Liu Qiangdong once again stood in front of the stage, while JD.com 's "troika", which was established during his retreat behind the scenes, was dismantled and reorganized.

At the secondary listing ceremony in Hong Kong on June 18, 2020, the person who led the team to ring the bell at the C position was JD.com retail CEO Xu Lei. At that time, on both sides of Xu Lei, one was Chen Shengqiang, CEO of JD.com Mathematics, and the other was JD Logistics, Inc. CEO Wang Zhenhui. Liu Qiangdong was at JD.com headquarters at that time, but did not show up.

Today, half a year later, Chen Shengqiang and Wang Zhenhui are either transferred or left, and only Xu Lei is still holding his ground.

At the same time, Liu Qiangdong returned to the front line of business at the end of 2020 and personally led a team to fight the battle of community group buying.

The story of spitting out the old and accepting the new is also staged in JD.com once again. Yu Rui, the new JD Logistics, Inc. CEO, became JD.com 's youngest executive and the first Guan Peisheng to enter the core executive level. Represented by Yu Rui, this group of Guan Peisheng, who were placed high hopes by Liu Qiangdong, began to come to the fore in JD.com 's huge system.

Throughout the history of JD.com, business split and reorganization, senior management rotation, management Peisheng training, together constitute the three axes of JD.com governance by Liu Qiangdong. And behind the core factors, can not be separated from a person word.

"I can't think of the second factor," Liu Qiangdong shared his experience in an early interview, pointing out that the success and failure of enterprises are mostly due to people.

And the most important person for JD.com is always Liu Qiangdong."if one day I really lose control of JD.com, then I will just sell it, quit completely, and take the money and go. This is the bottom line I set from the very beginning of JD.com 's establishment. "

Liu Qiangdong and Qian Gang are arbitrary, which is the most distinct gene of JD.com.After the Mingzhou incident, Liu Qiangdong once disappeared behind the scenes, and JD.com 's senior management team led by Xu Lei appeared frequently in public view, which inevitably created an impression to the outside world that JD.com reversed the arbitrary gene to a certain extent. ushered in the era of collective governance of professional managers.

Now it seems that this is obviously not the case. Of course, whether the corporate governance structure is appropriate or not, collective decision-making is not necessarily better than Qiangang arbitrariness.For JD.com, returning to genes is not a bad thing. Liu Qiangdong takes bold steps to adjust executives and organizational structure like playing with building blocks, which is undoubtedly conducive to enhancing executive effectiveness and combat effectiveness. However, to return to Qiangang's arbitrariness, JD.com is also bound to bear the inherent risk in his genes.

Who can tell the difference between gain and loss?

A

After more than two years of silence, Liu Qiangdong returned to public view with the help of community group buying. LatePost reported later that at the morning meeting of JD.com executives on November 30 last year, Liu Qiangdong directly proposed that he would personally lead the team and lead JD.com to do a good job in the community group buying battle.

In view of the Jingxi business group, which is competed by users in the sinking market, it was split and independent from JD.com 's super total channel business group in December, and reorganized the new channel business department, community group purchase business department, No.1 store business department, and the new person in charge Li Yalong, reporting directly to Liu Qiangdong.

Split reorganization is a common option for Internet giants, including JD.com, to develop new business.However, compared with BABA's complex retail system and numerous hills in the same city, the adjustment of JD.com (as well as Meituan and Pinduoduo) appears crisp and efficient. It cannot but be admitted that it is Liu Qiangdong's arbitrary JD.com gene that plays a role. or, to put it another way, JD.com is still enjoying the "founder dividend."

Liu Qiangdong's 78.5% voting decision-making power created JD.com 's arbitrary gene. This arbitrary governance system eliminates the tedious and complicated internal decision-making mechanism and helps JD.com to develop efficiently in locking in new business.

Before the battle of community group buying, whether JD.com comprehensively transformed online e-commerce in 2004, or decided on full-category expansion and self-built logistics in 2007, JD.com gene played a positive and key role.

The last two strategic changes that took place in 2007 were even appraised by today's capital Xu Xin as "the two most important decisions Liu Qiangdong made in JD.com." "

In these two changes, Liu Qiangdong left a well-known joke: at a strategy meeting, Liu Qiangdong announced that he had invested heavily in establishing a logistics system, while JD.com was not yet profitable at that time. An executive expressed objection, Liu Qiangdong said to the executive: "this gentleman, I did not invite you to prove that my decision is wrong, I invited you to implement my decision in place, implement it!" If there is any difficulty, you must find a way to finish it. When the meeting was held again a week later, the executive had disappeared.

At the same time, it is also helping JD.com to delay the disease of large companies that is bound to be caused by bloated organizations.

This is the case with JD.com Finance, which was set up in September 2013, as is the JD.com Logistics Sub-Group established in April 2017, and JD Health, which just completed its listing last year, will operate independently in May 2019.

