P&G People at Alibaba

Click to read the original text for details Text | Liang Xiao, reporter for China Entrepreneur In the FMCG world, P&G has long been known as the "Whampoa Military Academy." In recent years, many P&G people have been poached by domestic internet companies, with the majority joining Alibaba. Why are P&G people so welcomed by Alibaba? How do they adapt to Alibaba's soil? Listen to the transformation stories of our P&G alumni, hoping to inspire your career. Tmall President Jing Jie. Source: Provided by interviewee The first thing Jing Jie did upon arriving at Alibaba was to "empty" himself. He is a professional manager with a deep resume: after graduating from Nanjing University's Computer Science department in 1998, he joined P&G, and over the next 15 years, he held leadership roles in consumer marketing, in-store operations, and customer relationship management—it is precisely these valuable experiences in branding and marketing that had to be completely reset. "You must first forget all the How, and return to the Why," Jing Jie said. This is also what many executives who "parachute" into Alibaba need to do. In this internet company that "embraces change," any adherence to old rules or empiricism is the biggest "enemy" to moving forward. He once used an analogy: P&G is like the equator, while Alibaba is like the North Pole. The former has orderly systems and processes, with plans and procedures following a set routine. The latter is "all white," full of possibilities. "Alibaba is creating things that don't exist at all. Only after things are created from nothing do all the systems, processes, and rules come into being." When he first arrived at Alibaba, he encountered "the unknown." At that time, Jack Ma had not yet proposed New Retail, but Alibaba internally had already judged that online and offline would fully integrate in the future. In March 2016, more than twenty Tmall committee members gathered and spent three days and nights discussing one thing—where should Tmall go in the future? They wrote down the mission and vision they established on a piece of paper. Now, that paper still hangs in the meeting room where the Tmall management team meets, but Tmall is no longer what it was three years ago: during this period, Tmall and Juhuasuan merged, Tmall Supermarket was integrated into the FMCG business group, and in 2018, unprecedented "restructuring" and adjustments were launched. For Jing Jie personally, he also underwent a reconstruction of identity and psychology: visibly, he transformed from a typical multinational corporate manager to one of Alibaba Group's 17 senior executives; invisibly, his business thinking underwent what he calls a "rebirth"—in three years, Jing Jie completed the journey from the "equator" to the "North Pole." Before him, there were also P&G employees within Alibaba, but they did not stand out; after him, the "P&G faction" at Alibaba became increasingly prominent: Dong Benhong, who served as Alibaba Group CMO and concurrently as President of Alimama, had previously worked at P&G; Lin Xiaohai, responsible for Alibaba's Lingshoutong business unit, had 21 years of "work history" at P&G; similarly, Peng Liqi, who joined Alibaba as Vice President in June 2017, was also a P&G veteran of over twenty years. It is said that P&G people at Alibaba have a separate group, now exceeding 200 people—Alibaba can be said to be the internet company with the most "P&G faction" employees. "The increasing number of P&G people shows that Alibaba's work atmosphere, thinking, and cultural system are similar to P&G, and this demonstration effect will become more obvious," analyzed Dai Kebin, founder of Liepin, who is also a P&G alumnus. Behind this is a collective migration from traditional enterprises to internet companies, and a relay in the commercial era from old consumption to new retail. Chart: China Entrepreneur I. Why Alibaba? In 2001, several former P&G employees founded the P&G Alumni Association—to this day, this unofficial organization has absorbed more than 3,000 "members"—they call themselves P&G "graduates." The destinations of "graduates" (excluding entrepreneurship) have roughly gone through three stages: around 2000, the first wave of departures from P&G occurred, with most choosing to go to similar multinational companies; later, as the comparative advantage of Chinese enterprises increased, many switched to private or state-owned enterprises; in the last five or six years, as internet