On March 30th, Bytedance held its 9th anniversary annual meeting. Founder Zhang Yiming delivered a speech with the theme of "Ordinary Heart".
The speech mentioned that in the past year, Bytedance has achieved rapid growth in its product business, and some breakthroughs have been made in new directions.
At the same time, it implemented corporate social responsibility and launched anti-epidemic medical funds and other projects.
Zhang Yiming said that the world is rapidly changing dynamically, the external waves are ups and downs, and the heart must remain calm as usual.
We must treat ourselves, our products and businesses, industry competition, successes and failures with a normal heart, and "do extraordinary things with a normal heart."
He also said that in the new year, he will reduce more daily work and free up more energy to focus on company culture, social responsibility and new directions.
The following is the full text of Zhang Yiming's speech:
Like this moment in previous years, I will share with you the company's situation in the past year and some of my feelings.
These feelings also come from life and work, and from communicating with colleagues.
First, briefly review the past year.
The overall growth rate of our business is still very fast, and some breakthroughs have been made in new directions.
Including the fight against the epidemic, we have also done a lot of things in terms of corporate social responsibility, which can be regarded as our first year of corporate social responsibility in the world.
I hope that in the new year, we can continue to improve our business, and continue to regard the goal of social responsibility as one of our business goals to serve the society well.
Last year was very special. The chain reaction caused by various emergencies, including the new crown epidemic, was very dynamic. I believe everyone feels it.
Many people like to say that the years are quiet and good. In my opinion, the world is changing dynamically and acceleratingly.
Everyone can see a lot of news every day, which is very noisy.
So today I want to talk about the topic of "ordinary heart".
In the face of a dynamically changing world, we are often anxious, worried about the future or upset about the past, and a lot of energy and time will be wasted in facing fluctuations.
In the past, there were many discussions on methodology in the industry, and everyone attached great importance to it.
But I think that in such an environment, keeping a calm mind is an easy but important thing that sounds.
I have communicated with many colleagues in the past year. I think those who maintain a normal mind are more relaxed, have no inner distortions, observe things carefully, seek truth from facts, and are more patient.
They tend to do things better.
Most of the time, people can make good judgments without paranoia or distracting thoughts. There is a saying that "self-sufficient".
Only by maintaining a normal mind can we do extraordinary things. The theme of our anniversary is "Remain Grounded, Keep Aiming Higher". I understand that these two sentences have similar meanings. Only the more stable the mentality, the stronger the root and the stronger the courage. Imagination to do more difficult things.
"Eat well when you eat, and sleep well when you sleep"
When we discuss a topic, we first need to understand clearly, what exactly is this topic?
Because the concept is generally very abstract, since it is very abstract, it is easy to be biased.
"Ping Changxin" is a word of Buddhism origin. There are many such words in Chinese, such as "Jingjin" and "Thinking into Fei Fei".
The definition of "normal mind" in the encyclopedia is: "in all environments and all behaviors, remain indifferent and unbiased".
In modern psychology, there are also some explanations, to the effect that: "Do your best, go with the flow, and be calm."
If you search on the headlines, you can find other articles, concepts, and explanations. Common ones are: let it be/let it go, common sense, intuition, and sincere .
For example, "Do not leave the daily routine, until the innate time is not drawn", it is actually intuition (intuition).
There are also popular Internet circles like "return to essence, seek truth from facts" and accept uncertainty.
In the most straightforward terms, it is: "Eat well when you eat, and sleep well when you sleep."
Everyone is ordinary
Regarding normal mind, the first thing I want to say is: normal mind treats oneself.
The most basic thing is to realize that everyone, including yourself, is an ordinary person.
When reporting the stories of startups and characters, some media hope to add drama. Either the experience is legendary or the characters are very prominent.
When I was interviewed before, the other party also wanted me to share the twists and turns of the story.
I often say nothing special.
In fact, in my opinion, most things have a reason and reason, and there is no part that is particularly difficult to explain or particularly unusual.
It really is.
With the development of the business, I know more and more people, including many people who are very talented and capable.
One of my own feelings is that there may be some differences in knowledge and experience, but from a human point of view, everyone is very close. They are ordinary people and ordinary people.
But one thing is that people who can achieve good results tend to maintain a very normal mentality.
In other words, by maintaining a normal mind, accepting who you are now, and doing yourself well, you can often do things well: ordinary people can also do extraordinary things.
