Leader's role & responsibility

Speaker: Randy Ou, Vice President of Alibaba Group
Editor: Hilary Hu

Randy Ou, vice president of treasury management of Alibaba Group, is considered one of the best lecturers of Hupan Academy, which is an internal training sector to train Alibaba business leaders. Randy has been working in Alibaba for more than 10 years, he has not only a deep understanding but also real practices in being a good leader. The following passage is from Randy’s sharing to AGI Alumni Community on the topic of the Leader’s role & responsibility.

Why management & leadership training is so important?

When a company and the business grow, the training of leaders becomes very important and urgent. There are many challenges and changes for new leaders when they shift from individual contributors to leaders. They may already have enough professional experience to finish previous work better than others. But they need to learn how to train their staffs as best as they are, then the whole team can do more and better work to boost the company. In Alibaba, it is publicly known that leaders add value to the team by helping others succeed.

I totally agree with Jack’s above advice. yesterday I spent 2 hours on a 1on1 conversation with one of my team members to answer his question, provide solutions and coach. I was so delighted when my colleague said, ‘Randy, you know you are the best manager I ever have.’ It was my choice and duty to be a leader that helps people grow better and more successful.

Lucy Peng, the former CPO and CEO of Ant Group, believes that “an HR who doesn’t understand the business cannot be a good HR. Even more important is, a leader who cannot manage his/her team, will definitely not become the outstanding one he/she expects to be. This is what we say ambidextrous. A first-class leader should not only do well in business but also manage people well. You must have the ability to balance team and business, to integrate organization, business and strategy. “

Apart from having professional ability, leaders also should have knowledge about staff management and leadership philosophy. However, it is difficult for new front-line leaders to change their minds, vision and meet the requirement of a leader. In that situation, the company management team need to design and provide enough and proper training to help them.

Managers and leaders are different. A leader is much more important to Alibaba than a manager. The manager is important as well in delivering the result, execution and daily operation, while the leader is more about inspiration and encourage people with vision, mission and innovation, etc. In the internet industry, the situation is in high uncertainty and fast pace, we need leaders rather than managers. Leaders have followers, managers have subordinates. Suppose you are a new front-line leader, think about the difference between follower and subordinate, who do you prefer?

What is Alibaba’s leader?

The common words we use to describe Alibaba leader are as below:

Treat staff as talent

The mechanism, process and incentive plan of some other companies lead to the problem that staff is more like a tool to a company. We want to emphasize more that our staff are human beings who are expected to finish the work, but more importantly, they have their own needs, emotions, and meet some issues and challenges. We need to care for them.

Accomplish business via talent, develop talent via business and Integrate talent & business

The best training is to let the talents do the real business, even there will be success and failure. In the process of doing the business, we develop talents, who will grow better and achieve a business goal.

Like Jack Ma pointed out, “Most of our managers spend too much time on business because it is the easiest way to evaluate one’s capability. But developing talent is different, it is to let them experience different things, suffer, and have a sense of accomplishment, but still keep being optimistic. I hope everyone who joins Alibaba will become the unique and best self.”

The management philosophy of Alibaba leader

Eastern Wisdom VS Western Management: ambiguity and instinct vs science and process

We applied many science and good process from the western management system. In an interview with Jack 10 years ago, I discussed with him how to train the vision of senior leaders. Jack mentioned instinct was essential, and the effective method is throwing them to a battle, if they survive and get success, then throw them to a more tough battle to gain real experience. In a word, classroom training is only a part of leadership training, we need to put the leaders to the real business and battle. Then they can build their instinct and vision quickly, and become a real leader.

Dream Mission VS Business Reality: have a clear understanding of the cruel reality before having the real dream.

We all are inspired with a big dream by Jack’s speech, like the mission, vision and how we can help others and change the world etc. While we also need to deliver the business goal step by step. It is important and difficult to merge the dream and reality well to survive and become great, not just do only 1 of them.

Ownership VS Eliminating the Last: love company VS be eliminated

Alibaba staff love the company and feel they are the owner of the company, as many of them have company stock and lie on Alibaba culture. Meanwhile, they also face the pressure of performance evaluation. They will get a low-performance score if they don’t meet the requirement. In the internet industry, we all face competition and uncertainty, and we have to hold on to both the ownership and eliminating the last, though with big challenges.

Organized VS Unorganized: efficient collaboration, freedom of human nature, complexity and simplicity, supervision and innovation

In Alibaba, we prefer bottom-up ideas generating from the staff who know better about the customers than top-down design mechanism. This will help our organization to build freedom, innovation, in-depth thinking and etc. Once the company grows as big as Alibaba is today, chaos is inevitable without a certain top-down design. Keeping the balance is quite important and takes great effort.

