This article is from the WeChat public account: Hua Xia Cornerstone e Insight (chnstonewx) < / span> , author: Miao Lighthouse, title figure from: vision China

The topic of “Keeping the enterprise moderately chaotic” is a bit philosophical, and it is determined by the wisdom of many management masters.

At first, Mr. Yang Du proposed “walking into chaos”. The original intention was to say what kind of new order the enterprise should establish. The current management thinking viewpoints are very different, destroying, subverting, returning … even chaotic.

This has caused us to think. In this state of confusion, which direction should future management go?

Chaos is a good thing

The discussion is very lively, and the argument is fierce. The topic of “walking into chaos” becomes more and more chaotic. Teacher Yang Du said that chaos is a good thing, and innovation happens in chaos. China’s two most dynamic eras, the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and the May 4th period, are in a state of chaos, so many new ideas will be born. Once there is order, it will hinder innovation. I feel the same: This is similar to the development and innovation of management.

Mr. Peng Jianfeng said that in the next few years, China will still be in a state of chaos and the direction of economic activity is unknown. To cope with this state of chaos, the company must maintain a moderate degree of chaos. I have also been thinking about how the management of Chinese enterprises can enter the new order, but there is still confusion.

Through a case study, I have a comparison and found that western cases will write one thing clearly and deconstruct complex issues so that you can learn the operation ideas or methods of this company. But Chinese cases are often written very mysteriously, failing to imitate them, and even create the illusion that “only geniuses can do business”.

So I have been very vigilant, and the concept of “chaos” cannot mystify it. So, what kind of scene in the enterprise belongs to chaos? Does this state exist? Can it be managed? This is something that people in our management field should study.

Based on this understanding, I did a little homework. Although I still may not be able to explain it thoroughly, I hope to provide some lessons for everyone through the case.

Three scenarios of corporate chaos

Football culture: an innovative business model that is both orderly and rigid

The first scene is a 360 project made a few years ago. At the time, there was a controversy at the senior management level of 360. The founder side believed that companies should construct a Spartan square. In the cold weapon era, the way the ancient Greeks confronted each other in the war was that the enemy and I were two huge squares composed of soldiers, each holding a spear and a shield for hedging. This kind of square array does not need to consider the battle plan, as long as it is pushed forward according to a certain order, and the decisive battle of collective short soldiers is conducted in a highly orderly manner, the combat effectiveness is very strong. The Spartan square, imitating this ancient way of engagement, refers to a highly trained, highly organized, and orderly way of fighting. Huawei’s IPD should be this way.

The opposition is led by Zhou Hongyi. Zhou Hongxuan himself extremely abhors the rules and emphasizes that Internet companies should be in a state of chaos and disorder. So when I asked him about the organizational structure of the company, he said that Internet companies were chaotic, so if I gave you the organizational structure, the organizational structure might have changed. His mode of operation and organization are indeed not rules-oriented. Although each project is a leader, the overlap, crossover, and collaboration of the projects are inevitably intertwined.

After repeated arguments, Zhou Hongyi proposed that neither the Spartan model nor the chaos be maintained. We wanted a way in between, such as “soccer culture”, similar to the scene of a football game, the goal Run smart, others follow. This is the middle state he wants, not to talk about order in particular.

Now we understand that Internet companies are indeed like this. Its innovation pressure is much greater than that of traditional companies, so it cannot achieve innovation when it maintains a complete order. So, later, 360 formed such a corporate structure, and they set it as a “football culture.”

The Leadership Struggle of W Company Founders

The founders of W Company are two couples, the husband is the chairman and the wife is the president. The style of the chairman is that he hardly pays any attention to rules. He likes philosophical thinking. What he says makes people feel right or wrong, because he cannot judge right or wrong.

For example, he did not have a clear vision of strategic business, but when he encountered a market with development opportunities, he would often take over immediately. So when he was in power, the company had a lot of research projects in the water market. The subordinates report and ask, what should I do about this? He said it directly, and then said it again. The subordinates asked for instructions on how to distribute performance and how rewards are implemented. As a result, after this stage was done, many subsequent things could not be done, and he no longer checked and urged. Therefore, there is often a lot of movement at the beginning of the project, and many opportunities have been found for the future of the company, but at the stage of his administration, the company simply does not make money and the efficiency is very low.

