PES UNIVERSITY

(Established under Karnataka Act No. 16 of 2013)

-
100-ft Ring Road, Bengaluru 560 085, Karnataka, India

LEADERSHIP
(ASSIGNMENT)

Submitted by

Under the Guidance of

PROF. BRIJESH SINGH

DEPARTMENT OF MASTER OF BUSINESS

ADMINISTRATION

Eric Yuan
 (CEO of zoom communication)

1. EARLY LIFE

Yuan is the son of geology engineers. He was born and raised

in Tai'an, Shandong Province, China. In 4th grade, Yuan collected construction
scraps to recycle copper for cash.

As a first-year university student in 1987, he was inspired to develop video

telephony software while he took 10-hour train rides to visit his girlfriend and
was looking for an easier way to "visit" her. He earned a bachelor's degree
in applied mathematics with a minor in computer application from Shandong
University of Science and Technology, and a master's degree in geology
engineering from China University of Mining and Technology in Beijing. Yuan
completed a Stanford University executive program in 2006.
 2. PREPARATION FOR LEADERSHIP

CAREER

After earning his master's degree, Yuan lived in Beijing, and attended a training
program in Japan for four months. Inspired by Bill Gates, who spoke in Japan in
1995, he moved to Silicon Valley in 1997 to join the tech boom. At the time,
Yuan spoke very little English, and applied nine times before being granted a
visa to the United States.

Upon arriving in the US, Yuan joined WebEx, a web conferencing startup,

where he was one of the first 20 hires. The company was acquired by Cisco
Systems in 2007, at which time he became vice president of engineering. In
2011, Yuan pitched a new smartphone-friendly video conferencing system to
Cisco management. When the idea was rejected, Yuan left Cisco to establish his
own company, Zoom Video Communications.

IMPORTANT LIFE TURNING ANCEDOTES

In 2019, Zoom became a public company via an initial public offering, at which

time Yuan became a billionaire. His wealth has increased during COVID-19
pandemic, as Zoom has benefited from the shift to online work and
teaching. On September 1, 2020, Yuan's net worth was estimated to be US$16.4
billion, a figure 360% higher than his net worth at the beginning of the year. In
March 2021, Yuan transferred $6 billion worth of Zoom shares to Grantor
Retained Annuity Trust, for which Yuan is a trustee.

PERSONAL LIFE

Yuan married his girlfriend Sherry at age 22, while he was a master's student
at China University of Mining and Technology in Beijing. They have three
children. Yuan and his family live in Santa Clara, California. In 2007, Yuan
became a naturalized US citizen.

Yuan chose the middle name "S." after Subrah Iyar, cofounder of WebEx.

RECOGNITION

Yuan was named the 2020 Time Businessperson of the Year, and was included

in the Time 100 Most Influential People of 2020.

MENTOR

Eric Yuan considered BILL GATES as his mentor as he was influenced by his
training program which he attended in Beijing during the 1995.

CHAPTER 1
 a) Meaning of Leadership: Talk about the Leader’s intent, personal
responsibility and integrity, followers, influence over others, purpose
and being a change agent?
Meaning of leadership:
Talk about the leader’s intent, personal responsibility and integrity, followers,
influence over others, purpose and being a change agent

Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend

real changes and outcomes that reflect their shared purposes.

Leader’s Intend:

Back when he still lived in China, Yuan and his girlfriend were enrolled in two
different colleges that were separated by a 10-hour train ride, according
to Fortune. The two later got married.
"I was only able to see her twice a year and it took more than 10 hours to get
there by train," Yuan told Forbes in 2017. "I was young then — 18 or 19 years
old — and I thought it would be fantastic if in the future there was a device
where I could just click a button and see her and talk to her."

Personal responsibilities and integrity:

1. Focus on employee happiness:

Eric said he often asks his employees if they’re happy. If so, he encourages
coming into the office. If not, he sees no need for them to come in. He’d rather
them stay home and work on their own happiness.

2. Keep communication open and transparent

When asked how he brings happiness to his customers, Eric noted that to truly
win the customers' heart, you have to start with trust. Zoom aims to keep
everything open and transparent between them and their customers. Yuan added
that he wants to treat every Zoom user as an extended family member of the
company. Focusing on them is they key to great communication

3. Pay attention to your flaws

The customers are the center focus for the Zoom team. The Zoom team will
look at the negative reviews more than positive ones to make sure they
understand the problem and how they can best address it. Eric stressed the
importance of customer feedback.

