On the eighth anniversary of its founding, ByteDance, the world's most valuable startup, announced a comprehensive upgrade of its organizational structure.
Since March 12, Zhang Lidong has served as the chairman of ByteDance (China). As the head of China's functions, he has comprehensively coordinated the company's operations, including ByteDance China 's strategy, commercialization, strategic partner building, legal affairs, public affairs, public relations, Finance, HR.
Douyin CEO Zhang Nan will serve as ByteDance (China) CEO. As the head of China business, he will fully coordinate the company's China business product, operation, market and content cooperation, including Jinri Toutiao, Douyin, Xigua video, search and other services and products. The two report to Zhang Yiming.
As the CEO of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming will lead the company's global strategy and development, focusing more on the exploration and strategic thinking of long-term major topics, including global business management research, corporate social responsibility, and new business directions such as education.
At the same time, Zhang Yiming will spend more energy to improve the ByteDance global management team.
The adjustment aims to adapt to the development of ByteDance's global business, strengthen the team building of the Chinese business, and improve management efficiency.
Zhang Yiming said in a full letter to ByteDance employees: "In the past 8 years, ByteDance has developed rapidly. We have grown from a small product to a large platform that provides multiple products and services to global users. The number of global employees will also reach 10 this year. Ten thousand people. "
"As we grow, we face many challenges. These challenges require more changes in the way our company is organized."
Zhang Lidong and Zhang Nan are mature managers who have grown up within ByteDance.
Zhang Lidong joined ByteDance in 2013 as a ByteDance partner and senior vice president, with overall responsibility for commercialization-related businesses.
Before entering ByteDance, Zhang Lidongng Lidong worked in the media and held the position of Deputy General Manager.
Before joining ByteDance, Zhang Nan was an Internet entrepreneur.
In 2013, Zhang Nan started a picture community app, and the company was acquired by ByteDance. Zhang Nan led the team to join ByteDance and was responsible for the company's UGC business.
In 2016, Zhang Nan launched Douyin, Huoshan and other products from 0 to 1. In 2018, Zhang Nan was appointed Douyin's CEO and the company's market brand leader. He is fully responsible for Douyin, Huoshan, and market brands. In an extremely fiercely competitive environment, Douyin has become the most popular short video product in China.
In addition, Zhang Nan also led the company's camera business, leading the team to develop popular new products such as light-colored and cut-and-shoot.
In March 2020, Yingying was already the largest mobile video editing tool in China.
After handing over the business in China to Zhang Lidong and Zhang Nan, Zhang Yiming will also focus on the greater challenge of building a global, diverse, and ultra-large enterprise.
The following is a letter from Zhang Yiming to employees:
"ByteDance 8th Anniversary: You can look back on the past, you need to focus now, and the future is worth looking forward to." Hello everyone, today is the 8th anniversary of the company.
In this new mode of remote office, I will chat with you online about new ideas.
I want to do a relatively large organizational upgrade at this time: Today, the company will appoint Zhang Lidong and Zhang Nan (Kelly) as the chairman and CEO of ByteDance China, respectively, and overall responsible for the development of ByteDance's China business.
As the global CEO of ByteDance, I will spend more time in Europe, America, and other markets, and work with Alex to improve the global management team of ByteDance, and also help new colleagues such as Erich Andersen and Roland Cloutier to better integrate.
In the past 8 years, ByteDance has developed rapidly. We have grown from a small product to a large platform that provides multiple products and services to global users. The number of global employees will also reach 100,000 this year.
As we grow, we face many challenges. In order to respond to business changes, we have been constantly optimizing and adjusting the company's organization and cooperation methods.
For example, the CEO and management team that define the main business; establish virtual P & L for each business to help each business make better decisions; performance management and OKR tools are also constantly updated. But how to build a very large global enterprise is still a new issue for us.
As business grows, external effects continue to expand, and society has more expectations for us. In the past year, I have spent nearly 2/3 of my time in many places around the world.
In addition to understanding the company's business, I also communicate with many local colleagues and friends, do user research in the Delidi Hart market, visit friends in Paris, and go to museums in various places to learn about history. With a deeper understanding.
We have businesses and users in many countries around the world. We need to think more about our relationship with the outside world and our contribution to the outside world. Not only that, in addition to the information and content platform businesses that we are more familiar with, we have also begun to explore many new business directions.
For us, this is a cross-border, but we don't know enough about these new businesses.
These challenges require more changes in the way our company is organized. In addition to improving the work of the global management team, I will free up energy from the company's daily operations and focus on a few things:
1.Research on how to better improve the management of very large global enterprises
Frankly speaking, it is not easy to manage a company with more than 60,000 employees in more than 180 cities in 30 countries.
