Jack Ma on flattery, arrogance, and why he has a weird face

Late last month, Red Flag Publishing released a book called Jack Ma’s Internal Speeches: Trust in Tomorrow. Many of the speeches have never been shared publicly before, so I’m translating a few interesting excerpts from them. Already published: a piece about how Jack Ma sees his company’s success and a snippet on education and what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. In this latest excerpt, Ma waxes philosophical on flattery, arrogance, and why his face looks weird.

I think it’s very easy to flatter people. I could emptily say to someone else, ‘you’re very hardworking, just keep at it a few years and you’ll be successful.’ But you might actually be telling him to continue on a dead-end track. I think that in this life you need people who’ll tell you the truth, people who’ll speak the truth to you in critical moments.

I’m very thankful to my university English teacher. I was an English major, and had been studying with foreign teachers since I was a little over ten. In Hangzhou regardless of the weather I’d go to West Lake and find foreigners to practice speaking with. I’d show them around the scenery and they’d teach me colloquial English; I did that for around eight years so my pronunciation was quite good, a lot better than kids from the country. When I was in college, there was one test where I got a 59, and some of those country kids got 80s. I was very arrogant at the time, so I went to the English teacher. ‘My pronunciation is so good, how could I only get 59, it’s not fair.’ The teacher said, ‘Read something for me.’ I did and he said it wasn’t bad. I felt better, and he said I could take a makeup test the next day. I took it, and he gave me a 60. When I asked why he said: because you don’t know who you are, you’re too arrogant. You really are at the 59 level.

When I was on the panel of [reality TV show] Win in China, there were some contestants that were very cute, had funny presentations, but weren’t qualified to advance on the show. The show people all said keep them, it will be good for ratings. I said I should tell the truth, because this show will have a lot of influence on startup founders and future founders. If I just flattered people and didn’t tell the truth for the sake of humor, it would have harmed a generation of entrepreneurs.

Since founding Alibaba, we’ve got a good business model and team and we’re in a good industry, so we got to where we are today. But I can tell you that with any company, when other people say things look great is when the company often will encounter some disaster. Individuals are like this as well; by the time the problem is discovered it’s often too late.

A company’s leaders must become clear on what kind of things can become cancers, and continuously check up on them and rethink things. People ask me: why is your face so long and weird? Because I think about things in a weird way, I spend all day thinking about the obstacles that will block the company’s development, which things can become cancers and which are just colds. As the team got bigger, so did our troubles. With over 9,000 employees, most of them from technical colleges or universities, everyone thinks they’re smart. ‘What makes you smarter than me?’ Everyone’s talking strategy, and it becomes hard to manage. When a company gets big, lots of problems come up, and you need to constantly reflect [on them].

See more: What is Jack Ma’s net worth?