Influence over others

Eric’s inspiring yet humble leadership style—reportedly admired by 98% of his

employees—has ensured Zoom would not only survive this year but flourish,
winning the hearts of his employees, customers and other others along the way.
In fact, Eric Yuan is also known as one of the most transformative CEOs in
Silicon Valley today

PUPOSE AND BEING A CHANGE AGENT:

Eric said it himself. Zoom has made his life infinitely better. He rarely travels
and has more time to spend working on his happiness, keeping true to his work
smarter not harder attitude. Yuan says he only travels for business twice a year.
Zoom has teams in China, Japan, Kansas City, Austria, and Europe making it
super easy and efficient to hold video meetings with international teams instead
of having to travel.

B) Does he have the reflections of old paradigm or new paradigm

Eric yuan belongs to the new paradigm as he follows the following

 Change Manager:

Eric yuan was a change manager as he brought up digitalisation through

zoom he facilitated modern change of digitalising into the world of digital
method of meetings.

Facilitator:

Eric yuan facilitated technological digitalisation of conducting meetings

on an e platform.

Collaborator

He collaborates his technical and other department employee to adapt

with the current covid situation

Diversity encourager:

Eric yuan was diversified in various e commerce field of applying zoom

in various opportunity of online sectors for E-Commerce digitalization
where diversity is efficiently used in all aspects of the different fields
efficiently

Humble:
To be a successful entrepreneur he should be humble in nature where in which
he should give all the employees equal opportunity to succeed in the form and
have an environment pleased to the employee.

C) What are the evidence for the success of his leadership ?

He said that in the early day’s engineers were the ones responsible for closing
deals and that “we did not have a product manager, we did not have QA, we only
had engineers. Whenever we received a customer cancellation email, I
personally replied back.

He mentioned in a separate interview that Zoom did not hire Marketing or Sales
people until the Company achieved over $1 million in Monthly Recurring
Revenue (MRR). A phenomenal effort. Before that moment, everything was
simply left to the engineers to do including closing sales.

D). How did he develop his leadership potential?

1. Don't wait around for anyone to say yes, just go for it

Although he could have stayed comfortable in his executive role at an

established technology company like Cisco, why did Yuan leave? He woke up
every day and didn’t want to go to work. The customers he served were not
happy, and he realized that he was not happy, either. When he started his own
company at the age of 41, he didn’t think anyone around him would have said
"Yes, go for it!" So he had to motivate himself every morning by asking, what
is my dream? If I don’t do it now, things won’t change in 10 years. I can’t wait
anymore. 

2. Lean on your friends to support your dreams

Zoom might not have come to fruition today without the help of some friends
willing to take a risk and financially back Yuan: “I had friends who really
wanted to support me. So I sent my friends an email that promised I would work
as hard as I could to give them a 10x return. And that I did have money in the
bank in case the company did not do well, so I could repay them.” After raising
$3 million in capital from his friends and family, he eventually received funding
from venture capitalists, made good on his word, and the rest is history.

3. Your journey to success as a CEO is a practice in perseverance 

Little did Yuan know that a months-long trip to Japan from his native China
would transform his life forever. It was during this time that he attended a
keynote speech given by Bill Gates in 1995 about the future of the internet. “I
realized the internet was going to change everything and that I had better
embrace it as early as possible. I told my wife that I should figure out a way to
get to the U.S. and join the first wave of the internet revolution.” Although that
was his plan, he got declined eight times. “I did not give up,” Yuan recalls.
“After nine times trying to attain my visa, I got it. Looking back, it is more of a
practice of my perseverance.”

Chapter 2
 A) PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUR LEADER.
ANECDOTES WHERE THESE CHARACTERISTICS WERE
DISPLAYED

1. Have deep domain expertise:

Though Yuan started Zoom from scratch, he was no stranger to video

communications. Being a founding engineer and VP of Engineering at WebEx,
he gained deep domain expertise over the course of over 10 years before he
started Zoom.  

2. Take risks:

Eric might not have been sure about how Zoom would turn out, but what he did
know that his time at WebEx was up. He told me, “Every day I’d talk to my
customers at WebEx and they’d tell me how unhappy they were with our
service. This was a terrible way to spend my days, it weighed heavily on my
heart.” It made his next move that much clearer: “I wanted to spend my days
delivering happiness, and I knew I had to take charge of my own destiny to do
that.” 

3. Run lean:

Though Yuan had the know-how to run a successful video communications

company and had taken a risk to start Zoom in an already crowded market, he
couldn’t have grown Zoom at the pace he did without running lean. 

For starters, Yuan was a solo founder, and he saw this to be a huge advantage,
especially in the early days. He told me: “Being a solo founder allows you to
move quickly -- when you’re going up against massive, entrenched competitors,
you need to maximize speed and agility. Having just one person at the top
allows for faster decision making.” 