Expectations or labels are constraints
When you are particularly concerned about the results, it is very likely that you will not perform well.
For example, we are archery, aiming at the bullseye, but if you think "I want to take ten rings", it is not easy to play well.
The same is true in work and life. When we carry expectations, our actions will be distorted and easily complicated.
"How should I do", if you care about your own or others' expectations, then you will be more or less constrained when thinking or making decisions.
All kinds of labels will bring a psychological burden.
For example, the labels of executives may make people embarrassed to ask a seemingly simple question, or they may not be able to experience product scenarios in depth like users.
If you position yourself as a large company, you will think about how large companies should hold annual meetings. Large companies must have grand strategies and hold mobilization meetings.
In fact, the same is true for our company's emphasis on not advocating titles.
The title will make people compare. The vice president has to manage how many people, what kind of reporting format, and what level of peers need to be docked with, resulting in various forms of restraint.
Or the label of a young person will make you afraid to put forward ideas, suggestions or criticisms.
If you position yourself as a front-end engineer, you don't need to look at machine learning knowledge.
When I was working at Kuxun, I worked as a backend, but I also participated when there were problems with the front-end, participated when there were product problems, and when there were sales problems.
I think don’t be restricted by self-setting. For me, these experiences are very helpful.
Pay attention to the present, treat the past and the future with a normal heart
Two years ago, I heard a best-selling book called "The Power of Now" on "Open Language English".
There is a passage: all negativity is caused by the accumulation of psychological time and the denial of the present.
Anxiety, anxiety, tension, stress, worry-all fears are caused by paying too much attention to the future; guilt, regret, resentment, grievance, sadness, bitterness-all unforgiveness arises because of paying too much attention to the past.
This description may sound serious.
I want to give a small example of my own.
In my life, I am not particularly regular or disciplined. I often watch mobile phones, listen to music, read headlines, and use vibrato watermelon, which is not much the same as the legends outside.
Sometimes I plan to do a job at night, but then I am attracted by the interesting content on the watermelon and watched it for a long time.
I was a little upset before going to bed, eh, I didn't do what I had to do, and then worked retaliately for a while, but it caused me to go to bed late (I really think sleep is very important), and the next day's important meeting was very bad.
In fact, at this time, what you should do is to take a rest as soon as possible.
Although I often have no plans, at least I found it was too late, so I went to bed right away without being upset.
"The Power of Now" emphasizes that people spend too much time worrying about the future and entangled in the past, and very little time to focus on the present, the most important thing to do, the current feelings, and the current judgments.
We say that the past is a year of acceleration. I believe that many people have many different worries.
But maybe in the process that everyone is worried about, time and energy have been consumed. On the contrary, there may be a lack of attention to the more important and current things to be done.
Or perhaps in the chagrin of losses and mistakes, new opportunities have been missed.
When we faced the crisis and challenges last year, I always told everyone "stay calm, be patient", and we did it as a whole.
This is indeed the biggest gain from the challenges we have experienced in the past: you can't control the results 100%, keep as calm as possible, make the right decisions, don't rush to make decisions, don't panic, you can often get the best results.
Some companies open their annual meetings and say that the company is very good and the business is very good, and it will be even better next year.
I don't want to emphasize this to you. There will always be various situations and ups and downs in the business.
Some people often ask me, how do you deal with anxiety? Your company has risen by 100% last year. Can it increase by 100% next year?
I usually reply like this: Why must our company grow by 100% next year?
Of course, we hope to grow at a high speed, but we should not let growth anxiety affect you.
Now the company’s business is growing very fast, but we can’t indulge in past achievements, nor can we be annoyed by past mistakes, and we can’t have inertial expectations. What will happen to our company.
Open your eyes to see the environment clearly, understand the users, and make decisions without distractions. The result is as much as you want.
There is a saying that if you treat yourself as an object, you can have a more ordinary state of mind, and the same is true for the company.
Nowadays, there are many external summaries about our company. I think it is called "Byte Success Learning", which is very problematic.
I try not to watch.
We should not be defined and influenced by external evaluations, but should raise higher standards based on ourselves.
This year, I hope that the company will slow down to a certain extent. On the one hand, it can avoid the burden of short-term business anxiety. On the other hand, it will have a broad vision of the future without fixed expectations and a longer-term goal.
Without restraint, you can maintain your imagination for the longer term.
