Editor’s note: This article is from the official wechat account “Sequoiacap”. 36 Krypton distributed by license.

Entrepreneurs ask tough questions. Because everyone wants to find a solution to a problem that they are struggling with day and night.

In a recent communication activities, in the face of redwood part Family member enterprises, founder of the ceos, yi-ming zhang humorously tells the story of his first entrepreneurial experience, before the creation of today’s headlines, he has been “experience” internal various roles: big company core employees, partners, employees, startup company backbone, CEO… In his opinion, it was these experiences that gave him a holistic understanding of “entrepreneurship” and accumulated a lot of thoughts for future company management, which directly influenced the establishment and development of Toutiao.

“We moved quickly in the early days, the management of the company was relatively smooth, and we wasted little time,” Zhang says. “I also had a better idea of what I needed when looking for a team.”

All the problems of a company are people’s problems, and “finding people”, “employing people”, “managing people” and other “people” related topics also became the key words of the day.

What are some tips for building a team? How do you tell if someone is “awesome”? How to build an effective organization? How to cope with the management challenges of a large team in the process of company growth… The founders and ceos of Sequoia Family members shared their experiences and perplexities, and did not miss the opportunity to ask Zhang Yiming. Zhang took Toutiao as an example to introduce toutiao’s “hiring method”. The following is a list of notes compiled by Sequoia.

Break the mold by not sticking to your background

Q: What are the characteristics of the Toutiao team and what are the strategies when building the team?

Zhang Yiming: Toutiao has a diverse team. They come from different industries and fields and have their own specialties. And we value people more for who they are than for their major or background. For example, our HR director used to be an early stage investment practitioner. Some people ask, why is he qualified to work in HR? HR is to examine human nature, and as an investor, he has a strong ability of “judging people” and “selecting people”. It seems that his major is not right, but in fact, he is a perfect match.

So I also think that companies can break the mold only if they are less obsessed with the “background” of talent.

Mobilize collective intelligence

Q: What are the characteristics of Toutiao in terms of talent management?

Zhang Yiming: We advocate the “self-drive” of talents and unleash collective wisdom. Because the value of an enterprise lies in division of labor and cooperation, and division of labor is to let a person as far as possible to do their own responsible work well.

Pay attention to talent fundamentals

Q: When selecting talents, how do you evaluate their management ability?

Zhang Yiming: I pay more attention to the fundamentals of a person, that is, moral character, emotional intelligence, mind, enthusiasm, but management ability can be cultivated. In addition, I will also focus on the knowledge reserve and self-study ability of a person during the interview. I believe that as long as one’s fundamentals are good, management ability will not be a big problem.

Learn the case of good companies

Q: What management books do you read?

Zhang Yiming: There are two categories. The first category is the case of big companies, which is also the subject that our company will pay attention to internally. What are the successes of those good companies in the world? Our team needs to take stock; Classic management books, such as Those by Welch and Drucker, are also worth re-reading.

# Not being “nice” #

Q: How to deal with the situation that some talents fall behind due to the rapid development of the company?

Zhang Yiming: Adjustment. You either move the person or, if you have to, you let him go. In such cases, we will “open up”. We should focus on the matter rather than the person. Never be a “nice person”. The longer you put it off, the more negative it becomes.

# Look at the company from the outside

Q: Yiming, how do you spend your time? How much is focused on products and how much is focused on other businesses?

Yiming Zhang: Actually, I spend most of my time looking at the company from an external perspective. When we look at other companies, we often see many problems, but when we stand on the inside, we often don’t see the whole picture of our own company, so “look outside yourself.”

I only look at three things about products:

  • Data;

  • Product experience;

  • Ask users regularly for feedback.

As long as we grasp these three points, I don’t think there will be a big problem. As for specific product details, I think as A CEO, you can’t do better than others with just a little effort, which also depends on collective intelligence and teamwork.

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In fact, Zhang Yiming has expounded his “Context, not Control” management method on many previous occasions. He thinks the difference between Control and Context is that

Control is equivalent to treating the CEO as a supercomputer. The CEO does the strategic design, puts forward the strategic plan, and then executes it layer by layer. In the process of implementation, if there is any situation, I will report to the CEO again. The CEO will summarize the information and set the task again. In this process, there are approval, procedures and many management mechanisms.

Context means having more people involved in decision-making, allowing more ideas to flow from the bottom up, rather than top-down strategic decomposition. This process requires more people to make judgments based on Context rather than following instructions.

In his opinion, simple Control will not only bring strategic problems, but also lead to slow response of enterprises due to the pursuit of a sense of Control. Control can only be useful when three things happen:

  • In case of emergency or priority projects;

  • In the early stages of innovative businesses and new divisions;

  • When there is a mismatch between talents and positions.

In general, Context has obvious advantages:

  • Involving more people in decision-making and harnessing collective wisdom;

  • Work can be performed more quickly because layers of aggregation are not required;

  • Let more colleagues directly face the industry, will make more information, more diversified perspectives;

  • Enhance employee engagement to stimulate creativity;

  • Easy to produce scale effects.