The word is like the face, I am Brother Jun!
This year, the words that often come to everyone’s lips are, “It’s too difficult.” Two-thirds of a year has passed, and there are no signs of improvement that make people happy. Companies are cutting wages and laying off workers, making workers restless and trembling, worried that one day they will become one of them.
But if you look closely, not all migrant workers are like this. I have indeed seen some professionals who have become more courageous and frustrated. They can "turn crises into opportunities" in the current environment, buck the trend and obtain extremely rare promotions. Opportunities for salary increases. In my opinion, the biggest thing these people have in common is that they are not far away from the front line and are always in a position where they can hear the sound of artillery.
01
What is the first line?
What is the so-called "front line"? Not only the factory assembly line is considered the front line. For a company, the place closest to the core business, the place closest to customers (users); the place closest to money can be called "front line".
Wal-Mart Supermarket is a retail industry that focuses on sales, so its stores all over the world are its front line; for Internet companies, user data is the key, so R&D, marketing, and operations are the positions that accumulate data, utilize data, and transform data. It is their front line; in the financial industry, life and death are largely determined by the "gold content" of customers, so the expansion of high-net-worth customers has become the most critical front line in this industry. It is not difficult to see from the above that no matter which industry the front line is, it is the lifeline of the company. Therefore, the distance between you and the "front line" is the distance between you and the company's core values.
Some time ago, I received a private message from a reader describing his feelings during the resignation process. This reader works in the product development department of a company. Because he was dissatisfied with some of the company's changes, he complained at the meeting and impulsively proposed to resign. Afterwards, he also regretted a little, but he had no choice but to hope that the leader would give him a way to save himself. As long as the leader persuades him to stay, he will step down and never mention his resignation again.
At the beginning, he was very confident in the leader's retention, because a few days ago, a colleague from the business department also slapped the table with the leader and asked to resign. In the end, he was persuaded by the leader to retain him. What's more, I usually behave very positively and have a good relationship with my boss. It is very possible for me to be retained in both public and private matters.
But the reality was contrary to what he thought. Not only did no one do anything to retain his resignation application, but the HR department quickly urged him to complete the procedures. At first, he was puzzled and even suspected that he was too "popular". Later, after being reminded by other colleagues, he realized that compared with the previous colleague who slapped the table, what was worse about him was not his popularity, but his department.
The colleague who was upset before was actually in a position that brought performance and income to the company. The harder the company became, the more they needed it; and the production and research department where I worked was a standard cost department, so it was not difficult to quickly bring results and income to the company. In terms of direct income, everyone in the department is a "gold-eating beast". In times of difficulty, one less person is equivalent to reducing a burden for the company. When the company lays off people, it will first lay off people who are not on the front line or in non-core departments. Now that someone has given up their job and voluntarily resigned, the leadership and HR are secretly happy that it is too late. How can they retain them?
02
3 disadvantages of staying away from the front line
1. Easy to get out of the market
As an enterprise, an important prerequisite for sustained and healthy development is that the management must be able to fly close to the ground and have access to real and transparent information on the first-line market, instead of just blowing on the air conditioner in the office, patting the head, and relying on imagination make a decision. The fall of Nokia, the former giant, was largely due to its business decisions that were seriously out of touch with the market.
As early as 2007, Nokia's mobile phone sales accounted for 40% of the world's mobile phone sales. In that year, iPhone 1 had just started to be launched, and Google had just started to make Android. At that time, someone asked the CEO of Nokia what he thought of the newly launched iPhone. The CEO replied proudly: The iPhone is just a gadget, and our opponent is Motorola. Everyone knows the final outcome. The iPhone led the trend and ushered in the era of mobile phone intelligence, but Nokia was abandoned by the times and turned into a prostitute.
When Nokia CEO announced that he was selling the company, he famously said: We didn't do anything wrong, but for some reason, we lost. What did management not do wrong? Is this really the case? Obviously not. In fact, as early as Nokia's glory days in 2007, they had already developed a series of new technologies for smartphones. But Nokia's management, who are accustomed to being champions every year, have stayed away from the market. They are more willing to look at numbers and open champagne in the office. They have long lost their sense of the market and their awe of risks.
Although smartphones are rapidly impacting the market share of feature phones as user habits change, Nokia's management self-righteously believes that it is not that users no longer like Nokia's models, but that new mobile phone manufacturers are The small fluctuations caused by discount promotions and consumers taking the opportunity to try new products, as long as they increase their marketing efforts, shipments will return to normal in just a matter of minutes.
In addition, Nokia's management also judged that the sales were not increasing because the staff below were lazy. Therefore, Nokia's marketing department even formulated a more stringent performance appraisal...
Executives who make decisions in the office are far away from the first-line market after all, and it is difficult to touch the real user psychology and market pulse. The decisions they make are just small changes that scratch the surface. Not only do they not affect the overall situation, but they miss it. Entering a critical period of transformation, Nokia's mobile phone empire suddenly collapsed.
2. It’s easy to fall into an information cocoon
In 2001, American scholar Keith Sunstein pointed out a phenomenon in "Information Utopia - How People Produce Knowledge": When individuals only focus on self-selected or content that can please themselves, and reduce their exposure to other information, over time, they will Like silkworms, they will gradually confine their life and cognition into the "cocoon" they weave. This is the concept of "information cocoon room" that was later widely mentioned.