4. Prioritize customers 

Another reason for Zoom’s hyper-growth in the last couple of years is Yuan’s

extreme care for his customers. Many start up founders focus on marketing to
get the word out about their companies -- campaigns, social media, etc. Yuan,
on the other hand, believes, “Keeping our existing users happy is our number
one growth strategy. If our existing customers are happy, they expose our
platform to new users, both by meeting with them and by telling them about
their experiences with Zoom.”

5. Ensure work-life balance

Yuan has been vocal about making it to all of his kids’ basketball games and
gymnastics meets. Naturally, I wanted to ask Yuan about how he does it. How
is it possible that someone who runs a multi-billion-dollar company can make it
to every one of his kids’ commitments?  

He told “I don’t travel for work very often, maybe one to two times a year. If a
customer or someone else wants to meet with me in person, I say, ‘Let’s Zoom
first. If that’s not good enough then we’ll meet.’ 99 times out of 100, a face-to-
face on Zoom is all that is needed.” With the time saved from doing a Zoom call
instead of traveling, Yuan is able to make time for his kids.

B) HIS STRENGTHS AND HOW HE MATCHED WITH HIS

LEADERSHIP ROLES

1. Build something better than other solutions out there

“If you always look at the competitor’s product, you will not dare start
something on your own,” advises Yuan. “Lead with the focus on the customer.”
Zoom was able to beat established incumbents that dominated the video chat
platform by setting itself apart as user-friendly, without the long download
times that often plagued other competitors.

2. The best marketing is to leverage your users

Zoom’s very first marketing effort old-fashioned: It posted information on the

Stanford campus bulletin board. Eventually, the team grew savvier and learned
along the way that word-of-mouth and leveraging your users remain the best
marketing strategy. They created market demand by first making the users
happy and, in turn, those customers shared their satisfaction by using Zoom
with their network. The positive experiences continued to echo naturally from
there.

3. If you make customers happy, the money will come. 

When the company was young, Yuan thought, we are not successful financially
yet, but if we make customers happy the money will come. Now he receives
emails daily from customers who share their positive experiences and how
Zoom has changed their lives. And, the company continues to have one of the
most successful stocks in technology.

4. Your business principles are more important than just managing a team

With hyper-growth and thousands of global employees, Yuan’s management

philosophy has evolved from overseeing engineering talent to leading a massive
company like Zoom. "As a founder and CEO, you have to manage every part of
the business and be very hands-on,” Yuan says. “Ask yourself, what kind of
company do I want to work for? The culture? The value? Write down answers
to these business principles, because they are more important than just
managing a team.” 

5. Lead by example when creating a company culture 

In the early days, Yuan decided he needed to write down the company's goal for
culture so that everyone would remember it. “It should be catchy, not too many
things, maybe two to three words,” Yuan shares. “As a CEO, you need to think
about your employees. Zoom’s culture is: Deliver happiness. If we are happy,
the customer is happy. It’s a simple formula, and we lead by example.” 

C) Contingency approaches to leadership: what is the leadership style

of your leader based on hersey and blanchards situational theory?
Justify?

ERIC yuan style is based upon coaching style as coaching style is based on high
concern for both relationship and task. so that he could deliver the best service
to his customers and making his customers life even more easier.

D) Any concepts from fielder’s contingency model or path goal theory

Under contingency approach Eric Yuan comes under path goal theory as he
follows the aspect of reward where he understands the need of the customers
and people working there and satisfies them and works accordingly. He
understands the needs of the customers and provides benefits to all the users of
his application zoom. he also increases value of work outcomes for followers.

Chapter 3

A) What was the vision provided by the leader?

Zoom's vision to connect more people through video communications and to be
part of a culture that is focused on delivering happiness both internally and
externally.

 Enacting a feature freeze, effectively immediately, and shifting all our

engineering resources to focus on our biggest trust, safety, and privacy
issues.

 Conducting a comprehensive review with third-party experts and

representative users to understand and ensure the security of all of our new
consumer use cases.

 Preparing a transparency report that details information related to requests

for data, records, or content.

 Enhancing our current bug bounty program.

 Launching a CISO council in partnership with leading CISOs from across

the industry to facilitate an ongoing dialogue regarding security and privacy
best practices.

 Engaging a series of simultaneous white box penetration tests to further

identify and address issues.

 Starting next week, I will host a weekly webinar on Wednesdays to provide

privacy and security updates to our community.

B) Mission: What is the mission of the organization. How did he arrive to

this mission ?
Our mission is to develop a people-centric cloud service that transforms the
real-time collaboration experience and improves the quality and effectiveness of
communications forever

1. Although the start-up journey is long and tough, it’s also fun and exciting.
Don’t be afraid to start just go for it!

2. You don’t need to hire the people who are the most qualified on paper; instead
you should hire those with self-motivation and a self-learning mentality.

