THE 5 TRAITS OF JACK MA 

Ma Yun a.k.a. Jack Ma is one of those self-made billionaires with humble beginnings. Jack Ma was born in Hangzhou, located in the south-eastern part of China. He was born and raised along with an elder brother and a younger sister during the rise of communist China and its isolation from the Western regions. His parents were traditional Musicians-Storytellers and they didn’t make enough to be even considered as middle class during those days.

Open Risk Taker

It is often said that good things come to those who take big risks. An excellent, recent example of this is Jack Ma’s risk-taking that resulted in the super-successful company Alibaba. But Ma did not simple take risks—he dared to challenge the status quo, supported by many years of conventional wisdom about business and competition in the digital age. His amazing story is full of lessons for novice entrepreneurs and veterans alike.

The onslaught of criticism from academics, analysts and competitors were tougher to understand. It centered on the actions and remarks of Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma. This is because Jack Ma defied conventional wisdom and longstanding corporate governance practices to clear a new path for creative and innovative entrepreneurs. Below are the steps how he manage to challenge the status quo:

·                     He preserved after failing many times

·                     He learned skills in unconventional ways

·                     He believed that trust is important about all

·                     He took responsibility as a leader

·                     He pushed on despite being called ‘crazy’

·                     He believed that balance is a virtue

·                     He hired a lot of woman

Besides that, Nowak notes that Alibaba effectively controls this market as people go in and out of it, by controlling the retail platform, Tmall, and the online setting, Taobao, and disallowing indexing of Taobao. This is a radical departure from the open-door philosophy of the world’s largest e-retailors. By sticking to its strategy of locking in shoppers at the beginning and the end of their excursions, Jack Ma has captured huge market share. Due to have huge market share, Alibaba have core competencies and gain compete advantages in the Chinese e-commerce market to compete with other companies or competitors.

Visionary

Jack Ma always remind his team during meetings of his vision  and say that he wanted Alibaba to be one of the top 10 websites in the world, that he wanted the company to last for 80 years. He later expanded it to 103 years, because 80 years wasn’t long enough. He also wanted to be a company that served all business people in the world.  Without it, you can't achieve amazing, great things when you don't set them as a goal. Very seldom, some people might get lucky. By setting these bold goals, having goal-driven team, allowing them to visualize it, and set your team’s sights on this hundred‑year‑vision instead of the next few years, that’s what makes a great company.

Stories from his childhood tell how Ma rode his bike for miles everyday to spend time around English speaking tourists. He would give them free tours of the city in order to practice his language skills. He had the vision to know the importance of English as a child and the persistence to learn the language. He speaks English well today, but more importantly his childhood efforts have served him greatly in growing a business. Any person who has ever started a company knows that it takes tremendous energy and effort, but hard work alone is not enough. You also need to be able to envision success and put action behind your vision. Few in the world can speak about building a company like Alibaba. The business generated $170 billion in 2012 revenue (that's more than Ebay and Amazon combined) and is forecasted to achieve $420 billion in 2014 sales. Along the way, he has motivated countless small business owners in China and around the world.

Failure is an option

The example of the entrepreneur that had failure as an option trait is Jack Ma. Jack Ma is a Chinese business tycoon and also a philanthropist. He is a former English teacher but his passion towards business makes him one of the richest man in China. Jack Ma is a founder and the CEO of Ali Baba Group. He does not let his success cloud his vision for the future or his acknowledgement from where he originated. Even though how well he took to learning another language as he is an English teacher but he never excelled at math. Jack Ma has never been a typical technology CEO. He failed the college entrance exam twice before he finally got in to the university because of low marks on the mathematics portion.

Finally, after thorough preparation for his third try at the test, he passed and eventually graduated from Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute in 1988. Jack Ma says that he was rejected for a number of jobs including a manager position at Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) right after he graduated.

However from his patience he eventually became an English teacher, making about $12 a month at a local university. Jack Ma never give up for trying. He established Ali Baba Group in 1999 and belief that the Internet would provide the same level by enabling small enterprises to leverage innovation and technology to grow and compete more effectively in the domestic and global economies.

Jack Ma belief that, “giving up is the greatest failure.” If you go out, try your best and fail to achieve your goal but see it through to the end you are a success.  Like all great leaders, Ma recognizes that a person is able to learn the most from obstacles and hardships.

Open Culture

Jack Ma, who defied conventional wisdom and long standing corporate governance practices to clear a new path for creative, innovative entrepreneurs. He was entre and competing in Chinese e-commerce market, and effectively controls this market by controlling the retail platform. This brought motivation to other to take a big step to make investment. This is because if want to change the model of corporate governance status quo have for more than one hundred years is difficult and it will challenge by aggressive competition and governmental interference. For example, Ma was believed and confidences in his concept of investment which make him dare to challenge the conventional wisdom and longstanding corporate governance practices.

Jack Ma aware and think that the most important thing is made trust with other people in e-commerce. This is because system of corporate governance long characterized by secrecy, greed, and a lack of transparency. So Jack Ma believe that building trust is essential and often underestimated by other entrepreneur but recent events have proved that Alibaba was successfully changing of the traditional sales to network sales ,trusted by the public and indispensable platform.

Besides that. Ma also realized that to change the world cannot just rely on a person, therefore your employees need to be invited to shape the future of the business, rather than manipulated to meet the needs of management.In the role of an open culture, management is to create a culture where every person to be the best that they can then focus on removing barriers. Jack Ma believes that on feelings and trust among employees. Employees like our family member. We want to treat your family a way to treat them.

Once Jack Ma face financial problem and cannot to pay the salary of the staff. Ma did not hide the case, he bluntly told the plight of the company's employees. Ma sincere attitude has won the understanding of employees. Then Jack Ma treats former employees has different from the practice of other enterprises. When his staff was feel failure and find out not suitable for them. They can back to Alibaba and Jack Ma will gladly accept them come back.

Team Oriented

Jack Ma understands that a strong team is absolutely essential for the success of his business. Jack Ma always said that if we are a good team and know what we want to do, one of us can defeat ten of them,” As such, throughout his business, Ma always put his employees first and want them to come to work with a smile. During the SARS crisis, because of one suspected case, Jack Ma made the decision in one day to have all employees work from home and to pass the required isolation period. As a result of this quick action, they contained any possible outbreak, Hangzhou citizens remained calm, and our revenue grew by 30% during the month of May. Employees continued to perform jobs tremendously well at home. The most positive thing to result from the SARS crisis was an enormous amount of pride for employees who went through this crisis together. They built a strong bond through experiencing this event together. It’s still a much talked about event in the company. In fact, some employees have named the day that staff were sent home to contain the outbreak, Alibaba Day, to commemorate the event. The spirit of Alibaba came alive on that day.”

When Jack Ma founded Alibaba, he started it with 17 other co-founders out of his apartment. In the early days, Jack would even give equity to the high school students working with him. As one executive puts it: Jack Ma wasn’t the type of person who starts a business keeping 90 percent of the equity for himself and really hoarding all of the wealth and riches.” By empowering his workers with an ownership mentality, Jack was able to get an incredible performance out of his team. With Jack, it was never just about him but the team.