By Alex Ren, Robin. Ly, founder of TalentSeer

This document is dedicated to all Chinese engineers working hard in the United States! Happy New Year!

“Those who know do not speak, and those who speak do not know.”

—— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 56

Editor’s note

The author of this article, Alex Ren, landed in Silicon Valley in 2012 with a sales and marketing background that is rare among Chinese in Silicon Valley. As a Chinese with a business background that is rare in the party, he was confused by a completely different way of thinking. Therefore, in the past three years, I have talked with more than 300 Silicon Valley engineers, deeply aware of the lack of Chinese leaders, and determined to study the nature of leadership and the impact of Chinese and Western cultural deposits on leadership training.

The author believes that compared with Chinese leaders, Indian leaders pay more attention to the transmission of values, the cultivation of communication skills, influence and understanding of business, which are closer to the western definition of leadership. Therefore, if Chinese engineers want to cultivate leadership, they should cultivate stronger soft power, realize the transformation from technical leaders to business leaders, and have a deeper understanding of the social significance of their undertakings.

This paper attempts to explore the following issues:

  1. What is the essence of leadership?

  2. How do cultural differences between Chinese and Indian lead to different leadership styles?

  3. What kind of leaders do companies in a period of change need?

  4. How to develop Chinese leadership?

2,500 years ago, Lao Tzu, an ancient Chinese sage of philosophy, wrote a letter to Guguan, leaving behind a masterpiece of 5,000 words in the Tao Te Ching. One of the sentences, “Those who know do not speak, and those who speak do not know,” illustrates the cultivation methods and effects of the wise men. Lao-tzu believed that a wise man should not be a preacher, but should gain people’s respect through self-cultivation, consistency of words and deeds, and magnanimity.

About 200 years later, another Representative of Taoism, Laozi’s successor Zhuangzi, put forward the idea of “the Inner sage and the Outer King” in zhuangzi, Tianxia. “Inner sage”, that is, the tao hidden in the heart of natural inaction; “External king”, will show the way outside, promote the way of king. “The inner sage and the outer king” means the inner sage’s virtue and the outer king’s politics, that is, the combination of personality ideal and political ideal. Among them, “inner saint” is body, “outer king” is used. Emphasize the importance of internal practice.

But what does this have to do with Chinese leadership in Silicon Valley?

Deep in Silicon Valley, they are used to having Indian executives and even ceos everywhere and few Chinese executives (for example, 10 of the fortune 500 companies in the US in 2017 had ceos originally from India, while none came from mainland China). There must be something special about being at the top of the list of top companies in the high-tech heartland of the world; For a race to achieve such a position in just 20 years, there must be something special! With these thoughts in mind, I took a closer look at two Chinese and Indian tech leaders: Qi Lu, former chief operating officer of Baidu, and Satya Nadella, now chief executive of Microsoft. Both of them are outstanding leaders. The author has no intention to derogate either of them, but only to compare their leadership styles and characteristics as objectively as possible, hoping to inspire readers to think deeply about leadership styles forged by different cultures!

A style comparison of Chinese and Indian high-tech leaders: Lu Qi vs Nadella

Qi Lu vs. Nadella: The Early years

Qi lu, was born in Shanghai in 1961, the age of 5 and 15 years after China s cultural revolution, persecuted by parents, was sent to a town in jiangsu province foster grandfather home, no electricity or running water, eat meat, so malnutrition, physique weak and poor eyesight, so failed to apply for a job as a ship factory, 19-year-old admitted to fudan university, computer science, Since then embarked on a long and brilliant computer research and work.

Six years later, in 1967, Nadella was born in the central Indian city of Hyderabad, the son of a senior government official in British India and after independence. Keen on cricket since childhood, he had little interest in anything else. Unlike Lu qi, cricket, a team sport, has had a huge impact on the development of his personality and leadership style, such as how to motivate his players, how to make the team work together, and even how to build a corporate culture.

