In the sharing, the characteristics and management experience of high-efficiency s&T organization are introduced, and the positioning and mission of s&T team is to support business, empower business, and ultimately lead business. At the same time, the characteristics of future-oriented s&T organization and the ability requirements for managers are also introduced.
Appropriate letter content source | LeaTech CTO global leadership summit, CTO, senior vice President to Jiang Xu share management of large tech team
The speaker | appropriate letter, CTO Jiang Xu, senior vice President
Activity arrangement | ChengFang appropriate letter institute of technology
Introduction: On November 16th, LeaTech Global CTO Leadership Summit was held in JW Marriott Hotel in Beijing. As a high-end social circle of CTO, TECHNICAL VP, technical director and other technical managers, the summit gathered alumni of CTO training camp, CTO tutors and senior technical managers in the industry. More than 600 participants fully exchanged their views and thoughts on such wonderful topics as technical vision, technical leadership, and technical team organization construction. With the help of the offline platform of the summit, technical managers actively explored more business possibilities, expanded their management horizons, and promoted their leadership to a new level.
The summit invitation letter to the appropriate company CTO, senior vice President, to Mr Jiang Xu bring the theme for the management of the large-scale science and technology team to share, to Mr Jiang Xu referred to in the sharing of science and technology team of positioning and mission is to support the business, fu, eventually leading to business operations, at the same time, he also introduces the future of science and technology and the characteristics of capacity requirements for managers.
The following is a transcript of the speech.
Good afternoon, dear friends. Today, my topic is “Management of Large Science and Technology Teams”. I am very glad to share with you some experiences and observations about the management of large science and technology teams.
Last December, I mentioned in my share at another summit that the economic winter, the financial winter, is also beginning to winter this year, but regardless of the environment outside, techies/techies are very lucky. In the market of technology empowerment, techies are always needed and techies are always enthusiastic. In my opinion, the management experience of the technical team is worth sharing and exchanging with everyone.
I. Characteristics and positioning of large science and technology teams
Large tech teams typically have the following characteristics:
- A certain scale. As the name suggests, the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a large technology team is a large number of people.
- Wide geographical distribution. Members of the technology team may be located in different places.
- The team has diverse backgrounds. This diversity includes two aspects: first, the role background is diverse, some members are not even engaged in technology (especially software research and development here), but transferred from other industries, such as industry data analysts. Second, team members have diverse ethnic and national backgrounds.
Due to the characteristics of certain scale, diversified team background and distribution in different regions, large science and technology teams face great challenges in management.
1.1 Organizational structure of science and technology teams in large technology companies
These are some of the most familiar caricatures of the typical technology team structure in a tech company.
- “Google-style team structure” : The top is the two founders and a CEO, and the bottom is the department head, which is characterized by multiple reporting objects at the next level. This is the internal structure and management of Google, which represents the team structure of a technology organization at a certain historical stage from one level.
- “Amazon-style team architecture” : Typical hierarchical management, reporting level by level.
- “Oracle-style team structure” : Features a dedicated legal team, because Oracle has acquired many companies and is to some extent a legal or sales oriented company.
- “Facebook-style team Structure” : Facebook’s team structure, like its business, is a network in the form of a social network.
- The “Apple team structure” :(this is an earlier image) is characterized by the presence of the man at the heart of the company, who runs everything.
- “Microsoft-style team Structure” : The last and previous picture represents the company I worked for, Microsoft. There is no intersection between the three sections of the department, the deep department wall, there is a fierce internal struggle between each other.
It can be seen that the cultural genes of large science and technology companies determine the organizational structure of their science and technology teams, and the design and management of the organizational structure of science and technology largely determine the effectiveness of the organization.
1.2 Mission and positioning of science and technology team
Before discussing the management of the technology team, it is important to know what the mission and positioning of the technology team is.
Many non-technology-driven companies, such as banks, insurance companies and property companies, are planning or trying to become a technology company. I think in this context, technology practitioners should be more aware of their own positioning.
