EP.002 - Li Jun | The Secret To Improving Your Team’s Productivity | Full
welcome to the game changers podcast we sit down with powerful industry leaders and uncover the secrets to success in solving real world problems i'm your host kenny owl i'm very happy to have leigen founder of ontology to be here with us today how are you doing man yes good hi everyone it's pleasure to be here yeah christmas is coming up right and yes yeah where are you now yeah i'm in shanghai right now and yeah tomorrow is christmas day already yeah i guess tonight have a lot of celebration and shanghai yeah that's great so um just really happy to have you here you know like the reason why we want to do this video call with you is there's a lot that we would like to share with the world you know with the chinese blockchain ecosystem and definitely the person behind a very very strong blockchain project i want to take this opportunity to introduce you so why don't you tell us lesion where are you from yeah actually i'm shanghainese i'm my family from shanghai actually and so especially and my education background is kind of i.t computer science and also plus some finance and mba as well and my work experience also is kind of a major phase i'm doing a technical a lot of technical works and it industry and then i'm joining some financial institution to do the financial product design and architecture et so i have kind of mixed education both education and work experience finance plus the i.t technology so you've always grown up in shanghai right yeah yeah yeah that's a city where you're from so like 20 years ago you know what what was it like in shanghai for you uh 20 years ago shanghai actually in the history also is kind of financial center in chicago even in asia sometimes i mean before hong kong right in the several decades ago and in that time i think shanghai have a lot of financial concept for normal even normal people we know the stock market the china is the first the first stock market in shanghai and a lot of financial institutions is there and the people think always very easy to accept new mechanisms especially in finance and also the new business model etc so that and the people also is very uh respect for the regulation and the legal et cetera so i think financial is shanghai have a very good environment for doing business and finance the first time i met you um you told me that before before ontology you are already in the financial sector right can you tell us more about that what were you doing yeah i i'm working for the cfx cfx's china financial future uh exchange the china largest future and option uh exchange business contract uh exchange visa and i'm doing the system design architecture product financial production design and etc so in during the time i have got a lot of fintech financial technology background and financial product design experience as well so i think it's uh quite helpful uh for the blockchain industry every time every time we have a conversation i always experience that you do have a lot of technical knowledge which is very important right for our industry so where are you right now within this industry where do you see yourself you know in the next upcoming five years okay um in history i think the industry is still very short history i'm i'm as one of the earliest uh people joining this industry doing technology and right now we already built some projects and one of uh public projects and platform and infrastructure and it's coming five years and the challenge actually not only for me is for the whole industry we have to build a real application i mean we talked a lot about that they have been a large scope so everyone is face those kind of challenge uh in next five years but i believe more and more people already have those kind of concepts to how blockchain can have for them not only in different industries also for daily life and people's normal youth application and etc so i think in coming five years we have to do a lot of implementation in the rare application and to into to the more large scopes and the enterprise and different uh touch and the users that is i think this kind of task for me as you mentioned that there there's already a lot of people with these concepts you know the biggest challenge is how how do we implement them right yeah because blockchain like throughout the years have been so community driven with all the conversations we've had you know through the past years has always been hey how do we like figure out where the real adoption is right rather rather it's enterprise or rather it's uh community driven but we'll get into more of those later one one of the key points that i want to i also want to ask you about your personal life is how how big is your organization now by the way last time last time we met i think you guys had close to 100 people yeah country is more than i think 100 and more than 150 right now yeah you guys you guys have grown quite a bit yeah yeah because we actually it's not only in focus on the infrastructure level just i mentioned you need a private reapplication you still have a lot of other things you need to do like the ecosystem you mentioned the community driving and we need to build the ecosystem growth and another things is you need a touch and price right and to support enterprise to convert their service a decentralized service and also we also have a lot of media level protocol the media lab like decentralized identity and data exchange that is not directly in the infrastructure level but you need another team to focus this part so um as a platform blockchain platform you actually need to touch a lot of things you need to do a lot of things building infrastructure infrastructure so so are you still traveling a lot um not yet recently and uh but wait because we already built a lot of local team in united states and europe and even korea and japan so i still believe the local people can well be doing more good job yeah definitely you know like developing local teams like having having a very good relationships yeah you know with your local crew is so important right like like for you what about what about yourself like you know every time we meet we talk about like exercising right you know like elevating the mind as a leader who's running you know quite a hey 150 team for a blockchain project is quite it's quite it's a very big size right like how do you give time to yourself can you share with us yeah i went more focused on the one things is product and application i'm uh i lead a product team directly and i have a lot of time to focus on how to build a decentralized product and you can have a real application can have a go to real end users