"Becoming a Leader is Truly Not a Coincidence"

This article is Lu Canwei's 77th original piece.

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The book "Absolutely Not Coincidental" has been particularly popular recently, and I've seen many people sharing it. Finally, my copy has arrived. I've read two chapters, mainly about Feng Da and Qi Junjie, so I'll write a few words.

In my early years, I was also obsessed with blogging. I remember using various blogging software at first, and later I used Baidu Space to write blogs. Back when I was still a tech geek, I often posted my learning content online. There was a time when someone found me through my blog; I was learning SQL at that time, and they hoped I could help write a book related to SQL. Later, I felt my technical skills were still lacking, after all, I was not formally trained in technology and had only been working for less than two years.

We are always filled with fear of the unknown, to the extent that we reject many opportunities. Of course, we can now explain our choices at that time with our lack of understanding.

In fact, if I had been more confident back then, there might have been different possibilities. Although I had only been working for less than two years, I had spent two years self-learning programming, and the fact that someone could find me meant they recognized my abilities.

Why do I mention this? I saw Feng Da mention in the book, "No one is born good at something; as long as you keep trying, you have the chance to become an expert in that field."

Then, you need to choose a good target, which is a good environment. For example, Feng Da at Alibaba and Qi Junjie at Beijing Television. A good environment brings good opportunities and allows for rapid personal growth. I resonate with the problems Feng Da encountered; spending so much energy on writing makes it hard to do my main job well.

So why did I start to take this matter seriously? I didn't deliberately pursue gaining followers, nor did I consider chasing trends. The readership of an article might only hover around a hundred. I am not someone who loves studying or reading; the notion that reading is useless is quite common in my family. As a person from Chaoshan, the family perspective is mostly business-oriented, yet I chose a different path, where the limits of knowledge determine the limits of what I can achieve.

For instance, Qiu Erye has 20 years of reading experience and still maintains daily reading. The gap of 20 years is something many people cannot catch up with. So how do I make myself engage in this seemingly unproductive work that I believe has benefits? After trying various methods, I found the answer is writing. When you need to output, it forces you to seek input. At that point, second-hand fragmented information can no longer satisfy my output; I can only absorb from the source, which is the books themselves.

A good product does not equal a good model; this is something I took ten years to understand. Ten years ago, I realized that good technology does not equal a good product. At that time, we began to venture into food delivery, investing a lot of energy into many seemingly cutting-edge technologies, such as the apps that were just starting to gain popularity. I was among the first batch of Android developers in the country, and we also worked with the now-popular Html5 and push notifications based on long connections. Looking back now, these were indeed very advanced, but the products we created did not receive the response we had anticipated.

We began to fall into a vicious cycle: no users because the features were insufficient and the technology was not good enough. Even now, many companies seem to have a similar feeling, desperately piling on features, repeating the mistakes made ten years ago. So how do you solve this problem? I currently do not have a good answer. Even though I made such mistakes ten years ago, I found myself making the same mistakes again during my entrepreneurial ventures a few years ago. Even last year, when I tried to do some things, I still made the same mistakes.

Doesn't it seem foolish? Unfortunately, many people are like this. So how did I start to break out of this vicious cycle? The biggest inspiration for me was Charlie Munger's multi-disciplinary thinking model, which means you should read books that seem useless to you. Many people in technology only read technical books. Those in product management only read product-related books. Entrepreneurs only read books on business management.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with this if you define yourself strictly within that role. But life is not a straight path; there are many forks in the road. For example, if Qi Junjie had not learned about stocks and accounting, which were unrelated to his position at the time, he would not have had the subsequent opportunities in finance, nor would he have the advantage of having experience in the television, internet, and finance sectors. The combination of these three abilities leaves him with almost no competitors.

If I had not started to engage with content outside of technical products, I would not have seen that the previous errors seemed to have a hopeful solution; they were no longer unsolvable problems.

Just like a video I saw yesterday about the history of human cancer resistance, dating back 4,000 years to an unnamed Egyptian physician who compiled all diseases and treatment plans of the time. In case number 45, he recorded a lump on the breast that was hard, cool, and dense like a mango, lurking beneath the skin. This is what we now know as breast cancer. The treatment plan left only two words: none (There is none.).

Over the long span of more than 4,000 years, humanity has experienced surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and finally managed to erase those two words from the treatment plan. These methods stem from humanity's continuous trial and error and the fusion of cross-disciplinary knowledge, ultimately forming today's medical reality.

When we are now trapped in the well of knowledge, no matter how much we think, the answers we get are always the same, and the mistakes we made will continue to repeat. We hear others talk about how beautiful or bleak the world outside the well is, and then we share what we hear with those around us.

When the Tianhe-2 supercomputer topped the global supercomputing rankings, we heard accusations of pseudo-domestic production, funding fraud, and vanity projects, yet we did not seek to understand what supercomputing is, why it is necessary, and what it can do. We simply heard that it used Intel chips and followed others in opposition, without researching the actual situation at the time. We did not realize that Trump had withdrawn from so many groups but specifically allocated funding for supercomputing. At that time, aside from the foreign chips, most of the internet, storage, system software, application software, power supply, and cooling systems of Tianhe-2 were developed in-house. Of course, the latest supercomputers now use self-developed chips, but that's another story.

We always jump to evaluate problems when we see a point. Feng Da also made such mistakes back then, blowing up Twitter while facing Weibo. Now he reflects on his ignorance and arrogance at that time. I have also continuously made this mistake, including now, and my former leaders have pointed this out to me. Looking back, I indeed seemed quite ignorant and arrogant.

Suddenly, it seems I can somewhat understand that saying: the more you know, the more ignorant you become.

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