DEI Advisors Podcast

Ted Zhang, Founder and CEO of DerbySoft, interviewed by David Kong

March 08, 2023 David Kong
DEI Advisors Podcast
Ted Zhang, Founder and CEO of DerbySoft, interviewed by David Kong
Show Notes Transcript

Ted is the CEO of DerbySoft, a leading hospitality technology company that provides distribution connectivity, marketing campaign management and content management services in 197 countries. In this interview, Ted shares his vision of a connected world, his endeavors to help employees tie their daily work to company strategies, and how he builds inclusion and coalesces diversity in language, culture and business practices across the many different countries in which he operates. Finally, he offers advice to anyone who aspires to become a CEO.



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Introduction







Ted Zhang, CEO, DerbySoft, Interviewed by David Kong





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2,873 views  Streamed live on Nov 22, 2022

Ted is the CEO of DerbySoft, a leading hospitality technology company that provides distribution connectivity, marketing campaign management and content management services in 197 countries. In this interview, Ted shares his vision of a connected world, his endeavors to help employees tie their daily work to company strategies, and how he builds inclusion and coalesces diversity in language, culture and business practices across the many different countries in which he operates. Finally, he offers advice to anyone who aspires to become a CEO.





0:06 / 45:11


Introduction







Ted Zhang, CEO, DerbySoft, Interviewed by David Kong





DEI Advisors725 subscribers




Subscribed










5






Share



Download


2,873 views  Streamed live on Nov 22, 2022

Ted is the CEO of DerbySoft, a leading hospitality technology company that provides distribution connectivity, marketing campaign management and content management services in 197 countries. In this interview, Ted shares his vision of a connected world, his endeavors to help employees tie their daily work to company strategies, and how he builds inclusion and coalesces diversity in language, culture and business practices across the many different countries in which he operates. Finally, he offers advice to anyone who aspires to become a CEO.

David Kong:

Greetings. I'm David Kong, the founder and principal of DI Advisors. We are delighted to have Ted Zhang, the founder and CEO of DerbySoft on our show today, DerbySoft is a leading hospitality technology company that provides distribution, connectivity, marketing, campaign management, and content management services in 197 countries. It connects to all the major travel intermediaries and meta search engines, and works with almost all the global, regional and domestic hotel companies. And just to give you a sense of the. Processes about 12 million room night bookings a month. Ted, welcome to the show, Ted, I was impressed to read about your background and how you found Adobe Soft. Would you mind sharing your personal career journey with our audience?

Ted Zhang:

Sure. Dave we know each other for a long time actually. I was engineer in Silicon Valley for many years before I started this. One day, I just listen, think to Jesus, this is internet generation. I should do something by myself. I just start to, since I like tribal, so I just start to a company, try to sell hotel rooms That time, we believe, I have money as a guest and if I want to search, I can search hotel, and a hotel search should search my money too. So that time we try to build up the, like a reverse option type of site to, to for the market. However, I quickly found there was a company called Priceline, did a similar thing. So finally we decide to to do something. We believe that's how we believe in the future, every travel company will have its own system. Those system will connect together eventually to form a global data network. So that is different from gds. GDS centralized the system and everybody come to the gds to exchange their product. However, the GDN is different. It's everybody just stay in their own. And be able to work with others. So that is the should be the future. We believe that time. I still believe so. So then, we just start think about how to achieve that big picture and we believe we need to connect. First of all, we need to connect the different different companies together. Ensure the customer, like hotel, be able to open partial of the DA of of their data to their partners to share those datas, so that's why we start this company. Obviously, even today is still little bit too early. lots of people still don't have. Robust. A lot of companies do not have a robust system to support their business. However, we still believe one day, one day travel all the travel company. If you wanna be in this segment, you need to have your system. Your system must be open to your. Partners, eventually you'll be partial of Global Data Network.

David Kong:

That was a very astute and bold vision at the time, and you are beginning to bring it to life, and in fact, you've succeeded very well. And I've been most impressed with what you've been able to do and related to that question and your comments. In 2005, Thomas Friedman wrote a famous book, the World is Flat, it's about globalization, leveling the playing field for commerce. And it's uncanny that a long time ago. You've also made a comment that distribution world is flat. Would you mind to elaborate?