so i i'm kind of chief product manager yeah right another definitely strategy and you know the industry what is the correct direction people still cannot confirm right now people always a lot of people try to run different directions and to try around different things and you have to very focus on strategies and build a good strategy currently the infrastructure level strategy is quite clear because there are the build okay how to build a blockchain industry or infrastructure but the application level i mean the protocol a real application you still need a lot of exposing to more directions so you need to learn more and to know more information i you know you know i want to ask you how do you have time for yourself yeah i mean i still have a stuff since i'm actually i'm doing things very quick and yeah i don't know a country average i mean a book for example a book i can almost really finish a book in half hour or one hour can read a book and every day average every day i will reject these three books what yeah so how many pages per book normally if the business book maybe is 300 or 400 pages and but of course if you do any other technology book or philosophy book maybe a little bit slow but normally average and i just do a a calculation and in the uh the past year i i almost read 100 100 books and so i can go to information very quickly so i still have my personal life let's remove let actually let's put ontology aside for a moment let's talk about you you know this is very interesting like i remember the first time we met we were talking about exercising yeah you mentioned that you're you're almost you're doing a lot of swimming or running right each day yeah yeah i i doing running uh yes almost every day morning i would do running in my running machine actually yeah my home and i also do some swimming and so i still have time and but of course doing the the running for example i still where i have a lot of why i'm not doing this outside because i have like the ipad or iphone i will listen a lot of information class and the news actually and that's not also same time not waste time i didn't do it i think it's so important for for for individuals to work on themselves working working on yourself you see essentially working for your overall business right yeah because if you're if you're able to stay elevated you know that's that's the that's the topic i want to cover earlier if you're able to stay elevated everything you do everything you touch you know you really come with a very very fresh creative and structured perspective you know oftentimes i see a lot of leaders they're not taking good care of themselves so how can we lead an organization if we're not even leading ourselves that's why i've always been very proud of you you know i remember before you you're you're telling me that you would you know be running and spend a lot of time swimming like even on your cardio and there's never a time when you're late for anything so in regards you know in regards to books that you've been reading like how how the heck are you able to read three books in a day are you are you doing like speed reading or normally i will read in page one page by page we'll not just go through that because why more and more quick for reading is because when you read enough books i mean a lot of books for example sovereign's books already you already have kind of knowledge structure in your mind even in different parts for example language and philosophy and even management and business you already have a structure once a new book coming you will easily figure out okay which point in my structure i can easily link all the kind of knowledge together so you can you will got the highlight points very quickly from the book and you can read book first and first even some philosophy if you have very clear structure in the history and which kind of idea from which kind of philosophy and you can easily figure out okay what is this book talk about what a difference with the the other ideas all the concepts so that will help you more and more quick get to the highlights yeah so so what what are some of the books that you're reading like in in the past let's say three months what what has caught your interest uh recently i'm ready a lot of the society a lot of societal knowledge and it's because talk about how people be organized how incentive in different kind of cooperation and collaboration and people organization maybe a lot of people books is about political political and not voicings companies but this kind of ecosystem mechanism and incentive mechanism organization mechanism is very helpful for to build the even blockchain ecosystem communication yeah like like understanding of how of of people's behavior and and in a way is like how do you incentivize them to to collaborate right yeah that's always been the challenge in the industry yeah right yes yeah it's just quite actually but a lot of things doing in this industry like the dow the ao or other kind of things actually the similar things already happened in history just and they are using different kind of technology where i use digital technology and they have the internet they are using other kind of traditional ways to do that but the philosophy of principles behind that is actually quite similar uh similar i mean so that means actually history is always repeat itself again again based on different environment and technology but but in a way the message that we're sharing is just the context could be the same but we could be using just different formats right now now we're doing more digitally yeah yeah huh that's pretty that's amazing so what what is your what is your working style like you got 150 people man are you are you like very what's your everyday like is it appointments every hour or you kind of let your team like operate on their own like what's it like you know for you yeah nine countries i will do more enable people to do their their job more than management for example i just gave some support if they want okay what kind of direction and the strategy i will discuss with you and i will give you some suggestions for example products suggestion and new product ideas sharing with you so this most things is we we are doing the shining knowledge information in the whole team sharing knowledge yes sharing knowledge and information every people no matter his product team and the technology team or some business developer team they can go to the same information from this kind of shining mechanism and to make their decision by themselves and of course we have our direction discussion strategy to based on the strategy you can do the things use your own approach to to for this kind