The hyderabad Public Schools where Nadella grew up have produced leaders such as Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen and MasterCard CEO Ajay Sinh Banga, as well as parliamentary leaders, academics and writers. The school emphasizes students’ aptitude rather than merit. Nadella doesn’t consider himself the smartest kid, but he was introduced to computers at age 15 and started thinking about software, engineering and the popularity of personal computers. He failed to pass the entrance exam to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), the country’s best technical university, but ended up studying for a master’s degree in computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) after four years in the Munipal Institute of Technology, graduating in 1990.

In 1988, the same year nadella came to the United States, Lu qi met Professor Edmund Clark, a Turing award winner and professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), at Fudan University. With his appreciation and help, Lu qi came to CMU in 1992 to pursue a PhD in computer science and graduated in 1996.

According to statistics, there is a significant difference in the educational level between The Chinese and Indian people in Silicon Valley. After graduation from the Master’s degree, more than 28% of the Indian people go to MBA, while the proportion of the Chinese people, especially those from the Chinese mainland, is only 7.2%, while the proportion of the Doctor’s degree is 28.6%. Obviously, The Indian people pay more attention to business and management. The Chinese attach more importance to research and technology. Like many Chinese and Indian engineers in the US, Qi Lu received his PhD in 1996, the same year Nadella received his MBA.

Education Level of Chinese and Indian in Silicon Valley (%)

The highest record of formal schooling

Chinese mainland

Taiwan

India

High school

0.2

0

0.4

Bachelor’s degree

10.5

15.4

20.8

Master (excluding MBA)

52.2

53.7

40

MBA

7.2

14.9

28

Dr.

28.6

14.9

8.4

other

1.2

1

2.5

A total of

100

100

100

Comparison of Educational level between Chinese and Indian in Silicon Valley

Influenced by Marxist-Leninist thoughts in his childhood, Lu Qi dreamed of becoming a philosopher, believing that only philosophers were the best able to solve various problems in the world. However, due to the pressure of life and employment, I originally wanted to choose physics, but changed my major to computer because my eyesight could not meet the requirements. Much of his life changed due to the complex background of The Times. But in his beliefs, like other Chinese literati of his generation, Lu qi is a blend of traditional Chinese literati and Silicon Valley tech engineers: reserved, elegant, never aggressive, low-key, aggressive, and self-affirming.

Unlike most Indians, Nadella has never been deeply religious. Instead, he believes that each of us is born free, and that people should be judged by what they do and how hard they work, not by what they have. The young Nadella, who had seriously considered a professional career in cricket, learned some principles of leadership. The first was to compete relentlessly and with passion in the face of uncertainty and threat. The second principle is to place the team above individual status and glory; The third principle is that leadership first inspires confidence in the team members it leads. Those early experiences have shaped the two leaders’ different styles: Lu qi is quintessentially Traditional Chinese, with his emphasis on inner cultivation, while Nadella emphasizes competition, teamwork and leadership.

Career: Development period

Lu qi had a smooth career. Two years after joining IBM, he was soon invited by yahoo, a popular company at the time, to participate in the development of Yahoo’s search and lead the development of search advertising technology. Eight years later, in 2006, he was appointed senior vice president of search engine development and promoted to executive vice president.

Nadella worked at Sun Microsystems, developing desktop software such as email, six years before Lu, and joined Microsoft in 1992 to work on its flagship 32-bit Windows NT operating system. Nadella stayed through his MBA program on weekends. His daily routine involves visiting customers around the country and persuading companies to use Microsoft’s operating system. Then he moved to Xerox PARC, the prestigious innovation center in Silicon Valley, where he developed video-on-demand technology.

In 2008, while PC shipments stalled, search and online advertising revenue continued to grow, driven by then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Appointed by Ballmer, Nadella took over as head of the online search and advertising business that became Bing.

Since then, two people had substantial contact and cooperation, and began long-term cooperation. In 2008, Nadella, Steve and shen Xiangyang, then the head of Microsoft’s AI division, traveled to Silicon Valley to invite Lu to join them, and Nadella agreed to report to Lu himself.

