Master in the workplace: learn from Drucker, the master of management, and make your management better.

As an enterprise manager, the most direct embodiment of value is management appreciation. If it can't bring added value to the enterprise, it means management failure.

Therefore, how to maximize the profit of management value is a category that every manager should consider.

I chatted with a college classmate some time ago. Because of the geographical differences in their work, they seldom contact each other at ordinary times. When we meet occasionally, we talk about family, but the most talked about is work.

Students have been working in an electronics company in Suzhou since they graduated from university. When they first entered the company, they worked as quality engineers, and only after three years did they quit to be supervisors, saying that management is the quality supervisor. They may have reached the upper limit of their career and stayed in this position without any signs of promotion.

According to the students' own situation, the company has been dealing with the traditional management mode, or the mode of basically relying on yelling in the past. The scale of the company has not expanded, and the company lacks due competitiveness among its peers. It is conceivable that the management level of employees can only go with the flow and always cope with the most primitive state.

In the information age, dealing with current problems in the past is no longer applicable, and the management mode and strategic direction of enterprises need to be adjusted at any time. For example, offline wholesale used to be called small profits but quick turnover, but now online e-commerce is called resource integration.

In the big environment, if the management level of the enterprise is not improved, then the fish in the pond is no better. In business cases, Nokia and Kodak are the best negative materials.

When it comes to management learning, one person has to mention that this person is the father of management: Drucker.

Today's article focuses on Drucker's management practice, hoping that all managers who read this article or future managers will be inspired, so as to continuously improve their management skills and enhance their competitiveness in the torrent of enterprises.

Drucker pointed out that only a dynamic evaluation system can stimulate employees' best job performance, and at the same time, an important concept needs to be introduced here: management by objectives.

According to Drucker, management by objectives refers to the efforts of individuals in an enterprise, which are condensed into the same goal of the enterprise.

When it comes to management by objectives, many people immediately think of KPI, a top-down goal decomposition model. In any enterprise, each department will be assigned to the assessment targets of different data, such as the delivery achievement rate of the business department, the output rate of the production department, and the qualified rate of the quality department ... These data are all KPI of each department.

However, in practice, performance appraisal has made many companies stumble. For example, a former executive of Sony Corporation in Japan believes that performance appraisal has damaged Sony. When there is no performance appraisal, Sony is fine; The first performance appraisal, the company's performance plummeted.

Later, Google and other Silicon Valley companies began to implement a new evaluation system, called OKR (Target and Key Result), Target and Key Result Method.

For some private enterprises, not to mention OKR, even KPI is just a decoration. The operating conditions of such enterprises will certainly not be much better. If there is no minimum assessment, I will know such a stubborn boss when talking about sustainable management.

When you say that this boss can't go on, he will definitely not accept it, because his enterprise has developed from a processing workshop with a few people at the beginning to a processing factory with dozens of people now. Ask him how much money he has earned, and he will definitely say that he has earned a lot of machines in the workshop.

In fact, in the eyes of most people, the boss's processing factory has no process, let alone KPI, or even a simple product QC. Someone proposed to recruit QC, and the boss immediately said that it was a waste of money to recruit QC, and the product quality was produced, not tested.

It seems quite conscious to hear what the boss said here. It is true that quality is made, not detected, but "zero defect" is only a goal.

In fact, it can't be done according to the current manufacturing level, so the produced defective products still have to be intercepted by QC inspection, thus improving the product qualification rate.

Whether KPI or OKR, any enterprise wants to develop continuously, it must formulate its own assessment system, and once it has a goal, it can develop further, so target management is an indispensable part of enterprise strategy.

When it comes to defining goals, many people will think of maximizing the interests of enterprises for the first time, but Drucker thinks that such an answer is not only wrong, but also misleading to enterprises.

In the eyes of traditional businessmen, the means to maximize profits is "buy low and sell high". As businessmen, they can only passively adapt to the economic situation and cannot create or change economic conditions.

But it's different now. The market does not exist naturally, but needs to be explored. Therefore, enterprises must actively shape the economic environment, try their best to break through the existing conditions, constantly create demand and open up markets.

So simply emphasizing "profit maximization" has blurred the difference between modern enterprises and traditional businessmen.

Drucker pointed out that the fundamental goal of enterprises is to create customers. All activities of an enterprise should ultimately aim at creating customers.

