Big companies cannot escape the disease of big enterprises, and JD.com is no exception.
Recently, founder Liu Qiangdong emphasized at JD's executive meeting that employees with poor performance and lack of hard work are not brothers, revealing dissatisfaction with the current management situation. This is also another merciless reflection of Liu Qiangdong's own problems after shouting "we must change" at the end of last year.
Regarding the recent issue of employees clock in on behalf of others forming an industry chain, JD conducted an internal investigation and found that 14000 people find someone to clock in on behalf of them every month. Liu Qiangdong even said at the executive meeting, "Those who have poor long-term performance and never strive are not my brothers.".
At the tense moment of June 18th, both inside and outside JD.com are battlefields.
Internally, it is facing the dilemma of loose management, low overall organizational efficiency, and a lack of focus on the group's strategy. Externally, it is facing the challenges of e-commerce festival failure, traditional promotion fatigue, and the transformation of traditional e-commerce from a leader to a participant.
Someone calculated an account for JD.com. JD's financial reports in the past three years show that its total number of employees increased from 390000 to 520000 from 2021 to 2023, but the per capita annual income per employee decreased from 2.4694 million yuan to 2.0976 million yuan, a decrease of approximately 371800 yuan within two years.
Numbers may not represent everything, but at least they can represent a portion of "underperforming and struggling employees" who are not true brothers.
In fact, JD is not the only Internet company. In recent years, Alibaba, Byte, Tencent and other Internet companies have also faced reflection and adjustment on their development after rapid expansion.
Liu Qiangdong's last post on the intranet had similarities with Jack Ma, both of which were frontline employees questioning the current development of the company, triggering the founder's subsequent post.
The founders are not shy about their own problems and have repeatedly made public the anxiety of large corporations facing the disease.
Inertia, mediocrity, large plates spread out, loss of sense of crisis, lack of sensitivity... Rather than saying that big companies cannot escape the disease of big enterprises, it is better to say that every big company must fight against their own growth.
Since we have grown up, it is not possible to rely solely on the efforts of Liu Qiangdong and Liang Rubo to strengthen our sense of crisis, always start a business, and escape the weight of mediocrity.
Shouting and reflection are not enough to pry a big factory, not to mention turning around, even a glance is not enough. Every big company that can become a big one has experienced its own growth curve.
The winding growth curve not only gives them the pleasure and satisfaction of reaching the summit, but also accumulates countless hidden problems, laying the groundwork for future twists and turns.
Whether it's Alibaba, JD.com, or the rising star ByteDance, the disease of large enterprises has always been closely intertwined with the anxiety of development, and can even be magnified at certain special moments.
For example, Pinduoduo once surpassed Alibaba in market value, and ByteDance not only surpassed Tencent in revenue and other indicators, but also changed from 10000 to 100000 people.
In short, if the problem is exposed and a new king appears, the illness of large enterprises will become even more difficult to hide.
Therefore, what is more important than shouting is to recognize oneself, and what is more important than recognizing oneself is to talk about reform without hesitation. This "oneself" is not only the current situation, situation, future strategy and development path, but also the timing of the situation. Knowing oneself and the enemy, one will not be defeated in a hundred battles.
Recognizing oneself determines the problem, implementing reform determines whether to "prescribe the right medicine", and distinguishing between real brothers and fake brothers has substantive significance.
On April 10th, one year after Alibaba launched the "1+6+N" transformation and restructuring, Jack Ma posted on the intranet affirming the transformation and summarizing the changes over the year: "It's not about chasing KPIs, but recognizing oneself and returning to the customer value track."
Large corporations once had boundless ambitions to conquer everything, and as they grew up at an unprecedented pace, how to conquer the inevitable disease of large corporations is also a must answer question.
Beijing Business Daily commentator Tao Feng