companies entered the stage of organizational maturity and standardization, BATJ became popular destinations for P&G "graduates." According to Huang Yong, president of the P&G Alumni Association, Tencent now has over a hundred P&G employees, JD.com has dozens, while Baidu has very few—for P&G people skilled in marketing and product operations, companies with better integration of business and technology are more suitable. Alibaba has the most—less than 300 people. Among the 17 senior executives announced on Alibaba's official website, two have P&G backgrounds. "P&G has a strong system and many support departments, so generally speaking, the first job for people from P&G is not suitable for very early-stage startups. If it's not a relatively mature system, P&G people will find it hard to adapt," Dai Kebin pointed out. A high-probability event is that most people's first job after leaving P&G ends quickly and doesn't last long. In a popular article discussed internally at P&G, "My 278th Day After Leaving a Foreign Company for a Private Enterprise," the author's first job lasted only one month. She wrote about those "P&G people" who entered private enterprises, "They will be scared by the chaos that hits them. Compared to companies like P&G, everywhere else is 'messy.'" This state is not uncommon in many giant enterprises; their size is inflated by various "trends," but internal organizational construction and personnel management are still on the path to systematization—compared to 180-year-old P&G, they are still too young. Alibaba is one of the earliest companies to carry out systematic construction. In 2001, 52-year-old Guan Mingsheng joined Alibaba, which was only two years old, at Jack Ma's invitation. He had served at GE for 17 years, managing its 360,000-strong workforce. His first impression upon arriving at Alibaba was "chaos"—"There wasn't even an organizational chart. No one could clearly introduce Alibaba, and no one could articulate the company's strategy or development priorities." Subsequently, under Guan Mingsheng's guidance, Alibaba established the "Dugu Nine Swords" corporate culture and sorted out its internal structure and management. According to Guan Mingsheng's later recollection, Jack Ma once told him, "If I ever meet him (Jack Welch), I will thank him for training you to help Alibaba." Later, in 2008, Jack Ma indeed did so. It can be said that GE's management philosophy became Alibaba's earliest management enlightenment, shaping the management foundation of this company that would later grow into an internet "giant." Globally recognized as the "Whampoa Military Academy" for professional managers, besides GE, is P&G. Perhaps it is this connection that makes the migration of P&G people to Alibaba a "phenomenon." Dai Kebin pointed out that without this soil, there would not be so many P&G people because they would not stay. "The culture and values of Alibaba and P&G are almost identical." In his first week at Alibaba, Lin Xiaohai skipped the training videos and went directly to take the values test, scoring full marks, thanks to his "learning foundation" at P&G: Alibaba's performance system "361" (the best employees account for 30%, the middle 60%, and the bottom 10%) is exactly the same as P&G's "281"; Alibaba's evaluation standard for senior executives "433" requires business performance, team building, and cultural promotion to account for 40% and 30% respectively, which is comparable to P&G's requirements—the latter requires these two indicators to account for 50% each. In Lin Xiaohai's view, Alibaba's management truly achieves a combination of Chinese and Western elements. "The entire management system draws on mature Western enterprises, while the management philosophy is Eastern. Teacher Ma influences and permeates through various occasions—classes, speeches." It is also for this reason that Alibaba has absorbed more and more professional managers from different backgrounds, and those who are not native "Alibaba people" still bear a distinct Alibaba imprint. According to Alibaba's classification of employee seniority based on cultural assessment, Jing Jie is now a "three-year aged" employee—internally, such employees are defined as true "Alibaba people." During the one-and-a-half-hour interview, "Alibaba-style slogans" naturally popped out of his mouth: "Because we believe, we see," "Embrace change," "Customer first," "A group of people with feelings and righteousness do a valuable and meaningful thing"—this