Ted Zhang:

I still believe the word is polite. Yes. When we start a company, we have at least the two major assumptions. The number one assumptions the internet will really penetrate to entire world. And the second one is global economy. Basically we will travel to everywhere. So basically we need to connect with. Work together. So that is two major assumption. Yes. Today, we see some challenges. You see the geopolitical, you see the governor, risk and compliance, GRC things, all the local grc. Honestly, for me I believe that is a. What we see today is for better globalization. Actually, yes, globalization is not for free. There was lots of challenge. We need to always balance globalization and a localization. So this is why, yes, we will face lots of challenge. However I do believe, we will, human being will overcome the difficulty and globalization will, it's not just concept, it's really the driver. Of human being groups. We read the book what that guy's name the brief history of human being. That, that book basically we have today, because we travel around, because we work together, because we have different people work on different things. Eventually we turn to be very strong. So globalization just, Different people work on different things, make a human being even more stronger and stronger. So I, I still believe globalization.

David Kong:

That's well said. I admire you for saying that. Another thing that I admire about you is you take a concept and you are starting to bring it to life. And it's not easy. Cause we all know when you are working for someone, you have the comfort and security of getting a paycheck. But when you have a startup, you are in uncharted territory. And I was wondering, what are some of the success factors in launching a startup in your mind?

Ted Zhang:

You can tell I still believe what, whatever I believe that 20 years ago. So I think the first and the most important things, what do you believe? So you're ask yourself, put your hand on your heart and ask yourself what you really believe into it. If you believe it, then you know you have power. You can overcome difficulties. You're strong. So second, I believe, you always need to think about the past, how to contribute to what you believe and how to step that to connect what you believe to real world. So basically, particle is my. Second term, word. will definitely use. And the third one, very important patient. 20 years, 30 result this month, next month, 20 years. So 20 years, step by step you need to have patient. I do remember at the first beginning we have three three founders and the one, the guy, the CEO and president and the cto, finance cto. So after working this industry for. Even just one and a half years. He said, no, travel industry is too difficult, too diversified. We should fund something else. This is this is too hard. I told him, nothing easy. If you think something hard, maybe something easy, maybe it's too easy. We finally he allowed the company, so I pick up the CEO position, basically step by step, bring the company today. So patient that's very,

David Kong:

I do agree with you on that. All three very valid points. Thanks for sharing that. Now, Jeff Bezos had famously said it's always day one because day two is stasis. He has a company that's quite old, but he continued to create excitement and although he is no longer the ceo, you can see that Amazon is still very successful because of that attitude. And I was wondering, your company is 20 some years old also. How do you continue to build that momentum?

Ted Zhang:

Sometime it's hard, honestly. Sometime wake up in the morning after Jesus, I'm old I'm close to 60. Should I still work in this hard? But I always tell myself, yes, the mission is not complete yet. So we still have a goal. So again, if you have the mission in your heart, then you have the momentum. You get up early. I get up early every day, like five o'clock. So basically mission it's really deep in my heart and and that's my responsibility. That's my dream. I want to do something, to contribute to the industry. So that is major momentum for myself. For the company, yes. 20 years last people here for a long time. You have to build up the strategic map process and make sure everybody's still can work effectively. You cannot just depend on passion for every single day. Passion is important. Maybe just for top leaders, but for most of people, you wanna maintain the momentum. You always need to develop your corporate strategy map, your department strategy map. You have full perspective, finance, perspective, customer perspective, process productive perspective. People's, team capability perspective, you always use this four perspective to develop the strategic map and ensure your team can maintain the momentum based on some logic.

David Kong:

That's great. Thanks for sharing that framework. It's really well said. Now we all know our careers are never smooth sailing all the time. And you must have experienced some setbacks and disappointments. Would you mind sharing some of those and what lessons you've learned from that?