From my own point of view, I will also reduce more daily trivial tasks, free up more time to come out, pay attention to company culture, social responsibility and new directions, complete the OKR mentioned in the letter last year (because of external challenges, last year Many goals have been mentioned, but some have not been achieved).
Competition is the best blues
I actually heard the team say more than once, oh, how come this competition is endless, and when will it end?
I think that when dealing with competitors with a heart, the first point is to treat competition as the norm.
Don't want to escape competition, competition is also a good thing.
I even think that mergers and acquisitions should not be used to end competition.
We have seen many companies that eliminated rivals through mergers and acquisitions, becoming more and more self-conscious, and finally slacking off.
Competitors are very good blues.
Competitors may have good methods such as product innovation and market strategy that are worthy of your study.
Even if it is a critical article promoted by a competitor, we will take it seriously, not be angry.
Maybe 80% of the articles have problems, but 20% is inspiring for us, then we should absorb that 20%.
Except for competitors, no one will pick you up so seriously.
Of course, there is also "don't compete for the sake of competition."
Sometimes, after a long period of competition, the goal is to defeat the competitor.
For example, before Microsoft competed with Google, for a long time, Microsoft had set the goal of beating Google and invested heavily in search.
It was not until a few years later that I realized that the real impact of the core business is the emerging cloud computing, and the opponent is Amazon.
Why do we sometimes turn a blind eye to some opportunities?
In fact, it is probably because in the process of competition, the mentality has been imbalanced and more inclined to defeat the opponent.
In addition to competition, there may be other reasons, such as the desire to succeed, the expectation of going public, and so on.
When this kind of mentality is unusual, and there is already paranoia and discrimination, the company may become "blind."
All-in is lazy sometimes
I especially want to say: Don't rely on shortcuts, use less leverage.
Give two examples.
Many people in business will say they want to be all-in and end the battle at once.
I feel that there is a big problem with the all-in team.
All-in is sometimes a kind of laziness, if you think clearly, the strategy should be like this, then there is no problem.
But my feeling is that in many cases, it's just "I don't want to think about it anymore, so be it, just do it, take a gamble".
Another way to take a shortcut is: excessive abstraction of things, excessive pursuit of methodology.
My own feeling is that the methodology is actually not that useful, and in most cases, it may even be useless.
Because you are abstract on one thing, which is equivalent to adding leverage to your thinking.
Once this leverage is added to the wrong, it is usually "a little bit missed, a thousand miles away."
In fact, this phenomenon has a corresponding view, which is called "rational conceit", which is also human ego.
Because the finiteness of knowledge is very obvious, a lot of it is unstructured knowledge. Excessive use of concepts is actually not conducive to understanding. Avoiding excessive abstract use of methods is also a normal mind.
I often communicate with colleagues in various discussions, don't rush to conclusion, don't rush to conclusion.
Don't be too easy to say "this is the case."
When we draw conclusions, we must guess other possibilities and keep an open mind.
The use of increasingly abstract and advanced vocabulary is also a tendency to seek methodology.
Read to everyone a paragraph that I put together using words extracted from the materials of our bimonthly meeting:
In the past, we mainly relied on the information distribution capabilities conferred by recommendation technology, cross-terminal linkage, and self-research on multiple products to achieve in-depth co-construction, form a combination of punches, and create a closed-loop content ecosystem, so as to empower customers and users to create value.
In the future, we will increase the value of different horizontal scenarios and extend the service link.
At the same time, it satisfies the needs of users in depth, and uses the natural potential of human age to penetrate deeply into small, medium and young users of multiple ages.
In addition, by strengthening investment in infrastructure construction, a variety of position-related products improve the operating value link and establish a lasting influence on external users.
In fact, many of our important decisions do not require such a complicated description.
Many important judgments are made through observation of users and facts. It is important to maintain sensitive empathy and open imagination.
I found some past photos, which are random interviews with our management team in Delhi, Qingyang, Chongqing, and Zhangjiakou, India.
Earlier, we encouraged all employees of the company to communicate with five relatives and friends during holidays, to see what software they use on their phones, and to ask them why they use it.
I often find that there are counter-intuitive designs in our products.
I also often wonder why some counter-intuitive designs are made.
If you don't bring methodology, as long as you use the product very relaxedly, you will find that this place is not quite right.
Is it because we want to prove a certain idea too much, are too stubborn on a certain concept, so we make mistakes in product design.