After Xin Lijun joined JD Health CEO, Liu Qiangdong once said to Xin Lijun, "I am not sure how much I can do in the field of health for the time being, but if I do it well, it is tantamount to creating another JD.com. "

At present, JD Health has a market capitalization of 455 billion Hong Kong dollars, while JD.com Group has a total market capitalization of 1.076 trillion Hong Kong dollars. Liu Qiangdong's split plan has been recognized by the capital market.

An interesting detail is that after Liu Qiangdong stepped down as JD.com 's legal representative and chairman in February last year, the post of chairman was briefly handed over to Yu Rui. But the place where Yu Rui became famous in the first World War was in logistics. As a representative of the 2008 session of Guan Peisheng, Yu Ruimin realized that the newly formed logistics was the only department where he had the opportunity to lead a big team in JD.com at the end of the rotation.

Yu Rui, 28, became general manager of East China in 2013. After JD.com was listed on NASDAQ in May 2014, Yu Rui was promoted to JD.com 's youngest vice president. Now, Yu Rui has become JD.com 's youngest core executive.

B

However,The black swan incident in Mingzhou made everyone have to face up to the hidden risks in JD.com 's gene.And start to solve it.

In fact, for Internet companies with a history of only 20 years, it is a common phenomenon that the founder-or department leader-- Gan Gang is arbitrary. BABA, JD.com 's old rival, has also encountered the same problem, but with a lower intensity.

Fan Luyuan, president of BABA Entertainment, used to be a leader like Liu Qiangdong.

Before devolving to BABA Pictures in 2016, Fan Luyuan had been president of Alipay for a decade. Without his quick judgment and decisiveness, the two landmark businesses of Express payment and Yu'e Bao-- not only for BABA and Ant, but also for the Internet finance industry as a whole-- would not have gone so smoothly.

Zhou Xiaoming, general manager of Tianhong Fund, met Fan Luyuan for the first time in December 2012. As soon as he was halfway through the idea of "Amway" Yu'e Bao, Fan Luyuan waved and interrupted: "I see, this can be done!" "

Why don't you have a good time? It's the salesman's dream boss.

The bold and arbitrary style is like a dragon knife, which is extremely efficient for developing business, but when Alipay's volume expands rapidly and "reform enters the deep water zone", this style gradually reveals its anachronism.

Ant Financial Services Group was aware of this for a long time, and a senior official told the alphabet half-jokingly that the ant had run a "zero EQ class" and sent Fan Luyuan to the past in the first phase. However, Qiangang arbitrary surface is a style, in fact, is a personal decision-making mechanism, the main factor affecting decision-making will not be the level of EQ or not.

When the circle storm broke out in 2016, Fan Luyuan resigned sadly, and Alipay immediately implemented the class committee system. Jing Xiandong, then CEO, took the lead, and the team made collective decisions. All important measures must be agreed by all the class committees before they can be implemented.

It is obvious that such a decision-making mechanism will lead to inefficiency. A senior official of Alipay readily admitted that although the efficiency of collective decision-making is low, it ensures that there will be no mistakes to the greatest extent, and the arbitrary decision-making mechanism of Qiangang, "success is magnificent, but mistakes will also be vigorous." when Alipay was founded, it had a higher tolerance for mistakes because of its small scale and small responsibility, and then the volume expanded to a huge thing, and the importance of risk prevention and control was immeasurably increased.

The storm in Mingzhou is not vigorous. It goes without saying the scale and influence of JD.com. Outsiders found that Liu Qiangdong's arbitrary decision-making mechanism, which had repeatedly worked before, was in danger of paralyzing JD.com: JD.com 's internal terms stipulated that the board of directors should not hold formal meetings without Liu Qiangdong's attendance.

When the situation reached this point, it became an urgent task for JD.com to carry out "genetic modification" and adjust the governance structure to eliminate risks to the greatest extent.

C

In fact, Liu Qiangdong has long been aware of the risks of Qiangang's arbitrariness.

In 2012, at the stock promotion meeting on the eve of the company's listing, Liu Qiangdong talked behind closed doors with Liu Chuanzhi, Lei Jun and other bigwigs, expressing his deep concern: "the biggest risk of a large enterprise, I think, comes from the founder." "

With the implementation of the split strategy of "small groups, big business", the largest adjustment after the establishment of JD.com 12 years ago was unveiled, and a large number of external professional managers with glamorous resumes, backgrounds from famous overseas schools, and experience from famous foreign companies parachuted into JD.com.

Shen Haoyu, former senior vice president of Baidu, Inc., was the first CXO to join JD.com. In August 2011, he served as JD.com COO. Subsequently, Wang Yaqing, former vice president of Oracle, served as JD.com CTO, he Gang, former head of cloud computing, served as technology vice president and chief scientist of JD.com Mall, and Lan Ye, former executive vice president of Acer Group in China, served as long Yu, former senior vice president of CMO,UT Starcom, as CHO.

In April 2014, one month before the listing, JD.com confirmed the personnel arrangements for the pre-IPO restructuring: Liu Qiangdong, founder of JD.com, served as CEO of JD.com Group, and JD.com Mall CEO, a subsidiary of Shen Haoyu.

