in Performance Management, Technology/by Jon Windust

Is technology reshaping the way we work?

December 11, 2014/in Blogs, Workforce Data/by Jon Windust

Part 3 of our data driven investigation into 2014’s real talent trends

Recap: We’re continuing our data driven look into the real talent trends of 2014

Today we’re continuing our data driven look into the talent trends of 2014.

To recap on how we’re doing this, each week Indeed collects millions of job ads from sites across the web. And the team is kind enough to make all of this data publicly available and searchable. This means we can look at how frequently certain terms are occurring in millions of job ads, all the way back to 2005. It’s fascinating, and you should have a play with the tool at http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends.

Sitting in a workplace today, it’s easy to feel how technology is reshaping the way work gets done. So today we wanted to have a look at some of the big tech trends, to see if the impact on the workplace is as significant as the press and blogosphere makes out.

How is technology reshaping the way we work?

Again, there’s been a lot written on this topic recently. Here’s just a couple of pieces that you might have read over 2014:

Out of these, we’ve picked the four trends we were seeing again and again. In no particular order, we’re diving into:

Social media
Social (collaborative tech)
Cloud
Mobile

Social media

Clearly social media is no passing fad. It’s seen huge growth in hiring over the past ten years. But this is still less than 1% of all jobs, and at present these numbers are unlikely to represent much other than people hired into marketing roles. It will be interesting to see how “Social Media” in hiring evolves over the coming 5-10 years – will we see a stage where social media capability is a broader job requirement?

Social

Social (capturing collaborative tech) is potentially the bigger trend here, which continues to grow. It’s interesting how Social has seen a sustained pick up across 2014, whilst Social Media has plateaued.

Cloud

Again, “Cloud” is a trend that’s seen major growth over the past five years. “Cloud” has come from nowhere to feature in nearly 1% of all job adverts across 2012 – 2014. The scale of growth shows the level of investment that businesses have made in getting the workforce cloud enabled.

Mobile

Mobile is another big trend that’s really reshaping the way that we work. But similar to the “Cloud” it hasn’t been a growth area for 2014 (doing major growth at an earlier stage). If anything mobile is now starting to drop off as a hiring trend, as companies are reaching full capability.

So, how is technology reshaping the workforce?

Cloud, mobile and social media have all been huge growth trends in reshaping the workplace. But as this hiring data makes clear, they haven’t been the tech trends of 2014. All three terms have plateaued or fallen away slightly over the course of the year.

What does this mean? As these charts make clear, these technologies have seen explosive growth over the past five years. And there’s still significant hiring happening – especially when you compare the current numbers to 10 years ago. But explosive and ongoing growth in the field may have slowed. So it’s possible that businesses are bedding down current efforts and making sure they have the right strategies in place to go forward (now that they’re through initial deployment).

The only place we’ve really seen ongoing growth over 2014 is social technology. As I wrote about here, there’s really good reasons to invest and integrate social and collaborative tech. It’s great to see that businesses are starting to recognise this return and invest appropriately.

Interested in the real talent management trends of 2014? Don’t miss the other parts of this series…

If you loved these talent insights, there’s plenty more in this series:

Millennials are changing the way we work (part 1)
HR is about to be taken over by data/finance (part 2)
Technology is reshaping the way we work (part 3)
Holacracy is set to make managers obsolete (part 4, coming tomorrow!)

If you’ve got interesting thoughts about what this article means for the future of work, I’d love to continue the conversation on Twitter. Tweet and follow @cognology.

My experience using enterprise social technology

April 16, 2013/in Recognition, Social, Technology/by Jon Windust

We have been using our own enterprise social technology internally now for some time. I’d like to share just one of the many experiences. In part I’m doing this to help illustrate the benefit of enterprise social technology. It helps answer the question of why someone would want to use it. I’m also sharing the experience to shed some light on the technology for those who are wondering what it’s all about.

There are a myriad of uses for social tech in the organisation … this is just one.

A wall or news feed makes so much sense. We are social beings, we operate under social constructs. It helps to be able to see things that are happening across a group or wider group. Having used our wall quite a bit I couldn’t go back to pre-wall. For example, one of the uses of the Wall is to recognise others. As a manager I find this one of the most powerful and positive tools in my kit bag. When someone does something that deserves recognition, it’s wonderful to be able to put a thank you note on a wall so others can see. And it’s such a buzz when you see team members giving each other recognition.

There’s some legitimate concerns that people may have about this though. They are reasonable concerns and need to be addressed. The three key ones are:

The potential to waste time.
Inappropriate comments.
Replacing face to face interactions.

The potential to waste time

You may wonder whether a wall creates a social love fest. A frenzy of recognition and other posts. It doesn’t. It’s rare to see the same person giving recognition more than once a fortnight. My experience is that recognition has been given sparingly, where it deserved to be. If it were given for even the slightest thing, for the sake of it, I believe it would quickly lose its benefit.