Later, in 2010, his lover felt that this would not work, and took the initiative to take over the management. After his lover came to power, he first dug a senior executive from Midea to strictly control operations and strictly control plans and budgets. Allocate resources for good projects confirmed through research, stop bad projects, cut off non-profitable projects, and hire us for in-depth distribution consulting. In this way, all levels of the company began to operate effectively, and the efficiency has been greatly improved. It successfully went public last year, achieving sales of 400 million yuan and a profit of about 100 million yuan.

But at the meeting, I found that the product layout is a bit problematic. There are a few products to sell, and there may be no growth opportunities next year. In this way, there is a conflict between the chairman and the president.

After our consultation, we believe that it is extremely orderly and undesirable, because completely in accordance with the management of the president and in accordance with the strict planning budget control method, some new businesses have been killed as early as that year, Affected companiesBusiness growth. Confusion is not advisable and may vary from case to case. For example, some new businesses, new opportunities and old businesses should not be managed in exactly the same way. For this company, between the management style of the chairman and the president, what status should be found and how to manage it is a proposition.

Hales’ Change Adventure

The third scenario is the business transformation project of the Hals company that we did last year. Others’ bosses were 68 years old when they invited us, and they have experienced vicissitudes. At that time, although his business was growing every year in succession, he still felt a problem and felt that the company had not achieved the growth goals he had set out.

He asked us to help him in the transformation of the business department, and mainly expressed his intention to activate the organization. So our project team made a more pragmatic plan:

A principle is to leave those capable cadres. For example, a cadre in the business department is the son-in-law of the boss who is in charge of domestic business and is very familiar with the business. Therefore, the company’s main production resources and research and development resources are allocated to him. The original marketing director was also good and stayed. However, the boss was not satisfied with this plan.

Through repeated communication, although he has not said it directly, we finally made clear his intentions. It turned out that he felt that no matter how many transformations were made or the original team was in charge of the original things, they would still go the same way. The old habits, the relationship structure between the old people, and the old interest model have locked the company’s management model. Then even if it is changed to the business unit system, the organizational structure is drawn very clearly, but Such a group of people must have been abducted by past habits and there is no way to establish a new order.

Based on this understanding, he must break the existing structure and rebuild an order. Therefore, based on the dissatisfaction of the newly-appointed executives and other executives, he insisted on using them, and he was well aware of the risky elements of doing so, but he intended to break the old order and rules with some new power. As long as the original power is broken, then in the future, managers who are more suitable for enterprise development can be found on the new order. He said that at least this will allow enterprises to enter a whole new state. If the original structure is not broken, my company will never reach the new platform.

A 68-year-old man, he is very brave. Indeed, when companies change, entrepreneurs must endure the risks of disorder and uncertainty, but this is precisely the key to a successful change.

Seeing how companies keep moderate chaos from “Out of Control”, “Mixed Order”, and “Entropy”

After finding such a few chaotic scenes for enterprises, I think that this way of maintaining moderate chaos is a normal state for enterprises. Is there any basis for this judgment? I think we still need the original source. We can seek some theoretical traces through the existing theoretical research in the management field, or through some influential classics.

“Out of control”, the online era of the human brain

So I went back and looked at “Out of Control” (by Kevin Kelly, founding editor-in-chief of Wired America) . This book is very thick, and it says that the times have changed. In the previous era, people thought separately from each other, and now it has become an era of human-machine interconnection. For example, the influence of the network is increasing, and various physical forces will create results in the mutual influence. The method of human thinking has also moved from the stand-alone era of individual thinking to the online era of group brain thinking. The human brain has been connected unprecedentedly, the boundaries between business and culture, science and humanities have become increasingly blurred and elusive, the problems faced by individuals have become more complex, and the world has become more chaotic and unpredictable.

For example, the concept of chaos. After Yang Du first proposed it, soon Peng Jianfeng had new ideas. After another month, Teacher Shi Wei divided it into three scenarios on the forum. Therefore, in the era of the so-called human brain connection, once a certain idea is released, it will not be controlled by a certain person, and the whole society will continue to be perfected by this concept and this idea. It is an uncontrollable trend.

After watching Out of Control, I have thisOne idea: This era has become chaotic itself. It can no longer be managed in a straight line, so chaos has become the norm. In the era of group brain thinking, it is difficult to establish a centralized control order within or between enterprises. Instead, it is necessary to adopt distributed collaboration or mutual influence, and integrate low-level and fragmented creation into a common evolution.

