1) James Hardy was appointed head of Europe for Alibaba.com after a career change, despite having no marketing experience in his previous roles as a solicitor. 2) Alibaba encourages innovation and risk-taking in recruiting and developing employees, regularly moving people to new roles and splitting business units to allow new leaders to emerge. 3) Hardy says Alibaba's commitment to internal promotion and leadership development is demonstrated through the experience of many senior leaders, and that the company culture emphasizes accountability, autonomy, and teamwork over individual advancement.

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October 9, 2013 4:20 pm
By Sharmila Devi
It sometimes pays to take a chance on accepting a role in a new field, or for an employer to
make an unorthodox appointment to freshen up a team.
This is the experience of James Hardy. He was appointed to his present job – head of
Europe for the Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba.com – after being approached by a friend
who knew he wanted a career change.
“She suggested I apply for the job because she knew I had lived
in three different countries and the market knowledge I had
was particularly relevant, as opposed to any particular skill-
set,” he says.
“I was hired out of a non-marketing area to do a primarily
marketing job, so they took a risk right from the start,” says
Mr Hardy, 45. He had originally trained as a solicitor, followed
by 18 years of management experience in three countries.
He uses his own appointment to illustrate the importance of
innovation and risk in recruiting and developing the careers of
employees. He joined Alibaba.com, one of the world’s biggest internet retailers, just over a
year ago.
“At Alibaba, if someone’s been in a role for more than three years, then it’s time to look for
another one. There’s extreme cross-pollination of ideas. Many companies talk about giving
employees opportunities but they struggle to deliver,” he says.
He is equally proud of the way the company is developing its future leaders. This year, its
seven main business units were split into 25, each with its own general manager or unit
president.
Mr Hardy says the reorganisation will allow new leaders to emerge and become visible. “We
picked the 25 most important platforms or products and now we have 25, not seven,
leaders,” he says.
Alibaba boss sees benefits of risk taking

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“This will encourage entrepreneurship because people won’t have to go up the chain for
sign-offs because they will be working in independent units. Speed is everything for the
internet, particularly in China.”
The Alibaba Group, a Chinese company founded in 1999 and led by Jack Ma, a former
English teacher from Hangzhou, China, employs 24,000 people around the world.
While investors are looking forward to an initial public offering in the business on the New
York Stock Exchange that could value Alibaba at $100bn, the company has embarked on its
third reorganisation in two years as it pursues ambitious growth.
“We are going to make the most difficult organisational and cultural transformation in
Alibaba’s 13-year history,” Mr Ma wrote in an email to the business’s employees in January.
He urged them to “work together to make every business unit small but beautiful, and
enable them to collaboratively drive the development of and create value for the ecosystem”.
Mr Hardy says the organisation’s approach to career development is vital and that it is “hard
to overstate how critical individual autonomy” is to the group. Compared with western
companies, individuals are far more empowered, he adds.
“The most important value we have in business is embracing change. This means it’s critical
for teams and leaders to move very fast,” he says.
The best way to handle a large reorganisation varies according to the culture of an individual
company, he says, but communication is key at every stage. “It’s wise to deal with some of
the cultural issues as early as possible and having employees understand why restructuring
is necessary is vital.”
Before joining Alibaba, Mr Hardy was a senior executive at a large communications
company based in Sydney with responsibility across 22 offices in the Asia-Pacific region.
Before this, he was general counsel and held two board roles with public relations
companies in San Francisco. He is a qualified solicitor and has an MBA from Melbourne
Business School.
He now leads both strategy development and implementation for the marketing and brand
efforts of Alibaba.com across European regions. He works with companies to help them
develop their business using the Alibaba platform and new markets include Russia, Turkey,
the Middle East and North Africa.
He says Alibaba’s commitment to internal promotion and leadership development is more
than empty words and proved through the experience of many of its senior leaders. “People
work extremely hard and they are expected to operate in a team-oriented environment,” he
says.
Through the company’s grading system, people are “penalised for political actions”. These

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could include taking credit for other people’s work, behaving inappropriately, for example
by spreading malicious gossip, and power grabbing, he says.
He has witnessed key differences between Asian and western companies over the course of
his career.
“In China, your job is connected to who you are and your life. The work-life balance debate
is less meaningful and not such an integral part of work as it is in Australia, the UK or US,”
he says.
“Individual autonomy combined with accountability is very high compared with western
companies.”
He is excited by changes to the nature of entrepreneurship brought about by the internet
and to what he calls the democratisation of business. He gives the example of someone
setting up a company in the pre-internet days who might spend two years testing,
developing and marketing a product before its launch.
“These days, the best people get their product out fast to market and are not afraid to fail.
They will launch a product in six months and might end up with four different versions over
two years,” he says.
“The ability to fail fast is a significant advantage. Only a few years ago, if you were a 19-year-
old college student, it would be hard to be taken seriously as a young entrepreneur. The
nature of entrepreneurship is changing fast and a good entrepreneur is someone who is
curious about the world.”
Secret CV
Best career advice to others?
If you’re stagnating, then move. Taking more risk is key. Everyone says do something you
enjoy but you can only find out what you enjoy through experience – so the question is how
to get experience as fast as possible.
The answer is to shadow people – live for a day or two in someone else’s shoes. There’s a lot
of research showing that’s the best way to find things out rather than through coaches or
tests.
Your first big break?
Getting a job at Mischcon de Reya, Princess Diana’s old law firm. I was very lucky to get in
there. I worked on the contract team and then I was asked to train there and it was the
biggest break of my career. I worked in general commercial litigation and also defended

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What would you have rather done?
Teaching marketing or business. I have done a lot of lecturing and public speaking. I like the
fresh viewpoint you can get from students. They are unpolluted by conventional wisdom and
force you to understand new things.
What do you do outside work?
I spend a lot of time with the kids playing in the garden. I find different types of exercise,
usually outside, very therapeutic. And reading – especially about China.

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