The wall hasn’t magically created a perfect working world. Not every situation and person that truly deserved some recognition, received it. I think the truth is that people are just busy working and don’t always think to do it. But there is more recognition, a lot more. And it’s much more visible.

Inappropriate comments

When many HR people think of social tech, they are probably thinking of sites like Facebook and Twitter. Let’s face it, we’ve all read news stories about their inappropriate use.

The question is whether we should sacrifice the benefits of enterprise social technology to protect our organisations against potential misuse. My experience is that I haven’t seen any misuse at all. But I’ve read the news stories like everyone else and I know it can and will happen. So do we avoid social tech? I believe that would be crazy. That would be like saying no to the introduction of computers into the organisation in the 80s and 90s because of their potential for misuse.

The real question should be how can we minimise the possibility of misuse and protect people from it. The answer is that people, managers and HR should be given control over information sharing and visibility. And of course, appropriate policies are needed. But those policies are needed now regardless of whether you have enterprise social technology.

It’s counterintuitive, but I believe enterprise social technology helps protect organisations and their people. This is better explained by pointing out what happens if an organisation doesn’t implement social tech. People will eventually find their own social solutions which organisations won’t have any control over.

Replacing face to face interactions

From a leadership perspective face to face conversations are the shiznit. Great progress has been made in recent years getting leaders to have one-on-one conversations. Anything that threatens to undo all this progress is going to be received with some caution.

So does a wall replace face to face interactions? No it doesn’t. It enhances them and makes new things possible. Here’s three ways it does this.

If you’re a manager, ask yourself how often you see team members recognising other team members in front of others. It happens, but infrequently. To make things worse, you most likely won’t be there in the moment it happens. You probably won’t hear about it. The wall improves both of these problems. For reasons explained below, recognition is more frequent. Everyone doesn’t have to be there in the moment either. If you aren’t there, you’ll still see it, you won’t miss out.

How does a wall increase the frequency of recognition? The answer is something called the gift economy. In short it means this. Joe gives recognition to Sally. This makes Sally more likely to recognise Joe some time down the track when he deserves it. In my experience it also makes it more likely that Sally will think to recognise someone else.

The wall also gives people a greater reach. Visibility is not just restricted to one or two people. Recognition is not just heard by those in the verbal vicinity. People across a wider group get to see things they previously couldn’t.

A couple of posts ago I wrote about the new world of work and the need for HR to be part of the change. I’d love to hear your thoughts on enterprise social technology.

Is HR resisting social technology?

January 30, 2013/in HR Technology, Talent Management, Technology/by Jon Windust

I believe social and HR technology is helping to bring about a new world of work. But is HR itself getting in the way of this happening?

Sometimes it doesn’t take that long for big change to occur. When personal computers started to arrive in corporate life during the late 80s and early 90s secretaries and typists were commonplace. It wasn’t uncommon for a manager to draft a communication, send it to a secretary, who would then type it up and send it back for review before sending. Amongst other benefits, inexpensive and usable personal computers provided a great opportunity for organisations to save time and money by getting managers to type their own communications. PCs were implemented at a rapid pace along with organisational edicts for managers to do their own typing.

Despite the obvious advantage of using computers to draft, edit and produce communications, many managers were highly resistant to the change. Computers were things they didn’t understand. What you don’t understand, you fear. But by the end of the 90s you would be hard pressed to find secretaries typing communications anywhere. Today it only survives in limited areas like law firms who seem to love dictation as a form of creating a communication.

I believe the vast majority of managers who were resistant to the change that occurred in the late 80s and early 90s would not want to go back to the way things were. They wouldn’t want to wait for a secretary to type something. Nor would they want to be without the easy way to get their ideas into a document, then edit and perfect them before communicating.

Social technology is changing the world today. And talent management technology is becoming increasingly more important in organisations. Now we are starting to see the two combined. It makes great sense, we are social beings. We operate in a social way, even at work. We aren’t automatons.

So is HR resistant to social technology in the workplace? Undoubtedly many are. This is understandable though. Social technology is relatively young. Many people still believe that Twitter is used by people who want to tell everyone inane things about their cat and what it does all day. Add to that the potential legal issues of using social technology. For example, bullying via social technology. It’s understandable that HR would be resistant.

The change is happening though and won’t be stopped. Not for any other reason that the new world of work is just too compelling.

Combining social and talent management technology makes a lot of sense. HR can elevate its importance in the organisation by embracing it and driving its adoption in the workplace. If HR doesn’t do this, someone else in the organisation will.

Just like the managers of the late 80s and early 90s, I don’t believe HR will want to go back to the old world in ten years time. People talk about removing organisational silos meaning departments and teams that don’t communicate. I think we have something more problematic. We have individual personal silos. The new world doesn’t have those silos. People, their work, needs and achievements are more visible to others. Once you’ve reached this new world, would you want to go back? I don’t think HR will want to go back.

To be human is to be social.

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