Qihoo 360 Tan Xiaosheng: The Tough Job——CTO

At the "CTO Training Camp" event hosted by 51CTO Gaozhao, Qihoo 360 Vice President and CTO, VP, and CPO Tan Xiaosheng shared the topic of "The Tough Job - CTO". He pointed out that 16 years ago, CTO was a position he wanted to do very much. In 2005, he achieved this and became the CTO of Microsoft from 2007 to 2009. But why did his ideas change after so many years? In Tan Xiaosheng's original view, technical matters should be left to each team, and CTOs themselves would not write code or solve specific problems. But later, as the company grew bigger, it began to encounter problems with the training of technical team personnel and the unevenness of various technical lines, which are where CTOs need to play a role. So, does an enterprise need a CTO? What are the main job responsibilities of a CTO?

Tan Xiaosheng , Vice President and CTO, VP, CPO (Chief Privacy Officer) of Qihoo 360, is responsible for the company's website technology, technical operation and maintenance, data analysis and mining, etc. Since January 2003, he has served as the technical development director of 3721, the technical development director of Yahoo China, the CTO of Yahoo China, and the director of the technical research and development department of Alibaba-Yahoo China. He has published "Practical Technology of Disk Encryption and Decryption" as the second author. He is good at building and managing technical teams. He has been doing campus recruitment since 2003 and has recruited and trained more than 300 college students over the years. These students are now widely distributed in Internet companies such as Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, and Sina. He has the title of "Principal Tan" in the Internet technology circle.

Tan Xiaosheng believes that if an enterprise wants to establish a CTO position, this CTO must first be forward-looking in terms of technology, which requires continuous enhancement of capabilities and understanding of industry conditions. Secondly, he must be good at listening to reports and making reasonable judgments. He pointed out that when the number of team members increases to 150 or even more, there will be complex challenges in team management. It is necessary to set appropriate corporate management rules and use "Tao" rather than "technique" to manage the team. He explained: "Tao is your value to the team and to people. Once this value is determined, other communications are all digital, which is easy to handle. The following is the communication method, which is your technique." The third is personnel, which involves the training and growth of personnel.

What is the relationship between different "O"s?

We know that under the CEO of a large company there are CTO, CIO, COO, CFO and other "Os", so what is the relationship between these different "Os"? Tan Xiaosheng believes that everyone is a colleague, and they cooperate with each other and divide the work. The main responsibility of the CIO is to ensure that the enterprise operates in an information-based manner, while the CTO is responsible for the technical aspects, including the technical team, technical product route, technical capabilities and other aspects.

What things should a CTO do well?

In Tan Xiaosheng's view, there are three main aspects: first, leading the team, second, setting the strategy, and third, getting results.

Lead a team

He pointed out that when it comes to leading a team, the first thing is to select people. After selecting people, how to make the best use of their strengths and avoid their weaknesses? This is when the importance of corporate culture becomes apparent. What is culture? Culture can be defined in many ways. In his opinion, the most important thing is the way a group of people work together. Different teams and companies have different understandings of the same sentence, and a team must form a common way of doing things. There is no order without rules, and these rules determine whether the corporate culture can be well implemented.

Set strategy

For example, the second point is that strategy is not complicated. The main thing is to think clearly about where I am and where my company is. What is our current competitive position? Think clearly about why and where we are going. For example, if the goal is to make money and go public, then the technical team must provide good user experience and business support. Strategy is not static and needs to be reviewed frequently. So how often should we review it? Tan Xiaosheng believes that this depends on the industry you are in. Some industries review it once a year, and some industries review it once every six months, and the world is changing faster and faster.

Get the results

When it comes to results, Tan Xiaosheng believes that overly digital evaluation is not a very good indicator. In his opinion, the Internet industry is changing very rapidly, and overly rigid KPI or OKR evaluation cannot cope with this flexibly. Therefore, 360 has adopted a relatively flexible approach in evaluation, which is also done every quarter, and the leader will give the score, depending on what you have done in the past quarter and what the results are.

Then let’s talk about the four strengths of cadres .

The first is decisiveness, the courage and ability to make decisive decisions. Some people are indecisive and dare not make decisions, because they have to bear the consequences of making decisions. Not daring to take responsibility is a very fatal thing for cadres.

The second is execution, the ability to turn goals into actions and lead team members to complete tasks. Sometimes execution becomes an excuse to shirk responsibility. If the top leader keeps saying that the execution of subordinates is not good, you should think about whether there is a problem with him. First, whether the goal is clear, and second, whether the organizational ability is in place.

The third is understanding, the ability to accurately and quickly comprehend the intentions of the organization and others and grasp the essence of things.

The fourth is the ability to connect with others, resonate with others, and establish harmonious relationships. Even if some cadres are very capable, if their relationships with others are very tense, they will often feel very frustrated.

These are the four ideal abilities for a cadre. They must have the ability to make decisions and lead a team to accomplish goals, absorb surrounding information very quickly, and unite colleagues to get things done. This is an ideal situation. This does not mean that you must have all four abilities of a cadre, but try to choose in this way when screening, or it is also acceptable to enhance one quadrant. These are the so-called four abilities of a cadre.

How to improve the status of the technical team?

Tan Xiaosheng believes that among product development, operation and maintenance, and R&D, operation and maintenance is the easiest, R&D is in the middle, and product development is the most difficult. This is because technical operation and maintenance involve more of the known world and relatively mature technology, while R&D is more creative work. Product development is more about exploring the unknown world.

In addition, different companies are different. Some companies are technology-driven, while others are sales-driven. The weight of the technical team is also different. As a CTO, the core business value lies in spending as little money as possible to ensure the normal operation of the system. Secondly, when developing the business, the system can provide strong support for the development of the business. Then, if the business upgrade can be led by technology, it is already icing on the cake and exceeds expectations.

Risk Decision

Senior managers of enterprises inevitably need to face the test of making risk decisions. How to make good risk decisions? A wrong decision can often bring bad results, sometimes slowing down website access, and sometimes even ruining the company's business. In Tan Xiaosheng's view, when making decisions, the first thing to look at is the business's ability to bear risks. The second thing to look at is the probability of the risk occurring. Finally, it depends on the consequences after the risk occurs. See if you have a mitigation strategy or response measures when the risk occurs. Don't let the risk happen and ruin the entire business.

CTO Training

Speaking of CTO training, Tan Xiaosheng recommended several books that he thought were worth reading for CTOs. The first one was "Six Thinking Hats", which uses a formalized method to let you think about different problems. This is a book about thinking training, which can make people think about problems relatively dialectically. The second one is a book about psychological training, called "The Road Less Traveled", which is more beneficial for personal psychological training and thinking training. In terms of corporate strategy, he recommended "The Innovator's Dilemma", "The Innovator's Solution" and "Positioning"; in terms of management, he recommended "The Effective Manager"; in terms of work methods, he recommended "The McKinsey Method". If you want to understand different corporate cultures, he recommends reading "Catch All" and "My Internet Methodology".