of direction i i experience a lot of uh in in this in this conversation i re i i experience a lot of structure and framework yeah creating a sandbox for the teams to bounce around their ideas right within this sandbox which is incredible and and um i remember there was a time last year i saw a pose that you made on wechat you guys are implementing training you guys are providing training for the team yeah how how often are you guys doing that like i i remember that time you guys were implementing scrum yeah yeah yeah most most we are doing as a scrum mechanism is because uh currently we are building the application step by step we are not set a very big target and with the long term it's very short term maybe two weeks of vision aversion and step by step and also doing some training and i think is i mean in the company level maybe uh training is one year one or two times but normally every week's week every week we will do a lot of discussion and uh about products and broadband business those kind of discussion meeting also kind of training everyone will share their information their ideas and their concepts and for in different uh for different points people will challenge each other and to learning things from each other what i experience right now is structured sandbox implementation freedom freedom for the teams to to create and also co-create together what kind of challenges do you see right now for you and your organization you know in order to reach a vision you mentioned implementation but what is that challenge that you guys face now that you guys you believe that you and also ontology needs to overcome yeah actually two challenges one is uh if you give people uh more space to to doing their things by their own always own approach and to have some creative just mentioned but once while maybe some direction have been be confirmed okay we need to do these things through those things in the implementation or all the execution phase you have to have a very good management test where people need to touch okay i need milestone i need to have a good result those kind of also you need to have a balance between them people always cannot always i just thinking i just do the corrective but when i do the implementation i'm doing things very not very good that is not acceptable so you need to have a balance people when you do things you need to do good things and you need on time and need to have a good result but for the new idea you maybe can open your mind to do more things to training more things another is challenge from a whole industry because currently the blockchain industry which direction just mentioned which kind of application is killer killer app like the internet in the people's theater is doing i mean the trial one for that so we need to try one more and to very clear to figure out which kind of location which kind of direction will have a potential become a large application in a large scope so that is people how people to figure out when your vehicles have a very clear direction you need to do maybe you need to build a more big team or large team oh for sure for sure that is another model very like the currently internet industry and you need to have another kind of management mechanism to support this business so in the maybe in the same time i mean same period blockchain company or organization they will have a different management mechanism for different kind of things so you have to figure out things to balance that and to to to manage it in different ways when when it goes back to the team members holding themselves accountable accountability is so important right yeah it is you know even even in our organization the different teams we work with how do we make sure that hey we are responsible and accountable for the things that we do you know really really like putting a heart and passion towards it and with the teams too and also the second the second part is how when you mention about trial run you know with blockchain it's not like we're building as individuals anymore we we need to we need to have structure yeah you know that's why the enterprise adoption you we talk about that all the time that that part is so important right yeah so now can i ask you a question okay how a lot of a lot of folks from the west i'm i'm a lot of a lot of folks from the west they're saying that especially in north america right in the united states there is there they're saying that ontology essentially is a neo 2.0 yeah i would like you to share how do you feel about that give us some feedback yeah actually i think it's i think it's quite normal because the team have a very close uh relationship with your team as well people really okay you are kind of uh kind of neo you have a lot of cooperation with you as well but when you check details about the technology part infrastructure even the struct strategy and the vision anthology is quite different with neo maybe new but currently the things is because uh blockchain industries we still have not a lot of large scope rare application to touch the normal users even investors they're actually difficult to to they all the concept of the idea about projects is from luxor marketing okay how you define yourself actually in the infrastructure level most blockchain infrastructure will be very similar for example the question until you have a question and a portal question cosmos question what is difference between those kind of culture most people don't know it's just because okay whose marketing voice is more more voice i think okay this project is for this one but the next phase i think is two things is i mean the technical community they will touch more details about infrastructure protocols they will easily figure out difference between projects and another thing is real application and more and more epic reapplication to touch to the end user and the normal people people will figure out okay you are a difference between each other just i have an example before talk to you and twitter and facebook if you define it all is social network right but when you use the application you will easily find the difference between you and not okay makes mistaking what is twitter what is facebook even e-commerce you also can figure out okay what's difference between alibaba and and uh yeah yeah so that is uh i think you still have a more application to touch the users that's very true you know what i really agree with what you just said yeah so how is ontology different you know from eos and tron if it defines horizontal kind of uh trust pro branch to real world and digital world that means we are not only supports only real-world mechanism like tokenized or some digital ss game or