Ted Zhang:

Oh, I have a, if you have time, I can tell you these several days. I have lots of for sure. First of all, the challenge I face today. Let's talk about challenge I face today. The challenge I face today, is really lots of companies, culture companies. They wanna bring the connection direct. Basically even the prices, even if they do by themselves, even the performance is worse, the price is high, but they still don't want depend on one company to do the connection. They can depend on the electronic company to provide the electricity, but they don't want. Depend on one company to provide a connectivity services. I think they are definitely, absolutely reasonable. So for us, we also need to think about how we show the people. We are another electric utility company. We, we are strong, we are not, we are very strong. We are big. We, we can. So this is why in, in long term, I always buy the very high insurance. I have cash, in bank and make sure ourself very safe if we save customer feel better. So that's the thing, I'm fighting out, I try to tell people, we are very safe company. Even year 2020, 2020, we still Greek even because we, All the major team only take half salary myself, 50%. So then we ensure the company's still profitable, then, we can support our customer. So terms of this safe company, I wanna pass that message you also to the industry. And then in the early days, of course we face the challenge of internal communication. We face the challenge, the global customer communi. I remember a couple years ago, we have a company survey. Basically we asked the employees, what do you feel this company, what's the problem we have, you believe? And employees come back to me, say, Hey, we are not clear about the company the. I said, Jesus, we, I write these kind of things to my minus one team every year, and they should pass to everybody too. Why? People still don't understand, don't clear about the strategy. Eventually I out, if you don't put everything on tape, on paper to everyone and also open your heart to communicate with them. They, you never get it. So finally, we start to develop the company strategy and also a strategic map. Then linked to department map linked to people's kpi that people can click in. The Better works. System. We used to maintain the entire process. It can click from their job, their kpi, back to the company strategy. So today, everybody think well, the strategy come straight, loud, and clear. So that's one thing I learned hard way. Also even early, we invest a lot of money to some, to many product, same time. So finally one day, suddenly we found Jesus, we don't have money in the bank. Year two, year 2008. We invest a lot of money to lots of products, but, we assume we can raise the money year 2008, but eventually, no, we can't. The finance crisis, nobody put the money in. So immediately we invest a situation. We have to lay off people from 200. She was 70. Oh wow. That is a big pain in my entire life. Some people just come to me, they quiet, said, I did nothing wrong. Why you let me go? So that, that's moment, that moment is really truly breaking my heart. So I got, those kind of things will never ever happen to the resolved. So this is why, we, since that day, I go back the cus the investors. I cut my salary to zero for two years and and depend on my wife to pay all the bill and bring the company back. Now, since that day we always profitable even years was on 2020 we profitable. We will ensure this company always have deep pocket, always can deal with any terrible situation to guarantee or customers. Or employees safe, but of course we don't want the past message to employees say, no matter whatsoever, you save here. We want those people who can really contribute to the company. We will be safe. That is promise to the customer. That is promise to my employees. Wow.

David Kong:

I'm really impressed to hear that. I've always thought that setbacks and disappointments are learning opportunities, and you certainly weathered a number of storms the financial crisis in 2008, the pandemic and so forth, and I am really impressed that you go back to the foundation that you've built, whether it's from a financial standpoint or taking care of your people, valuing them and putting them first as well as a quality foundation because nobody can ever take that away from you. Those are great lessons. Thanks so much for sharing that. Now, related to this question is your approach to challenges. How do you approach it when you face big challenges, how do you approach.

Ted Zhang:

