Customers first, employees second, and shareholders third.
Interpretation
Prioritizing customers and employees leads to a better business outcome than simply focusing on profits for shareholders.
Jack Ma's quote emphasizes the importance of placing customers and employees at the forefront of business priorities. By nurturing customer satisfaction and employee well-being, a company can foster loyalty and productivity, which ultimately benefits shareholders in the long run, making them the third priority in this framework.
In practice
During a conference on corporate responsibility, this quote can be used to highlight a company's commitment to ethical practices.
Hong Kong people say Hong Kong needs to preserve its uniqueness. I say Hong Kong's uniqueness is in its diversity, its tolerance of difference cultures... China does not want to see Hong Kong in decline. I have full confidence in its future.
If we are a good team and know what we want to do, one of us can defeat tons of them.
It's not that other countries steal jobs from you guys. It's your strategy. Distribute the money and things in a proper way.
Helping doing business easier, we choose the name Alibaba because it is a global company. It is founded in China, but it was created for the world.
In the beginning I just wanted to survive. For the first three years, we made zero revenue. I remember many times when I was trying to pay up, the restaurant owner would say, 'Your bill was paid.' And there would be a note saying, 'Mr. Ma, I'm your customer on the Alibaba platform. I made a lot of money, and I know you don't, so I paid the bill.'
Even if your competitor is still small in size or weak, you should take him seriously and treat him as a giant. Likewise, even if your competitor is massive in size, you shouldn't regard yourself as a weakling.
Growth makes management easier. In particular, it makes making labor concessions seem easy. It's when growth stops because you're being disrupted that managing becomes really, really hard, and as a result, most disrupted companies simply disappear.
If all you needed to do is to figure out what company is better than others, everyone would make a lot of money. But that is not the case. They keep raising the prices to the point when the odds change.
Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.
Don't hesitate to seek external help or advice where need be. Sometimes, it takes an external, emotionally unattached individual to detect your business flaws and render unbiased advice.
If you are a new startup company, try not to arouse the interest or suspicion of your competition; especially if they are a bigger company. They can crush you while you are still in your startup phase. Lie low while still strengthening your bottom line.
Business men are to be pitied who do not recognize the fact that the largest side of their secular business is benevolence. ... No man ever manages a legitimate business in this life without doing indirectly far more for other men than he is trying to do for himself.
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