Ren Zhengfei, 76, and Zhang Yiming, 37, are standing at a similar intersection.

Since Huawei was added to the US "entity list" on May 15, 2019, Trump said on July 31, US time, that he would ban the operation of TikTok (Tik Tok International Edition) in the United States.

Under the big stick of "sanctions" waved by the US, Ren Zhengfei and Zhang Yiming not only need to think about external contingency measures, but also need to consider how to appease the hearts and minds of the people inside the company.

Sending signals through open letters and media interviews has become a common choice for Ren Zhengfei and Zhang Yiming.

Also against the backdrop of the grand narrative of the Sino-US trade dispute, Ren Zhengfei, who has been low-key and does not speak easily in public for the past few decades, has been forced to say what he seems to have said for the rest of his life in the past six months.

Six days after the United States added Huawei to the entity list on May 15, 2019, Ren Zhengfei gave an interview to the media on May 21.

In the interview, Ren Zhengfei maintained his usual style: clear thinking + like to use case stories. He not only told the story of World War II, but also shared the story of his daughter's childhood learning to dance. But once Ren Zhengfei was also a CEO who liked to "express his feelings with a pen." even compared with Zhang Yiming's rational writing style, Ren Zhengfei's letters can be described as quoting classics and "literary" feelings.

In the gap between geopolitics and the Sino-US trade conflict, Zhang Yiming and Ren Zhengfei, 39 years apart, struggled to survive under the same plight pushed by external forces. In public opinion, Tiktok and Huawei have become brothers tied together.But byte beat is not Huawei, and Zhang Yiming is not Ren Zhengfei.

In addition to the differences between the business model and the international layout, the box lunch finance special starts from the contents of the public interview or the open letter between the founder Ren Zhengfei and Zhang Yiming, and analyzes the price of the two from the text details to understand the similarities and differences behind their writing styles.

1 how to talk about crisis: VS rational Logic of Chinese thinking

Compared with Ren Zhengfei's interview record of more than 30W words, Zhang Yiming's public reply to the Sino-US trade dispute only stays in the employee open letter that has just been released.

On Aug. 3, Byte Jump founder and CEO Zhang Yiming sent an open letter to all members of the company.

Nine paragraphs of the full text have a total of 1144 words. The structure of the article is simple and the train of thought is clear.

Zhang Yiming starts with the TikTok crisis and focuses on the byte beat solution to the crisis. It is worth noting that in the letter, Zhang Yiming not only describes the solutions that have been taken and expected to be taken, but also devotes a lot of ink to analyzing the "byte-beating way of thinking" behind these solutions.

In short, Zhang Yiming is telling everyone in a letter: how and why byte beats think so in a crisis is more like a philosophical question of "who am I?"

This is not the first letter Zhang Yiming wrote to all employees this year. As early as the eighth anniversary of byte jump in March, Zhang Yiming also wrote an internal letter entitled "We can look back on the past, we need to focus on the present, and the future is worth looking forward to." Every year in the past, Zhang Yiming would write at least one internal letter. Zhang Yiming, a software engineering graduate, prefers to "convey feelings with a pen" rather than sitting in front of the media.

On this point, Ren Zhengfei is quite different from Zhang Yiming.

The Meng Wanzhou incident, ban, entity list, spare tire plan, cut-off, the ups and downs of Huawei in the past year all revolve around these key events. Last year, box lunch finance and economics sorted out and analyzed Ren Zhengfei's interview for half a year, and on this basis released an article entitled "what he has said for a lifetime: small data analysis about Ren Zhengfei."

In the article, Box lunch Finance collates several questions that media reporters are most concerned about, which are also frequently asked by different media during interviews: their views and judgments on the Meng Wanzhou incident, the impact of a number of negative events on Huawei, comments on the United States and Trump, and so on.

Ren Zhengfei's answer can be summarized as follows: without comment, the Meng Wanzhou incident follows legal means, and we believe in the openness and transparency of the law; a number of negative incidents are good for Huawei and can restore the spirit of hard struggle. It also allows the United States to make Huawei famous; Trump and the United States are great.

As can be seen in the interview, different from Zhang Yiming's logic of talking about things on a case-by-case basis and how to deal with them, Ren Zhengfei's answers are generally treated coldly, and from the positive and positive expositions, he does not see any negative emotions such as anxiety, tension, fear, and so on. And what we can often see from Ren Zhengfei's expression is the Chinese philosophy, such as good fortune and misfortune depend on each other and do not conflict.

2 perceptual Ren Zhengfei, concise Zhang Yiming

In Ren Zhengfei's early open letters, there is no lack of "how many things rise and fall through the ages."the spring water of the Yangtze River flows eastward", "complains incessantly", "We call for heroes and do not let Lei Feng suffer losses" is written in Ren's style: interesting, approachable but worth pondering over. Ren Zhengfei dabbled in a wide range of life experience, which created his eclectic style of writing.

He likes to design enough eye-catching openings at the beginning of the letter. There are three kinds of methods commonly used by him: the beginning of questions, the beginning of ancient poetry, and the beginning of routine.

In "how can we avoid Ye Gong's love for dragons? In this internal letter, Ren Zhengfei asked at the beginning of the article why Huawei could not retain highly educated people. On the other hand, many of his articles published in Huawei people are fond of opening poems.

Compared with Ren Zhengfei's eclectic style, Zhang Yiming prefers a concise style.Zhang Yiming's internal letters often begin by quoting recent events in byte jumps and quickly explaining the reasons for the letter.

Zhang Yiming even likes to put the core of the full text at the beginning, for example, in the article "We can look back on the past, we need to focus on the present, and the future is worth looking forward to." Zhang Yiming began by saying bluntly, "I want to do a big organizational upgrade at this time." Never dragging his feet, it is Zhang Yiming's consistent style.