Yeah I want give a, I wanna tell you the story. Years ago, 2020, the pandemic come over. One day we have met him the meeting and say, Hey, what's going on for this month? That's April years 2020. We figure out we lost 3 million US dollar nine months because, we are transaction based. However, we are materialized the transaction that. you're generally booking. We take your money, but the booking canceled, we need to pay your money back. Yeah. So then suddenly we lost the three point something million US dollar. So we immediately realized if we losing money this way, if the pandemic going this way, we could be bankruptcy. So we immediately have the meeting with the upper management team. To define the principle to handle this kind of situation. So that is our habit. When we face important things, we come down to develop the principle we to follow. And this principle need to fully communicate with the entire team. So we discussed our principle, which, which is number one, customer first, we need to protect the customer, make. Customer, no matter whatsoever, not hurt by this pandemic. That means you know, no matter whatsoever, we need to protect customer. Now we define how much money in the bank is enough to operate our business. Finally, we found that, we need to keep this money in the bank no matter whatsoever on top this money. We need to understand if we need to maintain the minimal operation, how, what kind of people. Who we need to keep in this company. Finally, long story short, after one day meeting, I create the proposal back to the management team, discuss about it. Finally, we make the final decision. This is your proposal. This is our principle number one, customer first, never ever heard the customer. Number two, we need to cut those departments far away from customer. So we define this name of this, those depart. We'll see if we reach this kind of a cash reserve. We need to cut this. The department, if we reach this cash reserve, we need to cut that department. Of course, the department had it in the com in the meeting room. They said, why me? Why is not somebody else was let's talk about it. If not you, who should be the person? The department should be cut. Let's talk about it. Eventually we reach agreement. We have great people, even some people. We'll be cut first, but they understand. They say, yeah, sounds like my department should be cut because based on your, our principle here, we are far away from the revenue. We are far away from the customer. So yeah, we should, since God we never reach that level. Other people, that our start to come back. So basically, long story short, ic want deal with. Terrible situation. Any situation. Basically, let's sit down to talk about principles. Let's sit down to fully communicate. Let's sit down to make a decision with the two things most important. Number one, customer, number two employees. Let's keep this to in mind and in this order too to develop the principle to deal with any.

David Kong:

I really like your guiding principles of taking care of your customer and taking care of your employees, because without them, you have no business. And that was really good of you to use that as guiding principles. And then you, I think you also talked about, Being calm and getting people involved and figuring out the plan and communicate communicate in times of crisis. That's really well said. We all remember how scary it was back in March and April of 2020. During the pandemic, there was so much unknown and everyone was scared, not. For the business, but for them themselves personally, right? We're all afraid of getting sick or loved ones getting sick. It was pretty scary times. Yeah. I

Ted Zhang:

saw you talk to president. You know how to deal with the pandemic.

David Kong:

Yeah, those were scary times and in your situation it's even worse. I could just picture not only do you have no revenue coming in, cuz there were no bookings, you also had a lot of cancellations, which meant that you have a lot of money going out That's really scary, right. You gotta wonder how long you can sustain yourself

Ted Zhang:

like that. Yeah. I operate the company last couple years. I always try to maintain the gross rate plus profit. Around the 40%. So sometimes or master push that very hard to grow. Raise, price, grow. We always turn them down. I say no. I'm run the show. So let me do my job. So don't push me, but basically we wanna ensure we are not just grow and also we need profitable because that is money not for me. That is money I put on site for customer. I wanna ensure something happens such as pandemic. The business as usual. There's one major hotel company. We have a very sad, that time in May or June, I forgot. I have very sad meeting. We get them together. Those guys said, Hey Ted, we will go home. Basically, we follow home. We cannot work anymore. However, we have 160 connection. Those connections in your. So you guys need to make sure those connections, no matter whatsoever, were not done. Even there was one booking or two booking. That's fine. We keep it, we wanna keep it open. I said, go home, do whatever you want. Leave to me, we, we will make sure, those connections, stable, safe, if we have issues, we contact you. So basically, yeah, as a technology company, as a service. That's our responsibility.

David Kong:

Yeah. Yeah. Ted I wanna just say thank you because during that time when I was at Best Western, everybody was worried about the run rate and how much cash they have on hand and or have to preserve cash. And we appreciate thereof giving us very attractive payment terms, allowing us to stretch out the payment over a period of time to protect our cash reserve. We thank you for that. And not only that, but to your point, you maintain all the connections. And in fact, you continue to maintain the highest quality certification with all the online travel agents like Expedia and Booking, which was absolutely remarkable because we're all cutting back on our staff. And yet you manage to take care of your customers that way. And I think in many ways that was a defining moment for DerbySoft. In my mind, DerbySoft was just tremendous. They took care of the customers, both in terms of financial payment terms and also maintain the connection and show that it was working. And business did come back. And yes we continued to process reservations through you. And it was just great. It was a true partnership. Appreciate.