The most famous example of information cocoon is probably the story of "Yuan Shikai's son cheated on his father". In the early years of the Republic of China, "Shuntian Times" was the largest newspaper in North China. When Yuan Shikai plotted to restore the imperial system, he paid great attention to the trends of this newspaper. His eldest son Yuan Keding was eager to become the "prince". In order to encourage Lao Yuan to make up his mind for restoration, he actually forged a fake Shuntian Times that published support for Yuan Shikai's restoration every day. In the end, Yuan Shikai mistakenly believed that restoration was what the people wanted, and history was staged. A big farce.
It is also common for managers in the workplace to be trapped in "information cocoons". Take managers who are away from the front line and work in offices or air-conditioned rooms all day long as an example. The source of information they obtain may be the three or five subordinates with whom they have the most contact; the content they are "pushed" may be the pages they are on. PPT or a few work emails, and the contents inside are most likely what managers like to see and listen to.
This situation is very dangerous for both individuals and enterprises. Enterprises cannot see the crisis, and individuals cannot see the problems. It may seem peaceful, but in fact it is riddled with holes; it may seem promising, but in fact it is on the verge of collapse. Even if I knew the truth in the end, I would probably just sigh, because I had been in the cocoon for too long, and it might have been too late to make other transformations and changes.
3. It is easy to lose one’s martial arts skills
Once many people have worked hard on the front line and become good corporate managers, they often have the idea of "breathing a sigh of relief and taking a break". They no longer have to work overtime to type code, no longer have to run to customers in rain or shine, and do the work every day. Just call the team over, hold a meeting, and divide the work. As a result, they will gradually become less grounded and put themselves on a pedestal. The technical expertise they were once proficient in has been wasted, and their "shameless" pioneering spirit and "regardless" execution ability have also been lost. Over time, their own value has also been lost bit by bit. Almost exhausted.
This is why most companies, including large factories and foreign companies, usually start with middle-level managers when laying off employees. Because laying them off will not affect the growth of front-line business, but also save a lot of salary costs. It can also free up seats and serve as "carrots" for front-line employees with outstanding performance. It kills multiple birds with one stone. If you don't lay off, who will you lay off? And those managers who have been laid off have become very embarrassed. There may not be so many pitfalls when looking for new management positions. When they return to front-line positions, they have abandoned their martial arts skills and lost their competitive advantages because they have been away from the front line for a long time. , In the end, I can only survive in various workplace cracks, and I am very passive.
03
How to enter the front line correctly?
What is the correct way to "enter the front line"? Here is a very easy to use front line work method:
"Watch, hear, ask and understand" method
"Looking, smelling, asking, and feeling" is originally a term used in traditional Chinese medicine, which refers to the four diagnostic and treatment methods used by traditional Chinese medicine to diagnose diseases. But when facing front-line work, "looking, hearing, asking, and feeling" also has reference significance for us that cannot be ignored.
Hope: In front-line work, "hope" refers to observing and understanding market changes and competitors' strategies in a timely manner. In this process, managers need to pay close attention to market trends, changes in consumer demand, and competitors' actions. For example, as the management of an e-commerce platform, you observe that consumer demand for fast delivery is increasing, and your competitors have begun to implement corresponding strategies. At this time, you need to optimize your supply chain and distribution system to meet market demand and prevent yourself from falling behind in the competition.
Smell: The "smell" here refers to understanding the mental outlook of front-line employees and listening to their voices. This can be judged by employees' work attitude, work efficiency, and job satisfaction. When I was leading the team, I would have many one-on-one communications with the grassroots employees in the team every month. As a manager, you can intuitively judge the current situation of the team from what they said and the status they showed. work atmosphere, and what incentives and support are currently needed.
Q: "Asking" means communicating with users and employees to understand their needs and feedback. This can be done through user research, employee satisfaction surveys, or direct face-to-face communication. Mr. Kazuo Inamori is a model in this regard. When encountering internal problems, he will ask front-line employees "What do you think should be done?"; when encountering external problems, he will ask customers "Do you have any good suggestions?" Much of the management wisdom of this business god is obtained from these seemingly simple "questions".
Cut: "Check" mainly refers to personally experiencing front-line work, understanding employees' work processes and challenges, and users' experience. If you are a company executive, it is essential to personally understand the entire process of production and generation of your own products (services) and experience the use of them. Many large international companies attach great importance to this. For example, Wal-Mart requires managers to return to stores to work regularly to understand front-line developments; Google, Facebook, etc. require managers to regularly re-experience grassroots work, such as customer service, content review, etc., in order to maintain relationships with users. Contact sensitivity.
Finally, I want to say that most technical people do not make career plans based on their own strengths/interests. The career path is extremely bumpy. This Saturday I will come to the live broadcast to share that technical people are at different ages, such as 25 From the age of 30 to the age of 35, how to make career plans? How to break the 35-year-old crisis among technical people? Of course , you are also welcome to ask questions in the live broadcast room with your personal questions. We will see you there~
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