Many start-up companies develop to a certain scale, and the top management will change their blood, especially the CTO position, the probability of changing is very high. There are many reasons, such as: CTO’s own vision and ability can’t keep up with the development of the company, CTO has realized the freedom of wealth to choose retirement, and is forced to leave because he disagrees with the CEO’s philosophy...
Brother K also told the story in his previous article that when I was the technical VP of a unicorn company, I had to leave because I didn’t agree with the CEO’s philosophy. But it’s not a bad thing. After I left, I went to work as an executive in a listed company, doubled my salary, and started my own side business. The income from the side business exceeded the main business, and later developed into a media company.
From my personal development experience, if a technician wants to have a better development in the workplace, or to start a business in the future, he must improve his business sensitivity.
Commercial sensitivity, as the name suggests, refers to the sensitivity to business opportunities, whether you have the ability to grasp business opportunities.
technician why
What about developing business acumen?
Some friends will say that it is impossible to start a business. I just want to be a professional manager. Does that require business sensitivity? The answer is yes. With the development of career, business sensitivity is almost a must when working in middle and high-level positions. Whether it is finance, market operation or technical management, one must understand business. Otherwise, how can one deeply understand the company's strategy and the CEO's business What about the intention? How to help your company win in the market competition?
What exactly is commercial sensitivity?
Business sensitivity, also known as "Business Acumen", was described in detail in Ram Charan's book "What the CEO wants you to know" ("What the CEO wants you to know").
Business sensitivity refers to the ability of business members, especially managers, to make business decisions quickly and accurately from the perspective of entrepreneurs, starting from the overall interests, simplifying complexity, and starting with the end in mind, thereby bringing about business growth . From the definition point of view, it is relatively abstract, but from the perspective of decomposition, it is manifested in three aspects: systematic thinking, financial sensitivity and sales awareness, which will be explained separately below.
systems thinking . Systemic thinking is a way of thinking that considers material systems as a whole. Different from the traditional way of thinking that analyzes first and then synthesizes, the procedure of systematic thinking is: start from the whole, first synthesize, then analyze, and finally return to a new synthesis at a higher stage, which is holistic, comprehensive, and quantitative. characteristics of refinement and refinement.
There are three levels of systems thinking:
1. Event awareness: only see the fuse of the event;
2. Pattern awareness: seeing multiple factors influencing an event;
3. System perception: stand in the dimension of time and think together with the external environment.
A professional manager with systematic thinking can look at his work from the perspective of corporate vision, mission and values, know what resources he has and what kind of capabilities his position requires, and comprehensively expand from a macro perspective One's own ability matrix makes oneself a more useful talent for the enterprise.
financially sensitive . Simply put, how much money does the company currently have? In a predictable amount of time, how much money? What are fixed and non-fixed assets? How much is the bank loan, how much is the interest, and when will it be repaid? How much is the product priced? We have a detailed understanding of every entry and exit of "money", not only knowing the current situation, but also predicting the future capital situation.
The key to improving financial sensitivity lies in the following three aspects:
First, you need to have a certain amount of financial knowledge and a large reserve of financial mathematics.
Second, the rapid perception of the relationship between data, especially the proportional relationship, is essentially mental arithmetic ability.
Third, the ability to quickly associate and deconstruct numbers.
The improvement of financial sensitivity is a long-term accumulation process that requires more practice.
sales awareness . The leader of an enterprise must always be a chief market researcher. For example, Ren Zhengfei will often be with enterprise customers to understand the difficulties they encounter and think about how to help customers solve problems through products.
There is an old saying in the business world, "The answer lies in the market."
A professional with sales awareness, he often thinks:
Who are my clients? Who is not? How much can they buy?
Are there business opportunities for them?
Who competes with me? Did I find it all? Where am I better than my opponent?
What kind of experience do customers want? Will my product or service satisfy them?
How will the market develop in the future? What should I do in the future?
How to develop business sensitivity?
To cultivate business sensitivity, the most important thing is practice. Business sensitivity is practical skills. "A good shooter is fed by bullets, and only in war can one learn war."
To cultivate business sensitivity, you can start with business theory knowledge and practice in the following ways:
First, training . Improve the mastery of business knowledge from the cognitive level. Many companies have corporate universities that offer business courses internally. In addition to business knowledge learning, sand table drills are also provided. Generally, the courses are concentrated for 2 to 3 days and divided into groups. Sand table drills, through sand table simulation, go through a complete process from company establishment to listing or liquidation, similar to the way of simulating stock trading, to cultivate the team's business sensitivity.
First, cross-job rotation . Some large enterprises have a complete rotation mechanism for middle and high-level employees, such as Alibaba and Huawei. Technical executives may take turns to manage human resources; human resources executives may take turns to do sales. For example, Tong Wenhong of Alibaba went from the front desk to the CHO of the group, and later served as the CEO of Cainiao. But the disadvantage of job rotation is that the time and opportunity costs are relatively high, and it depends on the company's relatively capable middle-level cadres as support.
Third, start a sideline business . Sharpshooters are all fed by bullets. Only in war can one learn war. The same is true for business. It is better to learn business methodology ten thousand times than to practice in the real business world. Using your spare time to try to run a business, even if you don’t make money, it’s a waste of time at most, but you have gained real business experience, which is more valuable to you.
In short, business sensitivity is a system capability, and improving it is also a system engineering. This article throws out such a theme, hoping that everyone will consciously improve themselves in their work, and build themselves into talents who perfectly integrate technology and business.
The above content is excerpted from "The Way of Technical Personnel Training", the author Huang Zhekeng, once served as the technical director of No. System research and development, large-scale technical team governance, blockchain innovation, etc.
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