3. Your company’s culture is the #1 most important thing to get right.

Everything else flows from there.

4. If your employees are not happy, nothing else at your company will go well.

5. Find the investors who want to invest in you, not only in your business.

C) The strategies used by Eric Yuan to achieve his vision

Prior to the pandemic crisis, we were already growing very fast. However, I
think if you look at the last 12 months, I would say that's hyper growth on many
fronts in terms of usage. We also have a quarterly revenue growth and we
doubled the size of the company. On many fronts I would say, wow, this is
hyper growth.

We would like to make sure we leverage this opportunity to think big. Not only
do we care about existing customers. We also think about what we can do
differently for future innovation because our vision is, we think (someday in the
future) video conferencing like Zoom can deliver a better experience than a
face-to-face meeting. We are not there yet.

I think if we can, imagine a world where you and I have a call. I can give you a
hug. You feel my intimacy. You get a cup of coffee. I can enjoy this remotely,
real-time language AI-based translation. I think if we can get us there, to be the
first vendor to get us there, I think we can maintain that hyper growth. That's
why we need to think about future innovation.

D) What were the values and norms which defined organizational culture
under his leadership?

A lot of work in terms of adding capacity and fixing some small glitches here
and there, not only for our data centre here but all over the world. Right? If we
do not invest in our company culture, I can tell you a lot of employees might
have quit already because it's a huge pressure and you work very hard around
the clock.

That's why when you invest in the company culture, employees realize this is
the best time we should work hard to really help the work. Employees, they do
not complain. They just move forward with all the solutions, with the plan.
That's number one.

Number two is if you do not invest in the culture and given all the workload,
you really cannot hire enough people. We more than doubled the size of the
company last year because of the company culture.

Chapter 4
A) Was there an open or closed communication under his leadership?

1. Employees will be more engaged

Translating this into leadership, giving your employees feedback and keeping
open leadership communication with them will increase their willingness to
work harder. It’s easy for large companies and corporations to miss this tactic so
it’s a great way to get a leg up. Great leaders are constantly looking for
constructive ways to compliment and encourage their team

2. Employees will feel cared about and stick around longer

People being managed by someone who checks in on them regularly will feel
more comfortable at work and ultimately, know that someone cares about them.
One of the biggest problems companies face today is a quick employee turnover
rate. Business solver reported that 92% of employees said that would be more
likely to stay in their job if their bosses would show more empathy.

3. Employees will be happier and more creative

Employees that have supportive and understanding management are
automatically going to like coming into work, bring a good attitude with them,
and take fewer days off.

B) Any techniques used to encourage the informal communication or

interaction with the front line employees
1. Focus on employee happiness
Eric said he often asks his employees if they’re happy. If so, he encourages
coming into the office. If not, he sees no need for them to come in. He’d rather
them stay home and work on their own happiness.

2. Keep communication open and transparent

When asked how he brings happiness to his customers, Eric noted that to truly
win the customers' heart, you have to start with trust. Zoom aims to keep
everything open and transparent between them and their customers. Yuan added
that he wants to treat every Zoom user as an extended family member of the
company. Focusing on them is they key to great communication.

3. Pay attention to your flaws

The customers are the centre focus for the Zoom team. The Zoom team will
look at the negative reviews more than positive ones to make sure they
understand the problem and how they can best address it.

4. Work smarter not harder

Eric said it himself. Zoom has made his life infinitely better. He rarely travels
and has more time to spend working on his happiness, keeping true to his work
smarter not harder attitude. Yuan says he only travels for business twice a year.
Zoom has teams in China, Japan, Kansas City, Austria, and Europe making it
super easy and efficient to hold video meetings with international teams instead
of having to travel.
5. Choose people who care
When asked about keeping his board and fellow executives focused on people
when most of them are focused on numbers, Eric stated that it’s his job to
choose the investors and executives that care about the people.

c) How did he act as a communication champion?

Eric Yuan knew communication is increasingly important to organizational

cohesiveness and the achievement of organizational goals and the success of the
company is purely the result of his communication.

Eric Yuan communicated the vision clearly to all subordinates and team
members. He also influenced his followers about his vision.

Eric Yuan use communication to inspire and unite people around a common
sense of purpose and identity.

d) Did he use technology effectively for message disbursement and

penetration to the target audience? Any anecdotes?

As Eric Yuan plays a major role in converting the meeting platform of any
company. He used the latest technology for conducting a meeting from
anywhere in the world. His technology was firstly used by few company
around the world. But due to the pandemic the application usage started to
increase more company started using the zoom meets, even educational
institute started to use zoom meet application. This helped Eric Yuan to
penetrate more into the market and target different segment of the markets.