Episode #560: The Big Badness Of Baidu’s EQ

Founded in 2000, Baidu has 39,800 employees and is one of the largest global AI and internet companies. Based in China, its major success has been its search engine business. Its quarterly revenues ending June 2024 were $4.67 billion, so it is a substantial company. The Head of Public Relations and Vice-President, Ms. Qu Jing, posted a video on social media demeaning Baidu staff, telling them she “can make you jobless in this industry”. She told staff she demanded they must be dedicated enough to travel by her side for 50 days straight and she doesn’t care about the impact on their families and personal lives, noting, “I’m not your Mum”. Her mantra to the staff was “I only care about results”. She was proud to say she was so devoted to Baidu, that she didn’t know what school year her son was in.

She publicly posted her video outlining her leadership philosophy as an example to her PR team of how to use social media to promote Baidu! Her professional skills in PR seem dubious to me. Also, her EQ or “emotional quotient” - her people skills - seems abysmal. From a Dale Carnegie “How to Win Friends And Influence People” viewpoint, this is a shocking leader mentality.

As a so-called PR professional, her genius use of social media created a firestorm of virulent criticism of Baidu. She had to take the video down and apologise, saying she would “earnestly read people’s opinions and criticisms” and “deeply reflect” on them. Days later, she was gone. The company wasn’t saying the circumstances of her departure, but given the apparent brutality of their corporate culture, you can expect they had no hesitation in firing her. Ironically, hoisting her on her own petard, so to speak. There are so many things wrong with this Baidu story, it is hard to know where to start.

Fundamentally, she was making a basic leader error to think that the staff wanted what she wanted. Her case may be extreme, but often as leaders, we do assume everyone wants to work as hard as we do, that they want to get promoted like we did and that they want to dedicate themselves to the business like we are. I don’t know why she was blind to the reality that actually staff do not necessarily want what we want and that they have their own goals, motivations, and desires. However, sometimes we can suffer from the same malady as Ms. Qu.
The enterprise has goals and values and as the leader, our job is to get everyone to fly in the same direction, in formation. That means finding out what our team members want and then aligning the way we do the business to deliver what is important to the staff. It also requires us to understand their value system and again find lots of cross-over points where the organisation’s values fit in with the staff member’s values.

The only way to do that is to communicate with the staff and through casual conversation, uncover what is important to them. Interrogating the team like a crime solving detective on their deeply held values isn’t the way to do it. Over coffee or lunch in an informal situation and built up gradually over time is the better approach. Creating a threatening video is definitely not the way to go and 99.99% of people would get that, even if Ms. Qu didn’t. Nevertheless, ask yourself, are you making an assumption about what your team wants, based on your imagination and no actual conversations with them?

As the boss, we get busy and we are working away in the business and so are too busy to work on the business. This is a how things can slip by us and before you know it, the last time you have a meaningful conversation with your staff was years ago. That is okay, except that people’s lives change. They get married, have children, have to take care of aging parents, age themselves and what was important to them five years ago, isn’t the same today, but we don’t know that.

Using fear as the driver for motivation like Ms. Qu does work, but it is a very blunt tool. Ms. Qu’s outburst is remarkable in an economy where there is a lot of job mobility. Those staff suffering the mad ravings of a demonic leader, can move to a better company, because they have choices. Japan is just the same and job mobility has never been higher or easier in this country. As the boss, we have to be aware of that and make sure that what we do and what we say are working well, to keep our people engaged and with us.
What is the culture of Baidu? I don’t know, but if Ms Qu can become head of PR and rise to VP, then it would seem things are pretty rotten inside the organisation. What is the culture inside your organisation by comparison? In our case, we have set priorities around our values: number one is your health, number two is your family’s health and number three is the company health. Making that statement is one thing and living it is entirely different. This is where leadership comes in by being congruent with what you are saying, by doing it.

I doubt we can find any framed posters inside Baidiu which say the company values are: number one – treat people like dirt, etc. I am sure many of us have highfalutin value statements beautifully framed behind glass and placed in prominent positions within the walls of the company. Fine. What about the “walking the talk?”. Are we living what we preach? I doubt Baidu is doing that, but before we get too deep in schadenfreude, let’s take a cold hard look at ourselves.