Ted Zhang:

Thank you, Dave. We we learn a lot from you and the best Western and also we have today is not just because of we smart, because you guys support us. You always trust us. This kind of trust is tremendous for us. We need to pay that trust back, so we will always. Always keep that kind of position. If you use the result, you're safe, no matter whatsoever, you're safe. We will protect your partnership for sure.

David Kong:

Thank you. The feelings mutual. Now let's switch gears and talk about diversity. You do business in 197 countries and you also have offices and all the major regions of the world. Not only is the language and culture different, the way that business is done is also different. It must be tremendously complex. And how do you manage that diversity across these different regions of the world?

Ted Zhang:

Yeah, this is a very interesting topic actually this last Saturday the Harvard Harvard student uni, maybe what I call Yeah, they have a Harvard Student Association. So they coordinate a meeting and also invite me to talk about this topic. Honestly, yes, we have people from 10 different countries and also we speak different language. And also we have we have 500 people, but 150 people outside China. A small company, but a very. Diversified. Honestly, when we start to go into global business to have actually we started going to global business day one. We are very lucky to have a lots of great people. One can people, we worked together before, actually they're our customer at the first beginning, so that's easily. We are already friends. We easily, we get together, then we start to do something. That, that's very nature. However, when we getting bigger and bigger, more people, we cannot always hire our friend, right? So basically we also build up some principles. For the, such a diversified Team, they from different background, culture background, they from different have different mother language. So that's turned everything pretty difficult. So we in our company principle we said the trust is everything. So we need to respect and trust people. So this is why, and at first beginning, if you really respect. Respect the difference. None. Everything is going to be easier. Second, we will also build up the principle. Have a company principle, have 10 different company principles. In those principles. Say, Hey, no matter who you are, no matter who you are team of Theof, member of team up. They resolve the team. So if you are the team member you need, we need a. These principles, we define the principle. For example, the first principle is customer obsession means, if everything related to customer, you need to pay attention very serious, no matter what kinda language you have, no matter what kind of culture you have. For example, some people said, oh in my country, we don't, we take a break in the holiday. We don't care. We respect that we don't assign the job to people in holiday. However, if something related to customer, you have to jump into it no matter whatsoever. If you disagree, you don't have to stay here. So we, we have the principles. We fully communicate this principle with the customer. No matter what kind culture, no matter what kinda language we put on the paper we communicate, we make the final decision. Respect, trust them. Principles make us have a very good foundation to be as a team member.

David Kong:

So tell me are those principles what you use to make sure that employees in Europe don't feel like the decisions are driven by someone in Dallas, your headquarter, or Shanghai, where you're station. Do they have a

Ted Zhang:

say? That's a, sometimes that's a challenge. So this is why actually I would travel around the world to meet my people face to face, for example next January I will fly to Europe to meet my people there. So basically we need to travel, we need to meet people, we need to communicate with them. We need to build up the trust. So sometimes, because we have different language, sometimes language is even too much. We need to put our, again, we need to put our hand out our heart and say, Hey, I'm your ceo. I'm here. I wanna communicate with you. This is the what we want to do to build up the great company. Do you agree? So if you have issue, please. So this is why every year we have a customer survey. Basically we hired a very famous company in the world to do the survey and and also we always listen to the custom listen to the employees employee sorry, employee survey. We always listen to the employees and figure out how we be better together to create a successful.

David Kong:

You obviously care deeply about your employees that you actually engage, I think Mercer, right? Which is a very well known consulting company in this area, and their work is fabulous. But that's an investment on your part and I'm impressed that you do that and your traveling of the place and spending time with employees. That must really help also. But it goes back to the same set of core values that everyone believes. And you instill that in them, which is also remarkable. Thanks for that.