1) Support business
First of all, we support the business and should put the business at the core. If the company relies on products and services to survive, the technology may not be able to do well if the business fails. Of course, different types of companies can not be generalized. For example, Microsoft is a pure technology company. Products and services are technologies themselves, and the quality of technology determines the quality of the company’s business.
2) Enabling business
The science and technology team develops some tools to help business and sales departments to realize the informatization and intellectualization of business processes, making the process of business flow more smooth and friendly. Even further, to develop a good technology platform, enabling the ecosystem, partners and third-party companies to develop business and build an ecosystem on the platform, then the science and technology team will play a role in enabling business.
3) Lead the business
Science and technology teams can also expand new business areas, generate new business models, increase new revenue sources and become a force leading business through technological innovation and product innovation.
These three aspects are mutually reinforcing, supporting, enabling, and ultimately leading the business. The mission and positioning of the technical team is the same in both a technology-driven company and a business-driven company.
1.3 The relationship between technology and business
Positioning determines position, and business development is the ultimate goal. When facing the conflict between overall technology strategy and business strategy, technology implementation node selection, technology and business path matching and other problems, technology managers can think from the following aspects.
1) Resolve the conflict between technology strategy and business strategy.
In addition to the complementary relationship between technology and business, there are also certain conflicts. In fact, we often see the conflict between technology and business in our daily work, for example, business colleagues are anxious to launch a function to do activities; Technology feels that in order to achieve the same goal, we may need good design and architecture, rather than simply creating temporary patches of functionality, which is a very common conflict between technology and business.
Although the technical leader has to keep thinking about the medium and long term strategic layout of the future, this depends on the size, scale and stage of the company. If you are a startup and the priority is survival, then the business needs are the highest priority, addressing system instability, security, or other issues first; But for a certain volume of business, the company’s business has developed to a certain stage, the technical team also has the certain scale, when there is business needs and technology strategy, to meet the urgent needs of the business at the same time, to a certain energy into the basic technology research and development, must do long-term project preparatory, do some of the underlying studies, and even the risk is high.
2) Implementation nodes of technological change
We’re forever on the highway, changing wheels or parts as we go along. Technological restructuring, technological change, the timing and node of technical debt repayment and the impact on the business are another challenge that we are facing and also need to consider for a long time.
Which node chooses which technology? Technical chief grasps new technology to introduce node concretely, difficulty is very big actually. If the new technology is only a year away from commercial value, it must be laid out, budget applied, and team built to promote; If commercialization of the new technology is imminent and competitors are already in the process, then rather than starting from scratch, a better response may be an acquisition or capital move.
3) Technology and business path matching
When new technologies come, the impact and impact on the business will be short, medium and long term. Some technologies are helpful to the new business form in the short term, while some technologies need a long period to have an impact on the business. At this point, the technology leader needs to evaluate the technology itself and match it with the strategic path of the business. If it will help the long-term business, the new technology still needs to be introduced, but the timing and scope of investment may be different.
At the same time, when introducing new technologies for technological innovation, we should also pay attention to the impact of new technologies on the current business. For example, CreditEase, a fintech company, has its own collection department. On the one hand, we collect by regulating the behavior of collectors, and on the other hand, we develop our own collection robots. The appearance of collection robots means that part of the work of collection staff will be replaced. At the same time, one of the characteristics of robots is that there is no emotion, it will communicate with users politely according to the program, which will affect the collection effect and business to a certain extent. So we also have to consider where we can use the robot technology to bring better results. This is also a reflection of the complementary and contradictory relationship between technology and business.
1.4 Science and Technology Strategy
For large science and technology teams, strategic thinking is also very important. Just a few examples.
Examples are several companies I’ve worked for that have made a few different strategic changes at different points in time.
