Building an ecological organization: 5 underlying logics of excellent management

The future of enterprises is driven by innovation.

Entrepreneurs create the value of an enterprise and drive its growth.

Since an enterprise is an organization composed of people, it must solve the problem of the relationship between people and organizations. As a manager of an organization, we must build organizational management thinking, including four levels:

The height of strategy - strategic thinking, focusing on the future and human nature.

Financial thinking - the essence of organizational management is to create profits, management is not a cost; establish an input-output value system for the organization and human capital.

Marketing concept - service-minded, customer-oriented agile organization.

Operational logic—management methods, system construction, and systematic thinking.

The essence of management is to achieve the overall goals of the organization while meeting people's needs.

To do a good job in an enterprise, we must solve not only human problems, but also organizational problems, as well as the matching of people and organizations. For example, Alibaba later iterated into the middle platform to adapt to the stronger demand of organizations to be closer to customers under the update of Internet technology. It precipitated the company's core capabilities in the form of exclusive services, which also triggered a revolution within Internet companies. revolution.

It can be seen that an entrepreneur must also be an expert in organizational behavior management.

In recent years, a new organizational form - ecological organization is emerging.

Ecological organizations have four major characteristics:

From emphasizing "value creation" to emphasizing "value consistency" among enterprises, employees, suppliers and customers, behind the Management has put forward higher requirements-from traditional power control, obedience and execution to emphasizing interactive influence and platform balance.

Please note that ecological organizations are iterations of traditional organizations, not replacements.

In order to achieve a flexible, agile, and ecological network organization and realize the transformation from a traditional bureaucracy to a networked and virtualized organization, the structure of the entity organization needs to derive many networked ones. , Virtual organizational units exist in specific forms such as virtual headquarters, virtual committees, and project teams, and achieve organizational goals through increasingly complex and innovative tasks.

In the ecological network organization, people's roles tend to be diversified. Whether they are managers or employees, they may become the leader or participant of important projects at any time outside of their job positions. Under this diversified role, individuals' contributions to the organization are also diversified.

Therefore, higher propositions are put forward for organizations and organizational management.

It boils down to a core issue, which is the need to establish a panoramic perspective of organizational management - the relationship between people and organizations.

The so-called panoramic perspective of organizational behavior management is to define the relationship between organizational behavior and human behavior as collaboration, integration, and creation. As mentioned earlier, the essence of management is to achieve the overall goals of the organization while satisfying human needs. Therefore, human behavior and organizational behavior are the two major propositions of management.

Human behavior includes three major aspects:

And organizational behavior also includes three aspects:

Organizational management with a panoramic perspective must start from the governance structure From this perspective, by building a benefit distribution mechanism and a cultural value system, gathering human capital with unified values, using leaders to drive organizational growth, and coordinating the relationships between customers, partners, shareholders, operators and employees, we will ultimately achieve the overall goal of satisfying human needs.

Everyone is very familiar with IKEA. IKEA is not technology-driven, has no Internet features, and its business model is extremely old. However, it is still a very good company. It can even be said that it has achieved the ultimate, creating a unique IKEA culture. .

Behind the achievements lies its founder, Swedish industrialist Ingvar Kamprad. His unique leadership charisma not only made him one of the world's top richest people, but also made the design simple. , a low-cost furniture business, step by step, turned into a multinational business empire.

In 70 years, Kamprad has accumulated unimaginable wealth. However, in order to set an example for his employees, he has lived an almost monk-like simple life all year round and described frugality and diligence as the key to success. The foundation of IKEA's success. He lives in Switzerland to avoid Sweden's high taxes, drives an old Volvo, flies only economy class, stays in budget hotels, eats cheaply, buys cheap stuff and insists his home is simple. He has no real estate, and the IKEA business is held by a charitable trust.