is already a heavily "Alibaba-ized" person. Alibaba employees also say that Jing Jie is a professional manager with a high degree of fit with Alibaba's culture. Undoubtedly, Alibaba has a strong culture. Jack Ma said at Hupan University: "This company has developed to this point, and its culture is indeed very strong. It's not that the culture embraces you, but that you adapt to this culture." But he added, "After entering this culture, improve it and enrich it." "What many P&G people find hardest to adapt to after leaving is culture, but Alibaba and P&G are both strong yet inclusive cultures. The cultural core is very strong, but it wraps people in a very soft way, a bit like Tai Chi, using softness to overcome hardness," Dai Kebin said. This is different from the strong culture of many private enterprises—the boss's culture is the company's culture, and the boss's will is the company's will. "P&G and Alibaba are like the sea, inclusive; the latter is like a mountain, and if you don't align, you'll hit your head and bleed." Liepin founder Dai Kebin. Photo: Wang Pan II. Jumping Out of the "Professional Manager" Mindset In fact, the emergence of the "P&G faction" is just a microcosm of the growth of Alibaba's professional manager team. Now, more than half of Alibaba's senior management team are external hires; among Alibaba's 17 group executives, only 6 joined before 2000. With Jack Ma's complete "handover," Alibaba has ushered in a milestone moment of professional manager succession. On September 10, 2018, Jack Ma issued an open letter announcing that he would step down as Chairman of Alibaba Group on the occasion of Alibaba's 20th anniversary (September 10, 2019), to be succeeded by current CEO Daniel Zhang, who joined Alibaba in 2007 as CFO of Taobao, later brought a series of key changes to Alibaba, and became CEO of Alibaba Group in 2015. This "transition" is also interpreted by the outside world as the beginning of a new generation of internet companies becoming professional-manager-oriented. But in fact, Zhang Yong and other Alibaba executives are not professional managers in the general sense. Jack Ma has long said that Alibaba does not need professional managers; anyone who considers themselves a professional manager will be eliminated. When Alibaba went public in the US in September 2014, the prospectus clearly stated that it would implement a partnership system, which not only further downplayed the concept of "founder" but also abandoned the professional manager system previously implemented. Zhang Yong is now also an Alibaba partner, and Jack Ma's open letter praised him as an "outstanding business leader" in the talent pipeline under the partnership mechanism. Only by truly understanding this can one understand the impact that "parachuted" executives feel upon arriving at Alibaba. When Jing Jie interviews new employees, the first question he asks is "Why are you here?" Those who do not focus on Alibaba's current business but embrace the evolution of the commercial society and are willing to be excited and work hard for that future are the people suitable for Alibaba; then he will remind them of the challenges they will face after joining, and whether these challenges are what they truly like and are willing to face. "These people have accumulated many successful experiences in traditional or internet industries, but they must accept reset, reconstruction, and re-creation at Alibaba." In other words, can these people with considerable "backgrounds" accept what he calls "a vast expanse of whiteness"—which means blank business, unknown prospects, and even a re-understanding of positions and roles? A person from an internet company said that in multinational companies, a position represents power and territory, but in internet companies, a position is more like an "option." How much say you can win and how many internal resources you can obtain are not pre-arranged but are fought for through repeated business breakthroughs. After being an assistant to Zhang Yong for three months, Lin Xiaohai was assigned to the B2B business group as General Manager of Lingshoutong. Reality made this executive, who managed a business of 30-40 billion at P&G, immediately regretful: at that time, the Lingshoutong business was just starting, with monthly revenue of less than 1 million yuan, no goods, and no warehouse. "I was quite unhappy at first, thinking I was stupid to come here to do this little work." But as he continued, he became more