If you compare the writing style of other Huawei executives, you will see a side similar to Zhang Yiming.On May 16, 2019, the day after Huawei's list of entities in the United States was published, Huawei President Hu Houyi wrote a letter to employees. Hu Houyi, who was born in science and technology, also tends to be concise.

However, he still has the shadow of Ren Zhengfei. For example, at the end of the letter, Hu Houyi also began to take the sentimental line: "time will lift the mask of hypocrisy, and the sun will shine after the haze," which immediately made the technical man show a warm-blooded side.

3 Zhang Yiming can use mixed English, Ren Zhengfei uses it much less frequently.

In Zhang Yiming's internal letters in the past, it is often mixed with the use of English. For example, in the eighth anniversary letter this spring, in addition to people's names and positions, Zhang Yiming also used nine English.

In his latest letter to employees, Zhang Yiming also directly used the English "We hope to continue to work for the vision of inspire creativity & enrich life" when talking about the company's perspective of the solution. This is related to the fact that there are a large number of overseas talents inside the byte jump. in addition, it is also influenced by Zhang Yiming's reading habits.

Zhang Yiming spoke highly of Welch and Drucker, quoting both views many times in byte-beating internal letters. Even Welch's "win" is often mentioned in Zhang Yiming's letters and speeches.

Many core strategies and thinking of byte jump are directly used in English, which actually reflects the determination of byte jump to become an international company.

Ren Zhengfei does not completely refuse to use English, but he only uses some English words more often. These words are more like a supplementary explanation of Chinese. For example, in Huawei's "letter to all employees" around the 2019 New year, Ren Zhengfei marked English after four key words: security, resilience, privacy, reliability and availability.

In fact, in Ren Zhengfei's interview, he sometimes quotes English a little when talking about some foreign technical ideas or management ideas.

In fact, neither Zhang Yiming nor Ren Zhengfei excluded English company leaders. Ren Zhengfei even said at an internal meeting that he was "still learning English at the age of 58." On the other hand, there are sometimes meetings in pure English inside the byte beat, and Zhang Yiming can easily deal with it without translation.

This is also a microcosm of Chinese enterprises going out in the new era:In addition to the company's business, the company's executive team has gradually become an international transformation.。

4 both Ren Zhengfei and Zhang Yiming like to be organized.

In their many open letters and internal letters, Ren Zhengfei and Zhang Yiming showed strong logic in their thinking.

Zhang Yiming likes to list the key points and tell them one by one. Even do not hesitate to use "1, 2, 3. "such a simple and straightforward" subtitle "way. Such a text structure can be seen in almost every letter written by Zhang Yiming.

In an open letter on August 3, Zhang Yiming listed three aspects when analyzing the logical method of thinking about solutions with byte jumps: 1. User; 2. Team; 3. The company. This structure and Zhang Yiming's concise writing style complement each other and can quickly convey information.

In Ren Zhengfei's letters, he will not use the "1, 2, 3" list as specifically as Zhang Yiming, but many of his open letters and articles can show people a clear structure. Ren Zhengfei likes the in-depth writing style from small to big.

Or in Ren Zhengfei, "how can we avoid Ye Gong Haolong? In this letter, Ren Zhengfei adopted the typical "what, why and how to do it" structure. Although Ren Zhengfei sometimes likes to quote poems and classics, he is by no means a person who pursues gorgeous rhetoric.

In fact, Zhang Yiming and Ren Zhengfei are very similar in this point: to express their ideas clearly in the most effective way. It's just that Zhang Yiming is more inclined to quick and simple effects, while Ren Zhengfei sometimes pursues the emotional appeal of words.

5 eloquent and short and refined

After reading Ren Zhengfei's internal letter, it will always make you feel that "an honest and honest old man sits in front of you and talks about it." This is very similar to Ren Zhengfei's temperament. In Ren Zhengfei's "A letter to New employees", Ren Zhengfei uses the word "you" in the full text. All the company's "management requirements" in the letter read more like the life advice of an elder.

Compared with Ren's style, Zhang Yiming does not pursue the emotions in the text.He seldom uses sensational methods, and almost never uses rendering poems. Zhang Yiming will quickly throw out all his ideas in a very short text. Zhang Yiming's writing style is more like a busy professional manager to quickly explain his task and mission clearly.

It will also make people feel that Ren Zhengfei's article seems more approachable. Ren Zhengfei not only quotes classics and stories, but also likes to talk about his past experiences. He will talk about his experiences when he was young, and even mention his family. "at the beginning of my foundation, I discussed this practice with my father, and I got his strong support. He studied economics. "

Ren Zhengfei will even open the door to his inner world and throw out his confusion and thinking directly in his letter. For example, he dared to say bluntly that "there used to be many princes". He's just a cashier.

Zhang Yiming is actually similar to Ren Zhengfei on this point, except that Zhang Yiming will adopt a more concise approach. "over the past year, we have seen a lot of management problems, and the most direct feedback is the decline in employee engagement and satisfaction statistics. "

He will point out the problem directly, but he will not embellish it with words. When it comes to thinking about byte jumping, Zhang Yiming habitually lists "problems, causes, and solutions." in Zhang Yiming's article, each paragraph is basically solving or answering a question.

Compared with their articles and the company's business, this nuance is even more interesting.Zhang Yiming, who rose through Jinri Toutiao, has influenced countless people who make a living by writing, but his writing style is more like science and technology. Ren Zhengfei, who established his life with a base station mobile phone, seems to be more "straight man of science and technology" in his business, but his writing style is more delicate and soft.