In 1976, he wrote a manifesto called "The Testament of a Furniture Dealer", which listed various precepts and called simplicity a virtue and waste a vice. He hopes that employees will uphold the "IKEA spirit" and be humble, tidy and courteous. They will not only know IKEA products well, but also be passionate about the company's philosophy, that is, its work and life principles.

He opened stores on cheaper land outside the city, bought materials at discounted prices, streamlined sales staff to allow customers to shop stress-free, did not paint the invisible surfaces of furniture, and packaged items in flat boxes for supply. Customers take it home and assemble it (instructions provided). He even went to Poland to purchase raw materials and carry out production to further reduce costs.

"Well, everyone knows that I am a very frugal person, and IKEA was opened for people like me," in 1997, when asked by The New York Times about his contribution to IKEA culture. he said. "I don't fly first class, and neither do IKEA executives." Counter-examples abound, such as Nokia.

Nokia failed in the smartphone war because the company's middle and top managers shared a common sense of fear. In this fearful organizational culture there are moody leaders and middle managers who are too frightened to tell the truth.

Because Nokia is task-heavy and performance-focused, senior managers are fearful of the external environment and their inability to meet their quarterly targets, which directly affects the way they treat middle managers. Although they realized that Nokia needed a better smartphone operating system to compete with Apple's iOS, and they also knew that it would take several years; but at the time, Nokia did not dare to publicly admit the shortcomings of its operating system, Symbian. , because they fear appearing defeatist to outside investors, suppliers, and customers. No one wants to be the one delivering bad news.

Within Nokia, there is a status culture - that is, everyone wants to keep power to avoid resources being allocated elsewhere; or people are worried that if they deliver bad news or show that they are not brave enough, Those who are not ambitious enough to take on challenging tasks will be demoted and abandoned—a culture that fuels a climate of fear within the company.

In summary, Nokia's corporate culture is "sick":

Therefore, we have repeatedly emphasized that leader-driven is the core of organizational development and the key to corporate success or failure.

Beginning in 2015, Hay Group’s “Global Best Leadership Development” research is based on findings from survey data from 115 countries, 2,100 companies, and 18,000 business managers around the world. : Facing changes in the global economic situation and technology, any company needs to reserve strong leadership.

In the next 10 to 15 years, leaders will need 9 abilities and traits, including:

I will give an example of customer orientation. One day, an Amazon customer I received a call from customer service, saying that we noticed that you had a bad experience with our product, and we have made improvements. We hope to make an appointment to come to your house to apologize. After making an appointment, two people came in as soon as the door opened, one was an account manager and the other was a product manager. You know, product managers are very important at Amazon. They said that the product experience was not good and we have made corrections. We hope that you will accept the product for 19.95 yuan and continue to support us.

This is what its founder Bezos said, "Our strategy is based on customer needs, not on competitors. Our philosophy is to become the most customer-centric company in the world. "

Bezos is an outstanding leader, but leaders have different charisma, explained by the leadership equilibrium output model:

Focus on the inside , Being process-centered will improve organizational performance;

Focusing on the outside and being process-centered will improve investor performance;

Focusing on the inside and being business-centered will improve employee performance Performance;

Being externally focused and business-centric will improve customer performance.

From the perspective of the leadership balanced output model, we hope that the growth of leadership will be a complete perspective and achieve the unity of organizational performance, investor performance, employee performance, and customer performance.

Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, said that leadership is about doing the right things, while management is about doing things correctly. Leadership is more artistic and relies on the personal charm of decision-makers to do the right thing, while management is more scientific, day-to-day and execution-oriented.

Let me define for you what management ability is. The popular understanding is - who can let others do the work without doing it themselves. Team building is done by others, training subordinates is done by others, motivating and empowering are all done by others, this is called management ability.

Therefore, the common problem of our enterprises is that they only know how to operate but not how to manage. How can we improve our management capabilities? Let me introduce to you a small method - the supervision and guidance record sheet, which is characterized by emphasizing the process control of management.