Ted Zhang:

Yeah. The diversity, equity, and inclusion, also very big words for

David Kong:

sure. You have been a very effective and successful of a major global company. Tell us about your leadership.

Ted Zhang:

Honestly I'm, I believe I'm very I'm very enjoy, communicate with the people. I'm a people oriented person so this is why my style is always communicate. Communication is the first. For me, I have lunch with my people. I just go downstair, walk in the park to talk to my people. Basically communication. I think formal and non-formal is very important. I'm not typical ceo, ceo, you big guy. You just uh, try to be serious. No, I'm just same as anybody in the company. So we communicated with just Like Frank, sometimes, even for example, I just invite the VP hotel from the very big company to join us as vp and he said I always call him, Hey, call his hey brother. Right? That before you know he was in that company. Called my little brother. So basically he joined the company. I said, you cannot this brother anymore. I said, why not? If you do something wrong, you are still same, because I do believe, I trust every, I treat everybody same. So this I call you whatever, doesn't matter, so people know it. You know it, you will know it. And I know it. So basically the communication is very key. We need to always keep communicating whatever style with the people. Second is principle. I always try to build up the principles for big things and small team. We have a company principle, we have department principle. Even, we have a project, we have a principle to deal with it. Such a project. For example, we just we have the one project from a very big hotel companies to build up their big data house right here in China. At first beginning it's. That, that only say, Hey, you know why ma? Because you have a global team, you have local team, you have Theirof, you have all different people. Let's see them together to create the principle to guideing us to achieve this common goal. Eventually this product is very successful. Customer, very happy. So principle is the second big or third one is transparency. Like we said, in, in a pandemic, we define which department would be cut first and communicate with people. Say, Hey, if not your department, which one tell, let's talk about it. So transparency is a really slurred big word for me, and not last one, but not least is measurement. If you don't measure, it's unfair. You know if to be fair to customer, you can measure everything based on the numbers. To operate your business, not based on whether he's your little brother or something else based on those numbers, the measurement another major word for

David Kong:

myself. Yeah. I appreciate that. Those four things that you talked about are so good. Being being transparent and having open communication. They build trust. That's really fundamental foundation to any relationship. And when you're leading people, that's the number one thing that we should all aspire to achieve. And I like what you said about principles because then you all agree to doing things a certain way and accomplishing certain goals, and then you share all that. That's great. And measurement is obviously accountability, which is also important. Thanks for sharing those thoughts. Now, when. Interview candidates for executive level positions, the highest level positions in your company, what qualities do you normally look for?

Ted Zhang:

Actually in our, one of our principle about people is we always put great people on to, on the right po right position. So how to define the great people. We define. The great people have both great car. And also great capability. Great character generally means being a radical choose and a self criticize and deep commit to the job. And also respect others for greater capability means the ability and a skill. Do the job excellent and deliver the results. So that is the we used to, we're putting in the principle. When we interview the people, when we have the team leaders, generally we use we define the four major major perspective to to, to filter. To fund the people, the right people. The number one strategic mind as a leader, especially corporate level top leader. You gotta be, have strategic side. For example, we develop a strategic map, we together to develop a strategic map. So those kind of strategic side is very important for leader. The second is a results. Some people always, we don't want lots of people lip service. Come on. Yes, you can have a lip service, but you still need to deliver the results. Then you need to let me know how you deliver those results. So every time, for example, we have budget, we need a, we need to estimate every connection we have and every opportunity we know for next. So the results oriented is second character for any leader in Dsof. And also because, like you said, away from different people from different countries who have different language. So com effective communication tend to be another important character for leader. And the last one is effectively develop the team. Cause you know, you one person, what you can do very limited. So you've gotta have a capability to develop the team. You have method knowledge, you have the month side. You need to have great character, be able to develop the team. So that is the four things, major things we used to to fund the leadership. That's great.

David Kong:

That's great. Now, related to that, I am wondering if someone came to you and. They wanted to aspire to be in your position one day, what would be your advice

Ted Zhang:

to them? You mean somebody come to my position?