After Qi Lu joined Microsoft, the company broke the tradition of a product cycle of three years, and accelerated to update every three months, so that Microsoft now has daily updates. Since then, Bing’s share of the search engine market has grown from less than 8% in 2008 to more than 20% at the time of his resignation in 2016. Based on this technology, Bing has developed Microsoft xiaoice and other basic ai-related technologies, laying a solid technical foundation for Microsoft’s AI layout today.

In 2010, while Lu led the development of the Bing search engine, Nadella was given the opportunity to lead the Server & Tools group, which led to products like Windows Server and SQL Server, and grew it into the cloud and Enterprise business, which is now Azure.

As a Young man, Nadella was impressed by a book called “Young Men and Fire” (Norman Maclean), in which 12 firefighters die because they don’t follow their captain. During his time in charge of the cloud, Nadella identified building team consensus and fostering trust and credibility as his most pressing task. First, he made Azure one of Microsoft’s main businesses, challenging Amazon’s AWS. Second, they challenged Microsoft’s longstanding rigid culture, such as rejecting open source software, renaming Windows Azure to Microsoft Azure, and announcing support for the Linux platform. Under his strong leadership, Microsoft’s cloud business went from just a few million dollars in revenue in its earliest days to more than $4 billion in 2014, and even surpassed AWS in revenue to $26 billion within 12 months in October 2018.

Leading change: At the peak

In 2016, After three years at Microsoft as executive vice president leading the apps and services business, Lu announced his departure, and a few months later joined Baidu as chief operating officer to lead a more determined shift toward AI.

Lu is known for his diligence in the workplace, waking up at 4 a.m. to exercise and working late into the night. He is strict with himself, even at the vice president level, to understand at least two levels of product code under his management, to avoid being fooled, he says. After joining Baidu, he began to pay more attention to products and markets.

Lu qi’s management style is a mode of “Pacesetting”, in which he first leads by example, not only understanding himself, but also being good at challenging his subordinates to make them think better and encourage them to make the best decisions on their own. Lu Qi infected a large number of engineers with his personality charm and hardworking spirit, and was deeply respected and loved by them.

Nadella went on to a 25-year career at Microsoft. His leadership in the cloud business was recognized by Microsoft’s board. In 2014, Nadella was given the job of CEO of the then 30-year-old tech company at a time when Microsoft was facing opportunities and challenges in mobile, the cloud and, later, AI.

On February 4, 2014, the two Microsoft ceos announced Nadella as Microsoft’s successor as CEO

But Microsoft is sick and its employees are burned out. Nadella realized that first he had to find Microsoft’s soul and restore its culture. He advocates “growth thinking” rather than “fixed thinking”. He believes that the key to cultural change is personal empowerment, so that everyone becomes an independent thinker and innovative individual. He believes there are three principles of leadership: first, to send a clear message to those you work with; Second, leaders generate energy; Third, find a way to succeed and make things happen.

He emphasized “empathy,” which means “compassion,” plus mutual understanding. This has a lot to do with what happened to his personal family life. As his son suffered severe cerebral palsy due to prenatal asphyxia, nadella and his wife spent a lot of time in hospitals and intensive care centers, so he became an empathetic leader who valued the social value of technology and products, and sought to find the social significance of each product.

Nadella wants Microsoft to create more value for society, inspiring employees, partners and customers. As for partners, he broke the decades-long rivalry between Apple and Microsoft by boldly announcing Support for Apple’s Office platform and partnering with Apple to make Microsoft’s Office and enterprise services products more widely available to Apple’s user base.

Unlike Qi Lu, who left Baidu in 2018, Nadella’s transformation of Microsoft over the past five years has been unquestionably successful. Under Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft has grown from more than $270bn in 2014 to more than $800bn today as the most valuable public company, adding more than $500bn in value in four years.