As the saying goes, if there is no process in management, there will be no results. This form has seven columns: extreme behaviors of work performance (good and bad behaviors); judgment (determining its merits and demerits); date of behavior; management actions taken (measures, countermeasures, instructions, guidance, promotion, application); management The date the action was taken; the effect of the measures and the current status of subordinates; the date of status inspection.

This table has three clear time nodes, which reflects the characteristics of process control.

For example, if we use attendance as a basis for judging employee performance. It is stipulated that work starts at eight o'clock. If the employee comes at 7:30 and cleans up, it can be recorded as a good behavior; if the employee comes only at 8:30, it should be recorded as a bad behavior.

The occurrence of employee behavior is one date; the manager takes measures is one date; the inspection date after the management measures are implemented is another date.

The assessment at these three nodes can be used as a factual basis for judging employees' work behaviors and attitudes; on the other hand, it can also be used as a basis for evaluating managers. After one year, this table is empty, indicating that managers have failed to perform their duties.

When we talk about teams, empowerment, and leadership, we must not forget the essence of management. You need to help employees achieve organizational performance through process control. If there is no process in management, there will be no results.

Of course, the choice of management style also depends on the maturity of subordinates.

When subordinates are immature, the choice of leadership style should be directive; when employees gradually grow up, the manager's style must also change accordingly and transform into a persuasive style. As employees mature further, our management style will become participatory and even empowering. This is actually team empowerment.

The process of team empowerment is actually the same as the growth of a person. We call it the leadership life cycle theory. The so-called "contingency leadership" means that the growth of an organization requires the selection of timing, work behavior, relationship behavior, people's maturity, and the effectiveness of participation at different maturity levels, thereby ultimately determining a suitable growth method and strategic behavior.

There is no best, only the most suitable. This is a classic and unchanging management concept. The effectiveness of leadership does not depend on the leader's unchanging qualities and behaviors, but on the cooperative relationship between the leader, the led, and situational conditions.

In 2018, Mercer, the world's largest human resources management consulting organization, proposed that future organizational management is driven by digitalization and mainly includes five aspects:

In response to this era Trend management emphasizes decentralization, flexibility, and even fluidity in organizational design, and emphasizes commitment to health and happiness and diversity in employee experience.

In 2020, LinkedIn proposed four major trends in global talent based on research data on LinkedIn behavior:

First, pay more attention to employee experience.

94% of talent professionals believe employee experience is very important for the future of talent recruitment. 77% of companies have begun to pay attention to employee experience. Companies no longer just accept services from employees in one direction, but need to actively cooperate with employees and start serving employees.

Second, more talent data analysis.

In the past five years, the number of talented professionals with data analysis skills has grown by 242. Take Amazon as an example. Everyone knows that Amazon puts its customers first. It uses big data and artificial intelligence to automatically monitor employees' work behavior, strengthen internal organizational management, and even automatically issue punishment and dismissal lists based on their behavioral performance. Big data and new technologies have greatly improved management efficiency.

Third, pay more attention to internal recruitment.

You may be overlooking a talent pool full of potential: your company's own workforce. LinkedIn data shows that employees of companies that hire more internally stay on longer than companies that hire less internally41. Most of JD.com's current management team are selected from its own management trainee program. They have a strong sense of loyalty to the company and identify with the company's values.

Fourth, today’s workplace is the only one that will last for generations.

56 companies said they had recently updated their policies to attract employees from different age groups. Delayed retirement and the arrival of Generation Z mean that companies are facing an unprecedented degree of employee age diversity. ByteDance CEO Zhang Nan is a post-80s generation.

From this point of view, the need for organizational change has become a major focus of today's enterprise reform.

While maintaining "strategy-execution", agile strategy and BLM emphasize two points in terms of methods: collaborative refinement and iteration at all levels.

But in conclusion, there is no best, only the most appropriate. There is no theory in management. What you know is called practice, and what you don’t know is called theory.

lt;lt;lt;Chaos University Official Account Study Notes