This does not include 5,000 foreign teachers in our education business in North America, outsourcing employees of the company's administrative system, and so on.
In the past year, we have seen a lot of management issues, and the most direct feedback is that employee engagement and satisfaction statistics have declined.
I strive to travel to all areas with offices in the next three years, learn about the company and learn the local culture.
Our goal is not only to establish a global business, but also to establish a global, diverse and compatible organization. Through better organization, stimulate everyone's potential and creativity to serve global users.
We have always said develop a company as a product. Understanding what the essence of the company's product is is important to improve management.
Before 2016, I saw a lot of things, I also had a lot of thinking, and practiced in our company management.
The frankness and clarity in Bytefan comes from my attempt to understand Jack Welch's repeated strong emphasis in "Win"-frankness reduces organizational transaction costs.
"Everyone is a manager in a knowledge organization." This is Drucker's redefinition of managers. His thinking on management by objectives has inspired our emphasis on organizational effectiveness and the practice of OKR.
His and Coase's ideas prompted me to think about the boundaries of the enterprise and how to measure the transaction costs within the organization from an external perspective.
Our philosophy of "context, not control" is directly influenced by Netflix. Of course, it is also largely related to Hayek's argument about rational conceit. I recognize the importance of transparent information, distributed decision-making, and innovation.
Changes in the organization of technology companies will bring many new changes, which are reflected in business, finance, and manpower.
Financially, how to introduce LTV in UG into internal financial statements, and how to settle costs between various businesses. In terms of human resources, how to organize talents under the intersection of three dimensions of function, business and market.
Correspondingly, internal tools of the enterprise also need new R & D optimization. For us, in the past two years, we have actually thought more about problems and less.
I will spend more time studying and researching, and also discuss improvement with ES colleagues.
2.Research on how technology companies create more social value
Beginning in the second half of last year, my management team and I re-discussed carefully what the essence of the company is.
We started with the most basic issues. What is technology and what is a technology company? Why do tech companies need to take more social responsibility?
Technology refers to the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry. The basic condition for becoming a technology company is continuous learning of scientific knowledge.
If technology companies can continuously improve their cognitive improvement methods, their leverage will become larger and larger, and the head companies' proportion in the economy will become higher and higher, and their impact on people's lives will become greater and greater. Regulatory concerns.
From the outside, the public expects higher and higher, and internally, employees also need a stronger sense of mission to assume greater responsibility.
To provide users with innovative, high-quality and efficient products and services is the basic social responsibility of the enterprise. But technology companies also need to think about how to face their own external effects and actively cooperate with external parties to create social value.
In the past two years, we have done a lot of work in the direction of corporate social responsibility, including establishing a public welfare department, requiring each business to have CSR goals and plans, and aligning with user goals and business goals.
Several projects, such as tracing people, helping doctors, and helping the poor, have been successful, but overall I feel that they are far from enough, especially compared with our goal of achieving a higher level globally.
I will communicate with more colleagues and external parties. On the one hand, I will better understand the current problems in the world, and on the other hand, I will explore how to establish better mechanisms within the company to take on more social responsibilities.
3. Thinking and planning new strategic directions such as education
Education is the new business direction that companies try across borders.
Everyone should understand that I have always attached great importance to talent recruitment, and I am full of expectations for personal potential.
I agree with Drucker. For the company, the meaning of the company's existence is to realize people's creativity through the company.
I will add another sentence-let everyone have richer and more meaningful experiences and experiences.
Yes, it is the same as the mission of our user products: inspire creativity, enrich life. For some time in 2016, I found that many of the company's outstanding algorithm talents came from the ACM class of Shanghai Jiaotong University. I went to Shanghai to visit Yu Yong.
From the completion rate of the ACM class of Jiaotong University, and later research on Minerva University, I directly realized that education is very important to stimulate people's potential, and that education itself has huge potential.
This is a starting point for me to seriously consider the education business.
In the past two years, I have interviewed many teachers and students, including experiencing different teaching effects in different classrooms, but because of limited time and energy, they are not sustainable enough.
Next, I will resume the interview and observation of education. The online tutoring market is very hot recently, and many people ask about my company's business progress.
In fact, I am not anxious and have patience. I think it is still very early. The education business must have more fundamental innovations, of course, provided we have a deeper understanding.
Especially for a company that already has a successful business, starting a new business is not easy, there is inertia and inertia.
Bold attempts in new fields are an important sign of always starting a business.
On the occasion of the eighth anniversary, I wish you all: you can look back on the past, you need to focus now, and the future is worth looking forward to.