For example, Drucker gave an example.

Richard sears, the founder of Sears Company (retail business), is a typical traditional businessman.

With a keen sense of smell, he bought a lot of cheap goods at a loss and then sold them to farmers through intensive advertising, making a lot of money. At this time, Sears Company was not a truly modern enterprise.

But Sears' successor, Rosenwald, changed Sears.

At that time, Sears found that American farmers were an extremely large consumer group. Although personal purchasing power is not high, the overall purchasing power should not be underestimated. However, they are scattered in remote rural areas, with inconvenient transportation and blocked information, and it is rare to go shopping in the city once a year.

How does Sears Company change the previous piecemeal sales model and develop farmers into their own long-term customers?

In this regard, Rosenwald has created a brand-new commercial channel-mail order goods.

Sears regularly sends mail-order catalogues to farmers' families. The goods in the catalogues are carefully planned to meet the needs of farmers' families and sold at psychological prices acceptable to farmers.

More importantly, considering that farmers have no conditions to inspect the goods in advance and it is difficult for consumers to defend their rights afterwards, Sears Company took the lead in launching the sales policy of "no reason to return goods".

In addition, in order to deliver goods quickly, Sears has established an efficient sorting factory, which can sort goods within 15 minutes after receiving orders, and send an average of 65,438+10,000 orders every day.

This initiative made Sears quickly become the largest retail enterprise in the United States and even the world, and 60% of Americans are its customers. American farmers can buy all kinds of daily necessities, household appliances and even complete sets of building materials without leaving home. Farmers only need to assemble themselves to build a beautiful villa.

In fact, as early as 100 years ago, American farmers enjoyed high-quality online shopping service with door-to-door delivery and no reason to return it, but the delivery speed was slow.

The example of Sears Company fully shows that enterprises must use pioneering activities to break through restrictive conditions and create markets and customers, which is the biggest difference between enterprises and traditional businessmen and the fundamental goal of enterprises.

What Drucker wants to emphasize is that the specific goals of an enterprise are actually multi-dimensional, and it is necessary to allocate resources rationally and pay attention to the performance of each key area.

It's like a pilot must pay attention to several dashboards at the same time when driving, such as altimeter, airspeed indicator, horizon, etc. To ensure flight safety. It is very dangerous to look at only one data.

As can be seen from the above cases, the profitability of enterprises is not the only goal. Profit can only be said to be an indicator of whether an enterprise is operating normally. Secondly, sufficient profit can be the best means to resist risks.

Therefore, the goal of an enterprise is to obtain the "minimum profit" necessary for survival and development, rather than blindly pursuing the maximum profit.

For enterprises, "creating customers" is essentially a long-term thinking. First of all, we should take into account the goals in all key areas, and then take into account the short-term and long-term goals in the time dimension, so as to transcend the economic cycle and realize the "everlasting foundation" of the enterprise.

To sum up, enterprises can't take profit as the only reference when making goals, but must consider creating customers and opening up markets as their business goals, so that enterprises can achieve the goal of sustainable operation.

The goal of an enterprise is to build on the basis of personal goals and ensure that it is decomposed into personal goals and then converged on the same goal of the enterprise.

take for example

The story of three masons. Someone asked three masons what you were doing.

The first stonemason said, "I'm taking bacon home."

The second stonemason said, I'm doing the best stonemason job in the country.

The third stonemason looked up at the sky and said proudly, I am building a cathedral.

If you look at it from the perspective of management by objectives. The first and second masons have their own goals, and the second mason's goal is still very high, to be the best craft in the country.

Under the guidance of personal goals, the first stonemason is likely to polish the work, while the second stonemason may only focus on the polishing process and ignore the overall cooperation of the project. Only the third stonemason clearly realized that the ultimate goal of his work was to contribute to the overall goal of building a cathedral. Only the third stonemason is the real manager.

The work focus of enterprise managers should be the overall goal of the enterprise, not just the pursuit of personal success. Only when they can really do this can they be called qualified managers.

Drucker pointed out that CEO plays at least three roles: one is the thinker, who is responsible for the long-term strategy of the enterprise; Second, the actor is responsible for the actual operation of the enterprise; Third, the exposed person is responsible for communicating with the outside world on behalf of the enterprise.

In fact, these three roles can not be completed by one person, but by a team of three people.