David Kong:

Yeah. Somebody in your company said, I want to be in your shoes. I wanna see,

Ted Zhang:

Yes. First of all, like I said, CEO need to be need to have a very high standout morale You need to always understand you as a ceo, actually the largest bottom neck of the company. So we have to always learn, we have to always enlarge our knowledge base, our combination, make sure you know we always grow. If we don't grow, the company cannot grow. If CEO cannot grow, the company cannot grow. So if someone wanna take my position, but she's great. I want someone to take my position anyway. However, my advice is really always think you are the bottom neck of the company. You always need to grow. If you don't grow, enlarge your combination. The company go nowhere.

David Kong:

That's so well said. Some people that I've interviewed said, you always have to be intellectually curious. Some people said you have to sharpen your but it'll go ball down to the same thing. Everyone has to grow.

Ted Zhang:

The bottleneck of the company. You, whatever things you do to make sure you're not bottleneck.

David Kong:

I'm sure you're not the bottleneck, you're the switch, the personal empowerment. Can you share a parting advice to the audience?

Ted Zhang:

My personal. Have a, in my life, I have a four keyword. The number one is integrity. Integrity is always important for anybody, especially for ceo. The second one I use master knowledge. Yes, there was lots of difficulties, there were lots of challenges. However, you can always find a. To address those challenges. For example, I saw my people criticize or challenge my my leadership of past the strategy to everybody. People say, Hey, I don't know company strategy. I'm not clear. That's obviously my responsibility, that I need to think Jesus, how I can address this issue. Finally, I found a balance scorecard and a strategic map and used this kind of a methodology. To address issues. Also, I'll give you another example. One day I worked with another hotel company for one project. It's also mass walking. I say, Hey, what's going on here? Let's see. Can you show me the race table? Who take what respond? Who is the A for this project? Then eventually I found that, customer believe was Theof is a theof believe customer is a, nobody's a. I said let's use, apply the re to this team. I will be the a, let's clear the responsibility and first, let's work scope of work, work first. So re c, help us a little methodology. Help us immediately change your situation. I'll

David Kong:

stop you for a minute because I'm not sure the audience understand r c charts and or what the term RACY stands for. So you start talking about a accountability, but you, once you explain what race C

Ted Zhang:

means. Yeah, r C is a four a keyword R is responsibility. A is accountable, C is consultant. I is inform that is this reason means in the. We have four different people. A only can I have one means he take, he's accountable for this project. He take a leadership for this project. Our have a different R, our customer knowledge, our technology, our, ui, user experience. You R can have different R, but the A can only have one. Now, C is consult. If we need to make this happen, who is should? Is inform if we have moved forward, if we do something who we should inform. So basically that's four roles in the entire project.

David Kong:

Yeah, that's a wonderful way actually, to clarify responsibilities. It's a very good thing to do, get people involved and engaged and clearly define roles and responsibilities. I use that a lot too. Thanks for sharing that, Ted. But you were continuing. Yeah. Can you continue?

Ted Zhang:

The third one is diligent. So yes we, we need a working hard no matter whatsoever. So like I, I just said, I generally, I get up at five o'clock in the morning, so no matter whatsoever, we need to working hard, even you smart. What you need. And the last one is modesty. Always keep humble. You, we always need to remember, we, whatever we have. Not because, or not just because we are smart or not, just because we're working hard, because the trust from a customer, because the trust of partners. So we need to always put our head down, always humble and Modesty is big word for us. Yeah, I

David Kong:

do agree with you on that. Those are wonderful advice that you dispense just now. I appreciate that. I'm afraid we're running out of time. I feel like I can talk to you forever, but so sorry that we are out of time. Thank you again very much for joining us from Shanghai today. I know you are busy. You've gone to San Francisco next and thank you again for taking the time.

Ted Zhang:

Nice to see you and hopeful I meet somewhere in person soon,

David Kong:

I hope so. And to our audience, thank you for tuning in. If you enjoy this show, I hope you will visit us on our website. DEIAdvisors.org. Thank you again.

Ted Zhang:

Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.