and more excited: in three months, it reached 1.2 billion; in one year, it exceeded 10 billion; in 2018, it covered one million small stores; according to his estimate, in 2019, the business scale of Lingshoutong will exceed 40 billion. Not all professional managers can survive this process. In Huang Yong's view, "P&G people are best at doing from 10 to 100, and can also handle from 1 to 10, but for the pioneering work from 0 to 1, the challenge is very great for them." It can be said that both Jing Jie and Lin Xiaohai are, in a sense, atypical "P&G people." From an internal perspective at Alibaba, Jing Jie is an idealist with realistic thinking: he sees the future but also stands on the ground. Dai Kebin, who worked with Lin Xiaohai for over a year, commented that he is one of the few P&G people who can both do things and is very good at doing business. "He has the characteristics of a founder." This is also a non-quantifiable requirement Alibaba has for its executives, as Lin Xiaohai put it, like an "unspoken rule." "At P&G, just doing the business well is enough, but at Alibaba, that only counts as half, and you can score 3.5 points—which is average," Lin Xiaohai said. In addition, Alibaba emphasizes the idealism behind doing a business: what is the contribution to the corporate vision? Is there technical content in doing this thing? "You need to find a good balance. It's not okay to only focus on business without a future, but it's also not okay to think about the future every day without current output." What needs to be balanced is not only that, but also the risk considerations after shifting from organizational decision-making to self-decision-making, because this not only means fewer constraints but also more responsibility. In large multinational companies like P&G, professional managers are more like nodes on a precisely designed, interlocking production line. A classic practice inside P&G is to require that no matter how complex the matter, it must be written clearly on one A4 page, but at Alibaba, PPT is used. This small difference reflects a stark contrast in decision-making methods: all content is condensed onto one A4 page because everything at P&G requires layer-by-layer approval. No one can say Yes, but everyone can say No, so a project needs to convince many departments before it is finally established. In contrast, Alibaba's decision-making chain is very short: a business unit head like Lin Xiaohai can make decisions on 80% of matters, 95% of matters are resolved at the business group president level, and only 5% of decisions need the CEO. The natural result is that P&G's decision-making is a systematic operation with few errors, and since all departments have approved, if there is a risk, no single department will be blamed. Under Alibaba's decision-making method, the error rate is inevitably higher, and once an error occurs, not only is the business cut, but the responsible person also bears full responsibility. In the view of an executive from an internet company, there is no good or bad between the two management models; it depends on the different development stages of the two companies. "Now Alibaba has fast growth and high profits, and can afford mistakes. But what about when growth slows in the future? Or when the current dozen or so presidents become dozens, can we believe that hundreds of presidents can all make correct decisions? Isn't a control system also needed?" Today, P&G, founded in 1837, has gone through more than 180 years of history and just celebrated its 30th birthday in the Chinese market, while Alibaba is just about to enter its 20th year—less than one-fifth of the 102-year vision Jack Ma expects. These two companies, separated by more than a hundred years, look at each other from afar, yet appreciate each other, observe each other, learn from each other, and even conduct cultural "exchanges" through their shared employees. On August 19, 2018, Matthew Price, President of P&G Greater China, visited the P&G (China) Alumni Association event for the third time. The host joked that he had broken a "mysterious rule" of the alumni association—previously, several P&G executives who attended the alumni association chose to resign afterwards, and the alumni association even dared not invite current P&G employees. In his later speech, Matthew Price said: "You can leave P&G, but P&G will not leave you." Jing Jie, sitting in the audience at the time, must have felt deeply. Before leaving P&G, he had