When he was in his senior year, Liu Qiangdong made money through programming. With more than 200,000 yuan in his hand, he wanted to open a restaurant.
There is a restaurant in the west gate of Renmin University of China that is particularly prosperous, and once posted a notice: Because the business is so good, I am going to open a bigger restaurant in the northwest, and this restaurant is sold. Liu Qiangdong went to inquire about the price, and the boss offered 240,000 yuan. Liu Qiangdong naively thought that if he bid 240,000 yuan, he would buy the restaurant and land himself, and he thought it was a good deal.
Liu Qiangdong went there the next day with a bag of cash on his back, saying that I wanted to buy this restaurant, and shocked the boss on the spot, saying that you won't bargain? Liu Qiangdong said coolly, there is no need to bargain for the things I like.
After Liu Qiangdong took over, he thought about treating his employees better and doing his own business better. So he distributed a Casio watch to each of the 17 employees. He also raised the chef's salary by 70%.
After half a year of operation, the restaurant has been losing money. Liu Qiangdong is desperately making money outside, but he can't plug the hole in the restaurant. What's worse, the landlord came to collect the rent. Liu Qiangdong is stupid, isn't this my buyout? The landlord was overjoyed, and showed him the contract, saying that you only have the right to operate. Liu Qiangdong saw that he had to pay another two years' rent, and he really couldn't afford it, so he decided to quit. There was a guy who really couldn't stand it, and told him, Boss Liu, the chef and the waiter are in love, and they are embezzling your money all the time, can you think about it?
After Liu Qiangdong came out of the restaurant, he was burdened with a debt of 160,000 yuan. He was heartbroken and went to work in a Japanese company called Ribao Laifu. Worked as a warehouse manager there. When Liu Qiangdong took inventory, he said that the error of the paper was 13 sheets. The Japanese said, we have no errors, this is called a mistake, Liu Qiangdong found that they are really rigorous. When Liu Qiangdong was in charge of the warehouse, he could see the entire information system of the company, and found that the management was really strict, and there was no chance for employees to make mistakes. Only then did Liu Qiangdong realize that it was not unreasonable for his restaurant to lose money, and the management was too rough.
Telling this story 1 is an introduction. No matter how big an organization is, no matter how charismatic you are and how caring you are for your employees, you can’t do without management.
Do you think that if you treat them well and trust them, they will do well?
They probably just think you're an idiot.
This article examines the nature of management.
First, look at the definition of management
Speaking of management, most people will agree with this definition:
“Management refers to the process in which a manager in a certain organization coordinates the activities of others by implementing functions such as decision-making, planning, organizing, leading, coordinating, and controlling, so that others can achieve the set goals together with him.” 2
Wait, I'm fine with anything else, but how does the definition of "management" include "leadership"?
The difference between management and leadership
Most people don't quite distinguish between these two concepts, but scholars who study leadership generally swear that there is a big difference between the two!
Generally speaking, scholars have summarized these distinctions:
Leadership focuses on strategy, management focuses on tactics.
Leadership is detached, and management is operational.
Leadership focuses on decision-making, while management focuses on execution.
Leadership focuses on motivation, while management focuses on control.
Leaders focus on influence, and managers focus on supervision.
Harvard Business School professor John Cotter, known as "the first master of leadership", said: "Managers try to control things and even control people, but leaders try to liberate people and energy."
The job of leadership is to set the vision, set direction, put the big picture together, motivate, inspire and influence people, and emphasize change and appropriate risk-taking.
The job of management is to plan and budget, organize and allocate resources, control and solve problems, establish order and process, issue orders and supervise employees.
However, in fact, for any manager, no matter whether he is in charge of 100,000 people or ten people, leadership is indispensable in his management activities.
Even if he is just a group leader, he still needs leadership, he must learn to motivate people, he must also understand the influence of taking the lead, and he must also make decisions on problems that arise within the group.
Even if he is a big leader, he still has a lot of management work to do. He is not always inspiring. He also needs to go deep into the front line and participate in the research and handling of some specific issues.
Leadership motivates people to work in a better mood, but management enables people who are not in a good mood to perform normally.
Therefore, management will use methods such as attendance, supervision, inspection, KPI, and assembly line.
If there is only leadership without management, nothing can be achieved; if there is only management without leadership, it will not be convincing.
The above definition of management includes the element of managers exercising leadership functions. That is to say, a manager must also have strategic thinking, be able to motivate people, make some decisions, and also need to establish his own non-power influence.
Based on the above, we discuss the essence of management.
3. What is the essence of management?
Generally speaking, there are several popular sayings.
The essence of management is to build trust
The essence of management is coordination
The essence of management is to stimulate goodwill and potential
The essence of management is entropy reduction
Let's take a look at what they all said and who said it better.
1. The essence of management is trust
Drucker said that the essence of management is to build trust.
How to understand?