Many times, children can find the counterintuitive part of the design. Why can't the product manager who has read various product concept analysis documents find it?
Do you want to test an idea too much or are too influenced by a dogmatic concept?
I have posted three products here, and they all do a good job. One is Google Earth. I often use it to learn geography. This product is great but not profitable.
Scratch, children's programming, I don't know whether it makes money or not, but it is also great.
Roblox, a UGC sandbox game, is very different from what we usually say.
What are the characteristics of these products?
The first is to be very imaginative.
Second, be patient and do it for a long time.
I wonder if our company can make similar products.
I'm not saying that it is better to do it slowly.
The speed is determined by the matter itself, but if this matter requires a lot of imagination and you have only done it for two years, many people will say, "Oh, this won't work. At that time, the strong expectations of the outside world will affect our continued investment."
Don’t regard external causes as internal causes, and don’t regard luck as ability
Once discussing business competition, I was very impressed. A team said, "Oh, the opponent is growing fast again. Let's do something quickly."
I said that when we were behind our opponents, we thought of a lot of ways to improve, but we didn't have any psychological burdens and we boldly imagined and acted boldly.
Now that we are ahead of our opponents, we can't do our usual heart. We are too afraid of failure and our actions may be deformed.
I asked him, do you play games?
Have you ever encountered this kind of situation when playing games? A certain game has to pass 100 levels. When you hit 99 levels, your hands are easy to shake.
You think, "I finally reached 99 level", "I must not make mistakes", and then you usually hang up.
Treat success and failure with a normal mind, including not attributing wrongly, taking external factors as internal factors, not taking luck as ability, and finding out the true reasons for success or failure.
We were the first to make short videos, and the retention of urban users was not very good.
During the discussion, a colleague felt that it must be because urban white-collar workers do a lot of mental work and are more inclined to express with pictures and texts.
The logic of the summary makes sense at first glance.
Now we know that this is not the case.
I am not saying that all conclusions are wrong.
Just admit that there are things we don’t know.
People don't like uncertainty very much, so they hope to find attributions that fit their own narratives for both success and failure.
I hope we can be more calm.
I have a "four steps" on how to deal with mistakes.
The first three sentences are taken from a book. They say that when you encounter a problem, you have several things to do.
The first step is to realize it. Really recognize the error, and then you will be less upset. Recognition is a gain.
You can also correct it, correct it, correct it, which is another gain.
You can also learn from it, and learn the reason behind this mistake.
These three steps are mentioned in the book, and then I added another one: forgive it-if you have completed the first three steps, then you should let it go.
In the face of mistakes, many people emphasize the painful experience. I suggest: Don't enter a state of self-blame for too long.
Two years ago, there was a very popular documentary called Free Solo ("Free Rock Climbing").
I met this protagonist, Alex Honnold, when I was in California.
Many people have reposted his story, but one of my deepest impressions is that it is dangerous going forward and backward, but weak legs and chaos are the most dangerous.
In the process of rock climbing, you can neither look back too much, fear back, nor entangle the wrong step; nor can you look forward, there is still such a long way to challenge.
One thing is worth learning from Alex: He was very focused on the present at that moment.
Free-hand rock climbing, such a highly uncertain experience, few people have.
I myself have a lot of usual but similar feelings.
Running and swimming, I used to have difficulty sticking to it, even two kilometers.
Later I was thinking, what is it that keeps me from running?
In fact, it is the disgust or worry of running fatigue that makes me nervous.
Later, when I tried to run, I didn’t want to do anything else, except for the necessary adjustment of breathing. The muscles that can not be exerted should be as weak as possible and relaxed as much as possible. Ignoring the interference caused by soreness, I can easily run 3 kilometers or 4 kilometers. .
Later I used this practice in swimming.
Originally, I could only swim 500 meters, but I could easily swim up to 1 kilometer. It was not because my physical fitness improved. My own feeling is that I removed the loss in the middle.
Don't worry about whether you can finish the swim, whether you have a good rest yesterday, and whether you are in good condition today, but you can run better.
I especially like watching videos of sailing in the sea on Douyin.
I'm not saying that everyone's work or life is really difficult like stormy waves. I want to compare a kind of mood. No matter what challenges or difficulties there are in personal work and life, these are all external.
What I can do is that the external waves are ups and downs, and the heart is calm as usual.
That's all for today's sharing, thank you all.