been representing the company in recruitment. At that time, the internet wave had already hit, becoming a formidable opponent in the "talent war" for traditional enterprises. Jing Jie once said to those job seekers, "You will definitely be CEOs in various fields in the future, but no matter where you fly, you should choose to take off from P&G, because it is indeed a company that places great emphasis on culture and focuses on cultivating people." Now times have changed, but he still thinks so. Source: China Entrepreneur Magazine (ID: iceo-com-cn) October 23-24, during the Autumn Sugar and Wine Fair, the "2018 FMCG City Distribution Logistics Conference" hosted by New Distribution will be held. We will invite industry experts, FMCG warehousing and distribution specialists, and distributors who have transformed to unified warehousing and distribution platforms to discuss and answer questions about the future development trends of FMCG city distribution logistics and practical cases of distributor transformation to unified warehousing and distribution, hoping to bring you different inspiration and thinking! The specific meeting topics are as follows: List of Participating Companies In no particular order Hunan Zonglan Diandan Network Technology Co., Ltd. Jingbang (Wuhan) International Freight Forwarding Co., Ltd. Mengniu Dairy Qinghai Hanxiang E-commerce Co., Ltd. Unilever Services (Hefei) Co., Ltd. Shanghai Branch Huicong Hunan Xuan'ang Food Co., Ltd. Guangzhou Tongdaoren Information Technology Co., Ltd. Qingdao 888 Trading Co., Ltd. Uni-President Enterprises (China) Investment Co., Ltd. Hunan Province Zhongxiang Gongpei Logistics Co., Ltd. Shenglong Ingredients COSCO Shipping Logistics Warehousing and Distribution Co., Ltd. Guangxi Yongpai Liquor Industry Co., Ltd. Shangqiu Kangrong Trading Co., Ltd. Jinan Dingzhong Economic and Trade Co., Ltd. Liaoning Bimai Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd. Kunming Xiongjia Trading Co., Ltd. Shaanxi Houheng Trading Co., Ltd. Guangzhou Dingwo Enterprise Information Consulting Co., Ltd. Shaodong Jiajiale Commercial Firm Boda Trading Industrial Bank Changsha Branch Wuhan Muchen Convenience Store Chain Co., Ltd. Fujian Fuxing Yuncang Logistics Co., Ltd. Guizhou Yilimi E-commerce Co., Ltd. Jiangxi Xiao Laoer E-commerce Co., Ltd. Jinshankoufu Shanxi Taihang Yuanjing Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. Shanxi Dezhun Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. Shaoyang Tongdeli Trading (Xiangbang Logistics) Huanfu Tongda Express City Distribution Beijing Xinjingxiang Food Co., Ltd. Wuhan Huizhong Tianhong Liquor Co., Ltd. Changsha Paide Biotechnology Co., Ltd. Chao'an Tuqiang Guizhou Yihe Bopin Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. Jiangxi Kang'en Industrial Development Co., Ltd. Xiangtan County Yisuhe Town Yuhua Paper Store Luoyang Yuanlang Trading Co., Ltd. Tongchuan Yaozhou Huayuan Supermarket Co., Ltd. Hunan Yongfu Jiujiu Trading Co., Ltd. Zhejiang Chengchengtong Logistics Co., Ltd. Chongqing Kaiguo Materials Trading Co., Ltd. Beijing Xianmaixianmai Data Technology Co., Ltd. Hanchuan Qixing Trading Co., Ltd. Tongxin Jiuzhi Trading Co., Ltd. Guizhou Meiguo Guoguo Network Technology Co., Ltd. ...... Representatives of Distributor Transformation (Proposed) In no particular order Rong Jun, Chairman of Jiangsu Huashang City Distribution Network Co., Ltd. Wang Bo, Chairman of Hubei Yijiaren Logistics Co., Ltd. Jiang Shuming, General Manager of Chengdu Xingrenxing Trading Co., Ltd., Sichuan Liu Jichen, Chairman of Shandong Yunbang Warehousing and Logistics Co., Ltd. Tu Mingyu, Chairman of Chongqing Lingyu Consumer Goods Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. Yang Su, Chairman of Guangzhou Zhongshan Wanrong Marketing Co., Ltd. Yuan Xia, Chairman of Sichuan Bajie Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. Li Qiangyun, Co-founder of Hubei Pengdun Meiyitian Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. Zhang Jianyong, Chairman of Henan Xuchang Jiulegou E-commerce Co., Ltd. Ma Haichao, Founder of Hebei Changyi Logistics Co., Ltd. Meng Yucun, General Manager of Hebei (Chengde) Wulian Yuncang Co., Ltd. Zhang Xun, Chairman of Urumqi Su'an Jinchi Logistics Co., Ltd., Xinjiang Zhang Hailing, Chairman of Jilin Sansheng Lianguo Qiang Huitao, Founder of Hebei Dunjie Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. Liao Lei, General Manager of Hunan Damei Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. ...... -END-