On The Way: Network Tycoon Zhang Zhaoyang'S Tai Chi Management

This kind of invisible management even lets the assistant not feel his existence, but each consciously strives to advance.

In the industry, "self-confidence and upward" is a general comment on Sohu staff.

"When I see the moon, I think it is a planet, because the reflection of the sun makes it shine," he said. "When I see a person, I think he is a pile of molecules."

As a doctor of physics, Zhang Zhaoyang's reason is difficult for ordinary people to understand. In the media, his news is just as many as the first line stars. His bold photographs appear in male magazines. Zhang Zhaoyang's romantic passion makes many entertainment stars hard to reach.

Reason and passion, like the Yin and Yang of Taiji, appear on Zhang Zhaoyang's body at the same time.

"In China, such managers can not find second!"

Sohu vice president Li Shanyou said.

The way of management of the company is too familiar with the "Star" Zhang Zhaoyang in the 42 position. As chairman of the board of directors and CEO, what is the management of Zhang Zhaoyang?

When reporters asked the vice presidents of the Sohu about this simple question, something strange happened. Several vice presidents could not react at the moment, and did not know where to start.

When the same problem was mentioned to the deputy managers of other enterprises again and again, the other party almost immediately went on without exception.

After thinking and summarizing, Li Shanyou, vice president of content construction, drew a number of Taiji pictures on the diary board, representing different contradictions, namely, entertainment stars and business managers, market speculation and technology based, rational and passionate, full authorization and direct orders - Zhang Zhaoyang harmonizes these opposites in his own management mode.

As the founder and operator of Sohu, Zhang Zhaoyang is the spokesman of Sohu, and is the spiritual leader of the staff. In management, "Zhang Style Taijiquan" also pays attention to 42 points of a thousand pounds, and makes efforts to be invisible.

"He often discusses and analyzes the market and company development problems with us, but he seldom negates our practices directly, nor does he like to let us work in his way.

You see, I look different from his appearance. "

Vice President Wang Jianjun entered the Sohu in 1997. So far, reporters have not seen him many times, almost every time they see him wearing that gray shirt.

"The management assessment of Sohu attaches great importance to the results.

We have identified goals, worked hard and managed to do so.

Wang Xin, vice president, introduced this model as "result oriented".

This kind of invisible management even lets the assistant not feel his existence, but each consciously strives to advance.

In the industry, "self-confidence and upward" is a general comment on Sohu staff.

Zhang Zhaoyang, the entertainment star or enterprise CEO, can search for more than 580 thousand related information on Sogou by using the keyword search.

This figure is basically the same as that of Sun Nan, the "one brother" of many domestic music circles for many years, far exceeding the 120 thousand of sina CEO Wang Yan.

Most of these messages are linked to the words "mountaineering", "beauty", "Star" and so on. Of course, these activities are often based on the activities of Sohu.

In many public occasions, when Zhang Zhaoyang appears, he often brings in many "fans" (Fans) who want to sign their names and take photos.

Zhang Zhaoyang, born in 1964 in the outskirts of Xi'an, Shaanxi, is a doctor in a factory hospital.

In 1981, Zhang Zhaoyang, 17, was admitted to the Department of physics of Tsinghua University. After 5 years of hard work, he received a Li Zhengdao scholarship to study in the United States. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology 7 years later, 7 years later.

In 1995, Zhang Zhaoyang returned to China as an American business representative. In the second year, he used a venture capital of $200 thousand to set up the company.

Until this time, Zhang Zhaoyang remained obscure.

"It doesn't matter if you feel the surrounding environment has nothing to do with yourself. Everything seems very indifferent and casual."

Zhang Zhaoyang recalls.

The fate of the 1998 has changed dramatically.

In February of that year, Zhang Zhaoyang imitated the launch of Sohu website by YAHOO. After months, he was selected as the "50 figure in the field of global computer digitization" selected by the times magazine. Gates, Yang Zhiyuan, Richard Lee and others were also selected.

From this time on, the three words of Zhang Zhaoyang and his signboard face began to appear frequently in the media, and related contents also gradually extended from the initial Internet to entertainment, sports and public welfare.

"From the first venture capital in October 1996 to the end of the third round of financing at the end of 1999, the total amount of money that Sohu receives is not more than 7 million dollars. You can figure out how much money we can use in the market."

Playing the show on their own has become the most appropriate form of publicity in the early stage of CEO entrepreneurship.

In Guangzhou and netizens, disco, playing skateboards in Tiananmen square, "they sell a little bit of energy, in exchange for a lot of free advertising."

Gradually, Zhang Zhaoyang seems to be an entertainment star in the eyes of the outside world.

But in fact, this is just part of his job. His real role is Wang Jianjun, vice president of Sohu, chairman and CEO. of the board of directors of billions of dollars worth of company. Since 1997, he has worked with Zhang Zhaoyang. "Every Tuesday's management meetings and Wednesday's technical meetings are all very hard for him.

In addition, communication with members of the board and negotiations with important partners can not be replaced by others.

"At the beginning, this kind of role switching is not very easy. Slowly getting used to it, it feels good, work is also entertainment, entertainment is also work, very relaxed, not tired!"

In June 6th, the Sogou BEAUTY BEAST mountaineering campaign officially began.

More than a month later, he will go to Tibet with Wang Shi, Sun Nan and others to climb 6026 meters of Kai Zi peak. "I originally liked climbing mountains, so I had fun and work two."

Zhang Zhaoyang said.

"If you can combine your personal life and business management successfully, you can hardly find second of the big enterprises in China."