etc we also have can link to a real application i mean the off-chain application led currently under from enterprise even from other industry as well so that means ontology infrastructure and protocol like decentralized identity and decentralized data exchange they will support the real application also can be digitalized and decentralized that is ontology more focused on yeah uh yeah this is why i noticed that ontology has been integrating with a lot of traditional businesses lately especially with enterprises right yeah yeah we actually build a lot of modules and fundamental protocols i mean besides the blockchain infrastructure and those kind of protocols modules that can support uh reapplication enterprise actually small enterprise even some public governance and other kind of individual cooperation they can use this kind of module id data reputation uh build their business cooperation and even kind of live for cooperation and as well so we think it's decentralized integrated centralized service as well so that is ontology more focused so in the past few years obviously there was a huge blockchain boom right in the past few years and and lately the general market has hasn't been as excited yeah i would say what have you learned you know in the past few years and being in this industry what are the top three things what have you learned okay uh one thing is i think the vision and idea or some is valuable you know before people think okay owning real product and a real service and even making money mechanism is valuable but the vision still is valuable when the people think okay this kind of direction we are waiting to do we are waiting to join even we are waiting to support this kind of new mechanism this is valuable so actually when you look back the history this kind of vision in in my practical and all the other canvas they still have lots of power a good power even you have no product in in the initial phase that is where uh land so how to define the vision is important yeah uh yeah another thing is finally you need to depend on your real service the private real value to your users to your supporters that is that also is history already told us like uh 20 years ago dot com industry have facing a lot of when it goes down and the real i mean the real application real product will goes up again so that is another thing to do that and another industry level you have found your special space for yourself i mean not only blockchain because currently the business models even technology is very easily be copied and be lent especially from those kind of big company large companies they they already they use the investment or other kind of they actually is tracking all the kind of new technology new idea new business model you cannot only depend on that to protect yourself you have to find some new mechanism that you cannot call it just like decentralized mechanism it's difficult to be corporate by the other big companies because they were impacted the current business model so in the future that is for i mean for the start of new community news starts up new vr media or small company enterprise this kind of space is important very interesting you mentioned three key things here you know one is uh vision yeah the second it's really putting out your product and service yeah and then and then the third is how do you how do we constantly invent innovate yeah you know really build up a community right yeah yeah that's huge so one one key point that i also want to talk about is earlier we mentioned you know there there's so much competitive drive in the industry especially in our industry but how how can we work together as a collective rather than working individually because because still we're talking about blockchain as decentralization people should be coming together but at the same time there's so many organizations still working in their own silos right yeah one question i have for you is hey how can we work as a collective i think it's one thing is where we maybe have the same vision or at least a similar similar vision and for example people believe the decentralized cooperation for that is good for that so every project i mean every individuals and uh should have to to to enlarge the scope for the whole industry not only do the competition internally and each other okay you do the things i do a similar things just because i i have a good marketing i can i can beat you in this part that is nonsense actually because very small industry compared with the other industry blockchain is very very small so we need to launch our scope and to touch more new things and to to to build more things new things uh to do the things so actually not to do the only do the competition in this phase so i think i already saw a lot of projects i mean some the top level projects people are doing the new things actually as not only focus okay not only focus other projects but focus what kind of new things i can do for the users for the enterprise yeah right um so one very important question i want to ask you legion in this conversation um what is it that you've learned you know and something that you can share with the world and is um what you think yourself what kind of things you think yourself is quite different with people other people think you think your to mention okay maybe you have a clear vision clear concept about your project even yourself but the people the outside maybe they have used their own uh own approach to to to think about you just imagine okay why ontology is different so it's new and honest so when you even you have a good vision and good technology good product you still have very good ways to touch people's dead people to understand you so in this world how to shine information how to let people to understand you how to learn people accept your your ideas is quite important that is not only can be done by technology also a lot of other things need to do so that is a new lesson a lot of new lessons and we need to learn from that i acknowledge the region for being open yeah you know and also being being someone who's very understanding and you do know the relationship part yeah so important as well as understanding where people are coming from right and that that's a very rare i would say that's a very rare characteristic that we would find in many people cool man um well this wraps up our call you know um it's always been very it's very exciting to speak with you my friend okay okay thanks okay yeah okay thank you for listening to the game changers podcast we hope you enjoyed today's episode if you're keen to learn more check out our other episodes that's all for this episode see you next time
2021-04-03 01:08