Many years ago, 90% of Windows in China were not genuine, so Microsoft came up with an internal plan to make Windows free in China. The plan now seems simple and easy to understand, and the benefits of free legal Windows are obvious: it’s a great end-user touchpoint, access to more users, analytics and precision marketing based on that user data, and so on. But the head of Microsoft’s Windows division opposed it, saying it would hurt Windows revenue, so the plan was never implemented. This is the problem of strategic thinking. If you do not personally experience the environment and market in China, the strategic decisions you may make may not be accurate, and the result may be the loss of greater development opportunities.
Microsoft’s subsequent cloud transition was a success, while its mobile transition was a failure. In the period of mobile transformation, Microsoft acquired most of nokia’s mobile phone business and developed a Windows operating system based on Windows on mobile phone hardware. Because Microsoft felt that it was a failure not to launch its own phone, and that conquering mobile devices must be based on Windows, it made such a decision and failed. Windows once made Microsoft the winner of the desktop system monopoly, but also made Microsoft fail in the mobile transformation and become a stumbling block to the next development. It can be said that Windows is won and Windows is lost.
Suning, under the impact of Alibaba, JINGdong and other e-commerce companies, is determined to become an e-commerce company. Its strategy is to combine the advantages of its offline stores to become an O2O smart portal, implementing online ordering, offline experience and home delivery, which is an all-channel and all-touch user interaction and service form. As a result, Suning has become one of the few successful cases of “Digital transformation of Traditional Industries in China to the Internet”.
Now that the financial industry is heavily regulated, where should financial firms go from here? Here are some of my thoughts.
Throughout the history of the reform and opening-up, every industry at the beginning of the start is open, anyone can participate, good and evil people mixed up, once the industry appeared, there will be regulatory intervention, the ability is not strong, not compliance will be eliminated, regulatory until after the open again, industry matures, the last surviving for their healthy development. The same is true of the financial sector.
Science and technology colleagues should not only bury their heads in their own work, but also look up to the history and future, and think about the industry we are in. What is the impact of our science and technology work on the company and the industry? What is the future development trend of the industry, which is helpful for our future career development.
Ii. Management practices of large science and technology teams
2.1 Characteristics of successful s&T organizations
Successful tech organizations, whether the aforementioned international tech giants or outstanding Domestic Internet companies, have some common characteristics.
1) Efficient and agile
An excellent science and technology team must be an efficient and agile team that can quickly respond to changes in the needs of users and the market, quickly launch products, get feedback, constantly iterate and update, and meet or exceed users’ expectations.
2) Business thinking
The science and technology team must have business mind and business thinking, because no matter we build systems or make apps, there must be users. We need to really understand the pain points and problems of users, help them solve problems in time, and create value for them.
3) Data-driven
If the work of the technology team only revolves around the requirements proposed by the product manager, the future product roadmap is not enough, it must be based on user feedback, market feedback, daily live, monthly live, retention, transformation and other data to drive the product trend, technology trend.
4) Reform and innovation
A lot of companies are emphasizing change and innovation, and I think this is the environment and atmosphere that technology teams have to create, in many ways, such as organizing various hackathons, communication and sharing between teams, etc. Our company also organizes hackathons. Every month, the business department will have difficult or urgent projects. The technical team and the business team will work together to solve these business pain points, and the results will be immediately applied to the business environment.
2.2 Performance Management
The performance management mechanism has been implemented in Microsoft for many years, and its mandatory 5% and 10% elimination mechanism has been criticized by people, because it makes many teams blame each other and undermine each other. Some employees prefer to be the head of the chicken rather than the tail of the chicken for performance, which forms bad culture and results in the organization. Later, the reward was changed to 5% and 10%, and the result was much better than that of the late ones.
2.3 communication
Communication happens every day, in meetings, big and small. I find that no matter how many meetings are held, the ideas and ideas of senior leaders are not always understood by all colleagues. Due to the communication methods and channels, information cannot reach everyone and needs to be repeated many times.