Li Shanyou pointed to his first Taiji picture.

Zhang Zhaoyang has been dealing with physics for 12 years since his rational thinking collide with passion and character, from Tsinghua to Massachusetts. This experience can be imagined for his thinking mode.

"I saw a small basket with towels, and I immediately thought of its stability and where the fulcrum was. When I saw the blue sky, it reminded me of the reflection of high frequency light passing through the air molecule."

Zhang Zhaoyang recalls that when he was a child, it was difficult to understand what influence a professional would have on himself. Now he has a deep understanding of it.

This mode of thinking can even be expressed in his habits of speaking.

"When I say a word, I always have to think about the reason for this sentence.

Sometimes you can stop thinking because you can't think of reason, so you always seem to be stumbling when you start talking.

Zhang Zhaoyang always looked down when he spoke.

"This habit of thinking actually dominates his management of the Sohu.

In the company's strategic arrangements, it must find the most basic driving force behind the development of the market before making decisions.

Wang Jianjun recalls, "just launched the Sohu network, most of the market peers are developing access business, but Zhang Zhaoyang believes that this is not the underlying power of the Internet market, so chose to do the portal."

When there is no chores, Zhang Zhaoyang likes to stay alone, preferably in Starbucks, holding the little yellow book at hand, and always joking down what he thinks.

What is interesting is that such an almost stereotyped rational thinker has a strong romantic passion at the same time. Both of them constitute another Taiji picture of Li Shanyou.

In his personal life, he even acted as a model and made sexy pictures in magazines.

In the marketing of Sohu, he directed MMS on Mount Everest, Miss Mademoiselle packaging, and organized beauty mountaineering activities.

These things are not passionate people who do not want to think about it, but he succeeded in doing so.

Li Shanyou said that he could not understand the unity of this contradiction.

"This passion for life is related to the experience of studying in the United States," explains Zhang Zhaoyang. "After I came to the United States, I became very rebellious. There was never any savings in the bank. The car must be open, and the wind was racing up and down the road."

Many years later, Zhang Zhaoyang, who has become CEO, displayed a skateboard on the Tiananmen square, which made many young people dumbfounded.

Zhang Zhaoyang, a deputy, can enjoy more power. The 4 vice presidents share the command of the huge Sohu fleet. Wang Jianjun is responsible for many businesses such as search, games and technology. Wang Xin has taken the market, advertising and other business lines, while the director of the focus real estate network is also responsible for the wireless business. Li Shan you, who controls the content of Sohu website, describes it as "full authorization".

However, Zhang Zhaoyang, who managed to "catch up", is a veteran who does not "let go".

"He often gives me some suggestions for improvement, sometimes on the page design."

Li Shanyou said.

Reporters learned from Wang Jianjun and Wang Xin that such directives are often sent to them.

Too many seemingly contradictory management methods appear on one person. What does Zhang Zhaoyang use to blend them together?

"The golden mean!"

Li Shanyou blurted out: "he is not strong in gambling, he does not like to go to extremes. He is very particular about management.

The old staff recalled that he had not seen him fiercely criticize his subordinates for many years.

Interestingly, this kind of mediocre character of Zhang Zhaoyang is not born. On the contrary, he was a very radical person in Tsinghua era.

He recalled: "at that time, everything that seemed to live was to compete with classmates, who spent more time learning than who did better.

If you can't get the first place, go swimming in winter or run around the Old Summer Palace for several kilometers every day.

At the time of the senior year, Zhang Zhaoyang got the Li Zhengdao scholarship, "immediately loosened up, and wandering around every day, it doesn't matter anything. It even doesn't matter if he died at that time."

After many years, Zhang Zhaoyang, who had won fame and fortune, did not regard the days as his "practice" before his great success. Instead, he sighed again and again that the extreme "self abuse" experience had hurt himself.

This kind of rejection of biased excitation from the heart also made Zhang Zhaoyang choose moderation and peace gradually, and put this character into his own management.

"Work does not necessarily mean working overtime. Leisure does not necessarily have to be completely neglected.

We will not win the whole city, but win the whole war. We must know how to move forward.

"In pursuit of excellence in peace, pragmatism and peace,"

This is one of Zhang Zhaoyang's core ideas for Sohu employees, and it is also the art of Zhang Zhaoyang's Tai Chi management.

Zhang Zhaoyang, Ph. D. of physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who had returned to Massachusetts Institute of Technology many years ago, once said impulsively, in order to show his own MBA thinking, "when I return to China, the Internet has the most potential to earn money, so I choose the Internet. If the real estate is the most profitable, then I may do real estate."

After many years, Zhang Zhaoyang still did not become a real estate developer because of the hot real estate, but continued to work in the network industry.

In this virtual world, user resources are like land, charging services are like real estate development, and Internet companies have become "Internet developers".

Compared with peers, Zhang Zhaoyang seems to have a liking for the "land". From the comprehensive portal SOHU to the youth community Chinaren, from the focus of the real estate website to the game portal 17173, Zhang Zhaoyang spared no expense to purchase the enclosure again and again, and the scale of the accumulated users was very few in the country, and became the number one "big landlord".

"Internet users and land are limited resources. They will show their value sooner or later."

When he said this, Zhang Zhaoyang was training mountaineering with real estate celebrities Wang Shi in Beijing suburb.

Not long ago, Wang Shi has just become a new director of Sohu company. Does he mean that Sohu will let go of the real estate development in his own hands?

Zhang Zhaoyang predicted that the value of Sohu could be released in two or three years.