Openness, sharing, freedom, equality VS Firmly believe the power of culture

The point of view about Alibaba leadership from Lucy Peng is quite simple in 3 aspects, “Leader should lead people, lead business and lead self“. She also shared the mission of Alibaba leader is responsible for the team, the company and the future strategy of Alibaba economy, and the creation of customer value eventually.

Some front-line leaders once asked, what could they do if they are not excited about what they are supposed to do which is right for the company? The answer is to be authentic and be real to yourself and the team, then don’t do it. Because we think finding the right people who are excited about and capable of what our company do is the most important.

How to be a leader in Alibaba? And management skills for front-line leaders

Alibaba has 3 management & leadership programs for 3 levels of leaders. Different leaders have different management skills to learn and grasp. Senior-level leaders should focus on the strategy plan, good department culture and making the right decision to help people feel happy and grow. Middle-level leaders are directors and senior managers, whose key responsibility is an accomplishment. As for the front-line leaders, they need to know and learn 3 parts: achieve business results, build the team, and hire & fire.

Hire & Fire

The principles of the Hire & Fire responsibility of our front-line leaders:
Hire

1. Hiring is the leaders’ responsibility.
2. Extraordinary people, with an ordinary heart, do extraordinary things. A good profile and experience are not enough, we want people with leadership, a good mindset and an attitude, who can be helpful to others.
3. Do not subjectively judge someone only by the first impression. Think twice from a different angle and ask for other interviewers’ opinions.

Fire

1. No surprise. We need to align with the staff who fail to meet the requirements and expectations of the company and push them to improve constantly, instead of just giving a low score at the end of a performance evaluation period, which is a surprise.
2. Appeal to reasoning, compassion, and rule during communication.
3. Decisive but with a kind heart.

Build the team

Three key components of building the team as below:

Scenarios and tips for you:
Scenario 1: a panicky team
Mr. Wang newly joined Alibaba from Walmart, take the lead of a team that have deep affection for the former manager. Later, Wang’s subordinates found Wang very strict and determined to reform the business. The team got divided in mind and members all wanted to leave Wang. If you are Wang, what would you do?
Tips: Build trust in the team

1. Create a simple & trustful team culture
2. Love and help your team sincerely
3. One on one communication, understand your subordinates’ strengths and weaknesses so to help them grow.
4. Listen to and take your members’ feedback
5. Listen, listen and listen
6. Share your thoughts with your team always.
7. Publicly praise subordinates

Scenario 2：a confusing team
Ming is newly promoted to be a junior-level leader to take the lead of an innovation business team. For the reason that the big picture of the business is still under discussion in his superior department, the business is shifting from time to time. Ming’s team members are confused and loose. If you are Ming, what would you do?
Tips: Build a common goal

1. 30% of the strategy is based on vision, while 70% is based on execution.
2. Wrong decision is better than no decision.
3. The goal and direction should reflect customer value
4. Connect team members’ individual dreams.
5. Truly believe in perseverance.

Scenario 3：a confusing team
Lin is the expertise of Java. He becomes a new leader recently. Once he sees his team member is low effective and cannot solve problems, he would do it by himself. Later on, his subordinates cannot feel any sense of accomplishment, or any space to develop. Most of them want to leave. If you are Lin, what would you do?
Tips: Cultivate the team

1. Create opportunities for your subordinates. Follow up with them along the way.
2. Be good at finding out others’ strengths, know how to make good use of others and their strengths.
3. Let newcomer does existing business, and the experienced one does new business.
4. Never take over the team’s works and do all works by yourself.
5. Learn from mistakes, dare to admit mistakes, allow others to make mistakes too.

Get the results

Doing things right VS Doing the right thing
Alibaba needs both, but doing the right thing is relatively more important than doing things right, especially for leaders. Leaders should make sure staff are doing the right things, and staff can help the leaders to finish the things right.

Process and result are of the same importance. The result without process is rubbish, but the process without result is bullshit.

Homework to think about

1. Leaders and managers are different. Leaders have followers, managers have subordinates. Suppose you are a new front-line leader, think about the difference between follower and subordinate, who do you prefer?
2. Among the 3 key components of building the team: build the trust, common goal, develop the talents through business, which will be the first step that you and your front-line leaders take?
3. It is a widely accepted process and results are equally important. Result without good process, the problem will come out soon. Why process is required in a result-oriented company? How do you think?
4. What kind of leader do you want to be?