During the joining period, Shen Haoyu promoted the growth of JD.com 's transaction size from less than 30 billion yuan to more than 460 billion yuan in 2015, a beautiful career and outstanding position contribution, which made Shen Haoyu become the No.2 person recognized by the outside world.

Liu Qiangdong also spoke highly of external professional managers during this period: "in the whole listing process, I only did 1% of the things, 99% of the things were done by CFO and other colleagues." "

During that time, it became the honeymoon period for Liu Qiangdong and these professional managers. Liu Qiangdong repeatedly stressed to the outside world that he would fully delegate power, and even revealed to the media that "tens of millions of bills no longer need to be signed by me."

But with the departure of Shen Haoyu from the CEO of JD.com Mall in August 2016, professional managers like JD.com collapsed.

Liu Qiangdong tried to modify the JD.com gene of this game, obviously did not run through.

One of the risks disclosed in JD.com 's 2019 financial report still comes from "Mr. Liu Qiangdong, Chairman and CEO of the company, has considerable influence on important corporate affairs. This may prevent others from seeking any useful purpose of changing the control of trading. "

Taking the Mingzhou incident as a turning point, Liu Qiangdong, riddled with negative public opinion, was forced to retreat behind the scenes, and local veterans entered key posts one after another.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2019, Liu Qiangdong, who was absent for the first time, pushed Xu Lei, Chen Shengqiang and Wang Zhenhui to the stage. This is also the first collective appearance of the head of JD.com 's "troika" business.

Even in June 2020, when JD.com Group went public in Hong Kong for the second time, Xu Lei stood in front of the stage instead of Liu Qiangdong to entertain guests from all sides. Xu Lei vaguely has the demeanor of the new generation of JD.com No.2.

In less than half a year, in the former "iron triangle" pattern, those who changed jobs and those who left left, only Xu Lei remained at the poker table.

The feeling that "JD.com will always be the JD.com of Liu Qiangdong alone" was mentioned by the media again.

The former "iron triangle" also had a sense of mission in the face of danger in response to the complex and changeable situation in the special period.When everything returned to normal, JD.com 's innate genes gained the upper hand.

D

One of the reasons Liu Qiangdong pointed out when he introduced external professional managers in 2011 was that "many employees are complaining that there is something wrong with internal communication and coordination." "

Before Wang Zhenhui JD Logistics, Inc. was abruptly removed from his CEO post in 2020, JD.com employees were also complaining about internal communication problems.

From the management's point of view, the poor communication reflects the poor implementation of the company's top instructions, and the problem obviously lies with the middle and senior leaders.

Where to find executives who can 100% implement the will of Liu Qiangdong?

The answer given by JD.com is "Guan Peisheng Plan".

This policy, which JD.com adhered to for 14 years, was evaluated as the most satisfactory plan for JD.com by Liu Qiangdong at the experience sharing meeting of listing on NASDAQ, and logistics can only rank second in front of it.

These professional experiences were previously blank, and they grew up mainly in JD.com 's Guan Peisheng, who are more likely to accept Liu Qiangdong's values, regard Liu Qiangdong as an idol, and win Liu Qiangdong's trust. When they have the ability to steer an independent business, they will pay more attention to the degree of implementation of Liu Qiangdong's will.

The 2013 session was the last one in which Liu Qiangdong participated in the whole process. After Guan Peisheng arrived at the post, Liu Qiangdong, who was as far away as the United States, wrote in a letter to them: "JD.com people basically have no family background, but we share common values. We all believe that only hard work and taking the right path is the way out. These are core values. "

This is a succession system tailor-made by Liu Qiangdong for JD.com, hoping to avoid the phenomenon of "pause in the post-wise leadership period" described in the book Evergreen.

How to select Peisheng Guan? Liu Qiangdong once described the recruitment criteria in his autobiography: "Family conditions are better. I didn't suffer much when I was a child. I basically don't want such people." In comparison, we hope that Guan Peisheng is the child of ordinary families or poor families, and that they are simple and down-to-earth people who bear hardships and stand hard work and are willing to dedicate their sweat and wisdom. "

Having experienced hardship and poor families, this is a true portrayal of Liu Qiangdong's early entrepreneurship. JD.com is more like looking for Liu Qiangdong shadow executives.

After a failed attempt to modify JD.com 's gene, Liu Qiangdong began to adjust and adapt to the gene, through mass reengineering of "Liu Qiangdong" executives to reduce the risk of his absence and ensure the implementation of the company's existing strategy and will.

JD.com Guan Peisheng, who grew up under the influence of Liu Qiangdong's values, slowly began to stand in the way: for example, Zhuang Jia in 2007 was the director of procurement and sales of JD.com small household appliances; Li Ruiyu in 2009 was the director of investor relations; and Shao Hongjie in 2012 was in charge of JD.com 's community group buying business department.

Among them, the most senior is the 2008 Yu Rui, who has been independently in charge of JD Logistics, Inc. 's core business and become the youngest core executive of JD.com.

However. It remains to be seen whether the "Guan Peisheng" plan can help Liu Qiangdong to share the risk of Qianggang's arbitrariness.