"Only when the subject and object of management trust each other and can achieve each other, can this kind of collaborative relationship be healthy and effective. Otherwise, all rules, systems, and processes can only be "superficial skills", and employees do not know what to do. If you are convinced and do not understand, you will not cooperate in action, and even if you pretend to cooperate, it will be out of shape." 3
Drucker said that the essence of management is no longer based on power, but on the trust of the organization. If there is a problem with the operation and development of the enterprise, it is actually a problem with trust. Employees no longer trust the organization, and the organization no longer trusts employees. The relationship between the two parties is only guarded and defensive, without love and rules.
If there is no trust, it will need to increase a lot of costs to supervise, prevent, inspect, verify, and audit.
Is Drucker right? He is a master, and of course he is right.
However, trust is difficult to build, and the cost of mutual trust is high.
Liu Qiangdong is just too credulous, and suffered a big loss in this regard.
2. The essence of management is coordination
An organization is made up of people, and if it is not well managed, it will be a mess.
Someone got inspiration from dragon boat racing:
"The more than a dozen rowers on the dragon boat, under the command of the commander, how coordinated their actions are! It seems that there is an invisible rope connecting them together. The first to reach the finish line must be the most coordinated boat in action. .”
"A manager, if he can coordinate the efforts of all the employees of the company, link the various management departments together in an organic and orderly manner, make them play a joint role in one direction, and guide them to achieve An activity with a common goal will make the enterprise the fastest dragon boat.” 4
In an enterprise, everyone’s ideas are different. The business owner is for making money, the employee is for a job, and the manager may be for promotion. How to fully mobilize the motivation of these people?
This depends on the ability of management. If the manager is smart enough, he can coordinate the forces of the upper and lower, the inner and the outer, and use them to achieve the best efficiency and achieve the goal.
Is this statement right? A little one-sided.
Coordination is only one aspect. What about planning, planning, supervision, and training?
3. The essence of management is to stimulate people's goodwill and potential
That's what Drucker said.
"What managers should do is to stimulate and release the inherent goodwill and potential of people, create value, and benefit others. This is the essence of management."
Why inspire goodwill? It starts with the goals of the organization.
Schools exist for students, hospitals exist for patients, businesses exist for customers, and governments exist for the people.
For enterprises, the goal is to create customers, satisfy customers with products, and bring value to customers. For example, a company that produces washing machines will solve your static clothing needs in good faith, provided that you spend money to buy them.
Therefore, the purpose of the enterprise is a kind of goodwill, but the provision of this kind of goodwill requires a fee.
Therefore, Drucker said that the essence of business management is to stimulate and release everyone's goodwill. Let everyone in the enterprise be willing to serve and help customers from the bottom of their hearts.
Is that right? Of course, Drucker is right.
However, what he is mainly talking about here is leadership, especially the motivational role of leadership.
It is not so much the essence as it is the goal.
4. The essence of management is moisture reduction
Some people say that the purpose of management is to improve work efficiency, that is, to reduce costs and improve results.
Then, management should reduce disordered and ineffective parts, that is, entropy reduction.
Management is to change the state of various resources in the organization (such as people, money, materials, time, relationships, etc.) from
the original disorder and continuous dissipation through decision-making, planning, planning, organization, command, coordination, and control. , Adjust to an orderly state, fully mobilize the ability of various resources, solve various problems, improve efficiency, and provide value.
But how to achieve satisfactory entropy reduction requires a lot of management knowledge, experience and skills.
Since entropy increases everywhere, this statement is true and very general.
Code management, self-management, and expression management are all applicable.
Anyway, it is to reduce disorder and invalidity!
Four. Summary
Combining the previous points of view, it can be seen that the essence of management is to stimulate the goodwill and potential of the managed, establish two-way trust, coordinate all forces, promote the greatest possible entropy reduction, and achieve the highest possible efficiency and productivity , and finally achieve the purpose of the organization: serve customers and obtain benefits.
In fact, this puts forward very high requirements for managers, because "entropy reduction" is not a simple matter, and requires extremely advanced wisdom and ability.
Let me just talk about one, how does an enterprise maximize the potential of everyone to 50% through management (including leadership)?
No company in the world can do this.
An effective manager needs a lot of knowledge and ability, as well as long-term training and experience accumulation.
Moreover, for the sustainability and scalability of the organization, he also needs to train potential managers.
V. Conclusion
The essence of management is to use all means to organize and coordinate resources to achieve the goal at the lowest cost.
The difficulty is not understanding this essence, but how to do it.
Coming up with a vision, motivating people, it's not the hardest part.
The hardest part is reaching the goal.
You have to do it the right way.
The alias of this article: "What is the essence of management".
Text｜Wei Jianfan
Liu Qiangdong’s Entrepreneurial History: He earned 50,000 in 22 years, and was cheated out of his restaurant money ( https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/abziRA1bNGwhLYlBQbQKsQ )
Management (https://baike.baidu.com/item/management/366755)
Drucker: The essence of management is trust, not supervision (https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/59542346)
Coordination is fundamental for managers to implement management (https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/341269962)