ByteDance’s Liang Rubo Sends Company-Wide Email Emphasizing New Leadership Principles in the AI Era
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On the evening of June 29, ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo sent an internal email to all employees, announcing the restructuring and update of the company’s cultural content. Among these changes, the “Leadership Principles”—the core basis for management and evaluation—have been established as ten points in the new version. This marks the first substantial adjustment to ByteDance’s core management concepts since 2022, after a four-year interval.
The email disclosed that the direct driving forces behind this adjustment are the “changes taking place in the industry” and “the organization’s own development needs.” At the macro-strategy level, the internal message clarified that the mission of “inspiring creativity, enriching life” remains unchanged. However, it outlined for the first time a specific path under the new cycle: “turn computation into intelligence, and use intelligence to enhance creativity and experience.” This fundamentally confirms the company’s strategic direction toward the AI age.
To support this strategic shift, the new ten-point Leadership Principles show significant changes in three dimensions in organizational management and evaluation standards. Based on the internal message’s requirements, the core of this adjustment directly targets correcting “management rigidity” and “formalism” within large organizations:
First, the principles newly add “doing things at a high level” and “daring to set high goals.”
The email clearly states that managers cannot be limited to short-term workflows and monthly data. They must step out of daily trivialities and anchor themselves to long-term high-value tracks. The company requires management to abandon the mode of “lying flat” by relying on existing resources.
In actual execution and evaluation, simply maintaining business stability is no longer recognized. Management actions without incremental output will be scrutinized, and managers must take initiative to break through, producing long-term results competitive in the industry.
Second, “having a sense of crisis, maintaining an external perspective” and “going deep into the frontlines” have been established as independent points.
To address the “big company disease” internally, new regulations set hard requirements: from now on, all middle- and senior-level managers cannot stay in offices reading reports and listening to briefings for the long term. They must routinely go down to the frontline of business, products, and users, facing real pain points directly.
The email states that for middle management detached from the business frontline, performing only information delivery without providing practical solutions, their value within the organization will be continuously diminished. This is also the core logic for ByteDance’s subsequent push toward organizational flattening.
Third, it reaffirms and strengthens the “Context over Control” concept.
To address the phenomenon where teams are “busy but without substantive output,” the email requires managers to drastically reduce multi-level approvals, repetitive meetings, and ineffective reports. Such formalized work has been directly listed as negative management cases. Managers’ energy must be forcibly refocused on solving actual business problems and achieving tangible results, rather than on creating complex control processes.
It is worth noting that this update to Leadership Principles is not merely a cultural promotion, but a personnel evaluation measure with mandatory constraints. The email also clarifies that the new ten Leadership Principles will directly be included in all managers’ promotion and annual evaluation core standards. For those unable to deliver output or who are detached from the business frontline for long periods, the company will strictly adjust positions and responsibilities according to this standard.
Overall, as ByteDance’s business focus fully tilts toward the new technology cycle, the company is attempting to clear out ineffective middle management links and rigid work habits through mandatory management levers and clear evaluation standards. This aims to restore tactical autonomy and agility on the business frontline.
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