Microsoft’s market value change chart

Qi Lu vs. Nadella: The difference between leadership

In his interview with Y-Combinator, Lu qi mentioned four principles he believes in:

  1. Learn daily and treat yourself as software that is constantly improving and updated every day

  2. Be loyal, tell the truth, keep your promises, admit your mistakes

  3. Frugal, each share of resources can be used in a better way

  4. Commit and execute. Only do what you are 100% committed to focusing on

He is certainly the best performer and employee that every CEO dreams of! His striver image is the best booster for any thriving enterprise! The problem is, Baidu wants to lead change! So what makes Lu qi different from nadella, a leader who specializes in leading change?

8 Steps to Change Leadership

In His book Leading the Change, Harvard Business School professor John P. Kotter identifies eight steps needed to lead change, Create a sense of urgency, Build a Guiding Coalition, Form a strategic vision and Initiatives, Enlist a volunteer army to Enable action by removing barriers and Generate short-term wins, Sustain acceleration of change and make reform part of organisational culture.

Compared with Qi Lu’s focus on technology management and execution, Nadella undoubtedly has an advantage in reinventing culture, building values, finding consensus, and strategically building a change team. However, Lu Qi, who grew up as a technical leader, believed in self-cultivation, the so-called “inner saint and outer king”. He used his stronger understanding and executive power to promote reform. However, if there is no coherent reform alliance, it is difficult to push forward the complex reform process by himself.

Definition of Leadership

Four state

In my opinion, leadership can be divided into four levels:

  1. Lead Yourself: This stage involves a long learning process, from birth to work, and often leads to greater intelligence and discipline

  2. Lead others (Lead) : beginning to enter the school, each of us need to influence their parents, teachers and classmates, joining the workforce needs influencing bosses, colleagues and customers, this stage need more communication and influence, the need to better their ideas to others, the role of emotional intelligence and communication skills will be greater

  3. Lead for change: For a company in crisis, change is often fatal, and the DNA of the original team is hard to change, so a strong leader is crucial! Change leaders need strong charisma, crisis management skills, political skills and decisive decision-making.

  4. Lead for results: To achieve operational results in a larger scope and at a higher level is the highest realm of every company leader. A target leader requires long-term determination, strong will, a team and a team of trust, so willpower is very important.

Although leadership by purpose is the highest form of leadership, it often involves complex changes. And that change will require strong politics. In the eyes of Chinese engineers, politics is often regarded as a derogatory word. In fact, there must be politics among the three. It cannot be avoided. Instead, we need to use politics to achieve positive ends. Members of a team with the same goals, promoting positive values, and achieving good goals are the positive energy politics can give! And politics, which requires studying the psychology and appeal of everyone you meet, is an ability that every leader needs to develop!

In this light, Nadella is both a good change leader and a good target leader; For Lu Qi, leadership by goal is his strong point, but it is not his strong point to reform a complex organization, stick to a firm goal for a long time and form a strong, coordinated and unified united front.

Leadership thinking: Handling things vs Handling people

Most Of the Chinese who come to the United States start by studying engineering. Long-term academic training has developed their super logical thinking ability. They pay attention to principles, processes and data, and their logical reasoning is interlinked.

However, when we enter the workplace, we find that we need to communicate with people, except engineers, because it is easier to communicate with people with the same background. When we communicate with others, we find that thousands of people have different personalities. Therefore, Handling people is more like art, and it is necessary to understand the personality characteristics, preferred communication methods and even values of the other party in communication.

The Handling people need to stimulate their potential on the basis of understanding each individual’s appeal and psychology. If everyone in the organization can stimulate their potential, the organization will have a strong ability to execute and learn. So leaders can’t use authoritarianism. Using authoritarianism will only scare people, not inspire them. If a person wants to give full play to his potential, it must not be caused by external pressure, but his own motivation is highly consistent with the goal of the organization, so he is willing to give full play to his ability and creativity. If there are a large number of such talents in the organization, he can be strong and fearless!

Chinese leadership development: Three steps

Start with more frequent, positive communication

The Chinese believe in Lao Tzu’s philosophy: those who know do not speak, and those who speak do not know. Think this is the ideal cultivation attitude of the wise, before they do not have a deep understanding and repair, should not boast, in order to avoid others to see their shortcomings.