To sum up, the first step of target management is to ensure that everyone's personal goals converge on the same goal of the enterprise. The head of a company should be a team, not an individual.

There is still an important link after the goal is set, that is, how to achieve the goal through effective means.

Drucker believes that getting a sense of accomplishment from work is an inherent need of people. Even front-line employees have the motivation to pursue high performance.

At the same time, let them have enough control over their work. As long as employees can control their own work, they can achieve high performance. Create value for the enterprise.

take for example

IBM used to produce office equipment.

These equipments are very sophisticated, and the operation requirements for front-line workers are very high, but at that time, IBM was still using piece-rate wages.

In order to pursue speed, the quality of workers can not be guaranteed. If we only rely on the final quality inspection, the efficiency will be very low. The ideal situation is to let the workers control the quality on the production line.

At that time, old Watson, the boss of IBM, decided to cancel the piece-rate wage system and let front-line workers receive a fixed salary like professional managers.

At the same time, it is emphasized that there is no so-called "standard output". With the help of the foreman, each worker plans the most effective workflow and speed that can create the maximum output according to his own ability and characteristics.

At that time, some people were worried that if there was no piece work and no "standard output" limit, wouldn't workers be muddling along?

The result is just the opposite. Under the new workflow, not only the product quality has been improved, but also the output of workers is rising.

Why on earth is this?

Through further analysis, it is found that IBM's approach is similar to Taylor's scientific management.

The concrete measures are as follows: firstly, the complex production process is decomposed into simple links;

Then, through repeated experiments, find out the most efficient operation mode of each production link and designate this operation mode as "standard action";

Finally, the division of labor is specialized, and each worker is only responsible for one or two operations in the whole production process.

Drucker highly affirmed the achievements of scientific management.

He believes that scientific management is one of the most important contributions of the United States to western thought. According to his estimation, scientific management has improved the labor efficiency of workers by 50 times.

Whether manual workers, managers or professionals, they can improve their work performance through decomposition steps and optimization steps. At the same time, a person's work must have a minimum integrity, so that he can feel the meaning of work, otherwise work is just forced labor. For example, it is much better for a worker to assemble a complete tire than to screw only one screw.

Similarly, scientific management emphasizes the importance of planning, and thinks that the more comprehensive the plan is, the more effective the later implementation will be.

However, the planning and implementation of scientific management are separated. The manager is responsible for making plans and assigning tasks to front-line workers. He doesn't need to know why or what the overall goal of the factory is. This of course deprives workers of their autonomy and the meaning of their work. This is the reason why workers strongly resist scientific management, not that people think that workers want to be lazy.

Similarly, IBM also breaks down production into as simple operation steps as possible, and each step also stipulates standard actions.

However, it trains each worker to be able to take care of multiple tasks and needs to use certain judgment ability in the task. This was more difficult than doing it, but I didn't expect the efficiency and work pride of workers to be greatly improved.

Another time, IBM developed a new type of computer. Because the construction period is too tight, the engineering design has to start before the final completion. The final design drawings are jointly completed by engineers, foremen and workers on the production line. Workers are very proud of their participation in product design, and the quality and production efficiency of this product have been greatly improved. Later, IBM institutionalized this experience, and every time a new product was launched, workers participated in product design and production process planning, and the effect was very good.

Performance appraisal such as KPI also makes the same mistake as scientific management, separating the planning and implementation process.

First determine the overall performance from above, and then forcibly allocate the performance from top to bottom. Lower-level departments will definitely resist passively or try to exploit loopholes. For managers at all levels, he must think and set his own goals, and then he will be truly responsible for his own goals and carry them out to the letter.

In fact, simply summarizing how to act according to the goal is to let employees think about their goals, set their own goals, and realize self-management. As long as employees have full autonomy in their work, they can achieve high performance.

Whether an enterprise wants to build a lasting foundation or employees want to survive for a long time, they should integrate personal goals into enterprise goals to maximize value, not profit.

Then the best way to tap the potential of employees is to let employees have autonomy in their work, set their own goals and realize self-management.

Drucker said that goal management and self-control represent real freedom and legal freedom. It can also be said that the enterprise that has achieved management by objectives is the real "free association of free people"

Finally, I hope that after reading this article, managers will have a different concept of management by objectives and go further and further on the road of enterprise management! The harder, the better!