Several days ago, it was spread online that Robin Li was calling for “wolfish culture” and eliminating “petty bourgeoisie” inside Baidu. Now the internal open letter entitled “Change, Starting from You and Me” has finally been leaked to the public. Li listed seven types of changes that needed to be made at Baidu related to areas such as culture, management and business practices.
In regards to strategy, first and foremost Baidu needs to rectify the underinvestment problem.
We raised lots of money in the past, but that was not enough. Rather than eagerly pursuing net profit, we should put more money on more new business and innovation.
In addition to the core business, enhance the enabler and protector!
In addition to our core business, what else should we invest in, so as to draw more users to Baidu Search? The search engine, for instance. We have a superior market position, yet if someone wants to come along and replace us they can, if that happens we will have huge problems. We need tools for self-protection.
Next is that we must be willing to disrupt ourselves.
We’ve found users migrating from PC to mobile devices. Thus we should guide their migration proactively and timely, so as to build up the wireless market with the help of our advantages in PC area, instead of desperately maintaining what we have now and persuade users to stay on PCs.
Managers need to understand the strategy at his/her level.
In the past, strategy was considered to be the domain of the CEO, but this is not completely true. Every product or every business has its own strategy. You should know how the strategy will change along with market changes.
To encourage “wolfish culture”, and eliminate petty bourgeoisie.
We also need changes in performance. Through my observations I have come to two points: one, we must encourage “wolfish nature” and two, we must eliminate petty bourgeoisie. The three aspects defining “wolfish culture” are very appropriate for Baidu at the present: acute sense of smell, a brave and dauntless spirit of attack, and group struggle.
You may feel that, through years of development, Baidu has become such a large and excellent company, recruiting many great talents. But I should tell you, that this background is not necessarily an advantage, because your living environment is too comfortable. It’s just like the dinosaurs who got bigger as time went on, but when the conditions become severe they failed to survive. on the contrary, it is those who came out of the countryside, whose family has little money, those who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, that have the strongest ability to survive. All staff members must clearly realize that, if you just want a stable job with no merits and no demerits, please leave, otherwise you’ll drag the whole company down.
Reduce levels of management and promote efficiency.
Downsizing for efficiency, is to reduce number of people whose work is simply management. Senior engineers can write code while managers know about business. I’ve done a survey and found that only a few staff above T5 level still write code. Staff in T5 level have about 2-year working experience, they stop coding when they have just learned how to write code because they are in charge of many new employees and have less time. Thus we have to reduce the number of junior people, by letting go those who are less diligent and passionate, and adding the saved money to the salary of staff who really work hard and are efficient.
To reduce meetings and make timely decisions.
For everything there should be a clear decision maker, a deadline, and people to follow through on the work.