Therefore, we Chinese put forward opinions and questions prudently at meetings. Therefore, it is not easy for us to greet strangers at parties. So when we are in crisis, we don’t dare to take the initiative to try! Chen Sheng and Wu Guang are “rather brave”, not because they are appointed as leaders, but because they help and influence others on a daily basis. When they raise their arms, millions of people will respond!

I often talk to engineers in Silicon Valley who want to become leaders or entrepreneurs. I ask them, how much power do you think you have? How many good people do you think you have with you? As everyone knows, these influences are fundamental to the success of a start-up company. Without a strong enough team, your probability of success will be greatly reduced.

Indians in Silicon Valley are the most motivated and communicative community in the world! They started with the earliest entrepreneurs, such as Sun Microsystem’s Vinod Khosla, and later founded Kholsa Ventures to actively invest in and cultivate Indian entrepreneurs, making this group a silicon Valley power in a very short time!

Stones from other mountains can attack jade! We should not complain, we should speak out, we should reach out, we should dare to act! That’s the essence of leadership! This is the 5000 years of culture to shape the wise man dare to lead the world, brave to be the forefront of the spirit!

From technology leaders to business leaders

Besides courage, the next thing we need is wisdom and ability. In my opinion, for more than a decade, the most difficult breakthrough for Us Chinese in the American workplace is the upgrading from technical leader to business leader. It’s hard to become a CEO-level leader if you can’t reinvent yourself at the operational level and have a say in strategy. In my opinion, efforts should be made from the following three aspects to achieve the ultimate transformation:

  1. Understand the business: Understand the business context of your work, no matter how detailed you are, and try to understand the business and technology at the highest level of the company to figure out just how important it is. Why do you do that? If you were the CEO, how would you define and implement the strategy for your products? Finally, be sure to understand the DNA of your company.

  2. Get close to the client: Try to get close to the client. The reason a business exists is to be able to solve the problems of customers or users. A long-term focus on technology implementation ignores market sensitivities and fails to gain a deep understanding of the product’s DNA. Try to do some work close to the client side, even try to do sales and marketing work, will develop their business and market sensitivity, help to become a qualified business leader.

  3. Unity of purpose: Will try to understand the company’s strategic goals, your goals consistent with the goals of the enterprise, to be your boss, your CEO think important things,, success largely depends on his leadership in the success of cloud services business, because of what he did is the fundamental and Microsoft in the future, so when Microsoft needs a new CEO, is ready.

Focus on developing communication skills and influence

During the transition from technical leader to business leader, I also need to exercise my communication skills and cultivate my influence. David Rubenstein, private equity king and founder of Carlyle Capital, once said that leaders have three levels of competence. The first level is to strive to get things done and prove themselves with actions. The second level is to speak out to influence others and persuade others to follow you. The third level is to write it out, to influence the whole community in a larger and more profound way!

Chinese engineers in the United States are usually able to do the first level — to do things well. Few are able to do the second and third levels well. This is the fundamental reason why we see so few Chinese leaders today!

Do things well at the same time, the use of language and pen, will pass their ideas to colleagues, partners, customers in the heart, you will establish their own united front, you are ready to become a better leader!

5000 years of culture, laozi, Confucius, Zhuangzi and other sages deeply imprinted in our thinking, when we are deeply in the very different western cultural atmosphere, try to use more inclusive mentality, more positive to learn and socialize, is the only way to self-sublimation!

About the author

Alex Ren

Ly, a silicon Valley-based video content platform for Chinese engineers, founder of TalentSeer, an AI talent service company, and managing Partner of BoomingStar Ventures. TalentSeer is a leading AI and executive search firm in the US, reunderstanding and defining the role of talent through investment, industry analysis and other dimensions. TalentSeer has built silicon Valley teams for over 100 high-tech companies. Robin. Ly is an influential video sharing platform in Silicon Valley. It serves tens of millions of Chinese engineers around the world.

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