We can use some informal occasions or social media to communicate. For example, there is a monthly CTO lunch meeting in our company. Each team has the opportunity to sit down and have lunch with me. Through such face-to-face communication, I will put forward some of my opinions or recommend a book to my team members, and they will give me feedback on their pain points and ideas at that time. I think it’s a great mechanism for people to talk face to face in a relaxed environment. I remember when I worked in Cisco, there was also a CEO breakfast meeting. Employees who celebrated their birthdays each month could have breakfast with the CEO, which was also a good way to communicate and interact.
2.4 Team culture
There are many elements in team culture, which I strongly identify with: sense of ownership, sense of urgency and empathy.
2.5 Technical Decision
The business world is full of choices and decisions. As a technical decision maker, sometimes it is difficult to make a decision, and difficult to make a decision means delay, which is taboo for decision makers in large scientific and technological teams. Most of the time, it does not depend on whether the decision you make is right or wrong, but whether you make a decision. If you are a person who is afraid to make decisions, your team will lack a sense of direction and your decisions will be questioned and challenged by the team.
Sometimes even if you make the wrong decision, when you work together to implement it, it is possible to gradually adjust and achieve the right result. Technical managers must be able to make trade-offs by calculating in their brains, defining goals, understanding related parties, analyzing options and pros and cons, and making decisions based on goals, data, and expectations for the future.
2.6 execution
When implementing, we should not forget our original intention. We should focus on the big and start small step by step, run quickly in small steps, iterate quickly, give feedback and adjust in time, and concentrate on the set goal without distractions.
2.7 Ultimate Goal
Finally, the ultimate goal is to hope that the science and technology team can understand the business better than the business, understand the user better than the user, so that the technology itself becomes the core business of the company. In my opinion, if the technology team can play a core role in the company, this is the value of immortality.
A future-oriented science and technology organization
3.1 Review of Microsoft’s three ceos and three organizations
In the case of Microsoft, the culture and technology climate are different at different stages of the same company.
In the first stage, CEO Bill Gates, technology is king, thinks that technology changes the world, code can change the lives of millions of people. This stage produces good products, but also has some negative effects, such as monopoly.
In the second stage, CEO Ballmer, who was the king of performance, required all devices, including mobile phones, TVS and cars, to run on Windows. He also cooperated with Haier to launch smart TV based on Windows. At that time, all ideas and plans that conflicted with Windows were basically killed in the beginning, which also led to the company missing many opportunities for development.
The third phase, CEO Nadella’s, is a more inclusive, empathetic, open and transparent culture that includes open-source technology, offering cloud services, and partnering with competitors like Apple and Google. This kind of open and inclusive atmosphere, let Microsoft be able to rise from the ashes.
3.2 Future-oriented science and technology organizations
What should a future-oriented technology organization look like?
1) Cross-border integration
People from different backgrounds come together in a cross-boundary atmosphere and organization.
2) Digital transformation
Traditional companies are also in the process of digital transformation. At this time, many technical talents will be introduced to help companies complete the transformation with technology and achieve rapid development in the industry.
3) Global sharing and global distribution
Teams form a global team. People from different countries and races form a global team. In Southeast Asia, there is a company integrating Meituan, Didi and Ant Financial to solve the problems of travel, payment and express delivery. This company has a technology team of several thousand people, whose members come from more than 50 ethnic groups and are distributed in the United States, Singapore, Beijing, Indonesia, India and other countries and regions.
4) Technology leadership
In the future, technology teams should not only empower businesses, but also lead businesses.
Such a scientific and technological team needs cross-boundary, global and compound leaders who understand both technology and management; Managers who understand both the business and the industry are well suited to lead future-oriented technology organizations.
The above is all the content I share with you today. In a short time, I mainly introduce some management experience of large science and technology teams in different companies and industries. I hope you can find your position in future-oriented science and technology organizations and become an excellent leader. Thank you.
This article is based on what Prof. Jiang Xu Xiang shared at LeaTech Global CTO Leadership Summit. Please contact us for permission to reprint.