“Reordering”, the most basic organization rule should be reordering

Then I read “Reorder” again. This book was also very popular. Its author was VISA founder Hawke. (DeeWard Hock) .

VISA should be the largest organization in the world and an infinite organization. The earliest VISA credit cards were issued by Bank of America and belong to Bank of America. In the first two years of its release, it suffered huge losses. In the United States, it is usually a large bank that makes a credit card. It is represented by a small bank with insufficient credibility and goes down according to the distribution system. This is a very complicated process. In that era, the Internet was less developed and the risks were difficult to control. When merchants swipe their credit cards, because there is no Internet connection, and they do not know the credit limit, they can only call the agent’s card issuing bank, and that bank may not know. Maybe only the U.S. bank knows, but the query speed is not limited. Customers wait for this time difference, so there are a lot of credit card frauds, too many bad debts, and a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Hok is the person in charge of credit card business in one of the small banks. When Bank of America convened various leaders to discuss how to solve the huge loss problem, he said that your approach was wrong, so that we could not control the risk. He convinced Bank of America to give up control of the VISA credit card and turn it into everyone’s. The Americans were also very powerful. They gave up control and transformed VISA into a free and loose organization. Whoever wants to join this alliance will come in, so 50 banks in the United States have joined in. Everyone discuss the rules of this credit cardThen, in the absence of shareholders, everyone signed a paper agreement, and everyone settled and traded according to the same rules. The risk also began to be borne by each issuing bank. The operating expenses of this platform are deducted according to a certain tax rate. Profits are also shared and distributed to everyone according to the size of the turnover.

The emergence of such a body without authority and management has become a body that negotiates with each other.

VISA has developed very fast, so when Hawke wrote the book, he came to a conclusion: the rules of the world’s organization should not be vague and chaotic, nor should it be centered on control. Order, but should be between chaos and control. This understanding is very powerful, because we look back at the operating mode of the Internet and look at some types of organizational models, including the board of directors, you will find that this organizational form has actually been produced in VISA .

  • “Entropy: A New World View”


    There is also a book-Entropy. I found that Ren Zhengfei often mentioned the concept of “entropy”, and I found this book later. This is a 1985 book about the first thermodynamic law discovered by humans, called the law of conservation of energy. The discovery of this law is a gospel for humans, because energy is conserved, which means that we will use it inexhaustibly, which is very optimistic.

    Then the second law of thermodynamics emerged: Although it also acknowledged that energy is conserved, it proposed that energy can only run in one direction and change from the available state to the unusable state, so the energy will accumulate, the more accumulated Coming bigger. For example, more and more fat is accumulated in the body, and when it cannot be used, it becomes a dead energy. So the second law of thermodynamics gives humans a very pessimistic conclusion. To the end of the universe, energy will change from a state of vitality to a state of death, which is an unusable state. This is what Entropy is about.

    This theory is applied to the organization, and it can be concluded that, under a certain order, the entropy value of the organization will increase. As the entropy increases, the vitality of the tissue decays, and eventually it disappears. Your organization will gradually be locked by your distribution model and the relationship between people. This is the so-called organizational structure. Once the structure is solidified, the company loses its vitality. Therefore, when those big companies come to the end, they will definitely lack the ability to innovate.

    So, will companies such as Nokia not see such a trend? No, but because it has long lost its ability to regulate itself. Therefore, to maintain vitality, enterprises must break the inherent structure, the original order, and absorb new energy.

    How companies can maintain a moderate degree of chaos: dissipation, tolerance, inspiration

    Through the principles described in these books, we do find that when we understand the enterprise, we must jump out of the state of order to reflect on what kind of state the enterprise should exist in and how to manage it

    Dissipation-breaking the original equilibrium

    Ren Zhengfei said that Huawei’s management structure should be a dissipative structure. Enterprises must not only accumulate energy, but also find ways to radiate this energy. He gave a vivid example-loyalty. Loyalty is a kind of positive energy for the company. If employees are loyal to the company, then the company must be durable. This is also the reason why most companies begin to use high benefits and various methods to lock in employee benefits. They try to build employee loyalty to the company in this way.

    But Ren Zhengfei thought deeply. He said that loyalty is a kind of entropy. The so-called entropy is something that will become negative energy to a certain extent. In order to maintain loyalty, companies need to improve their benefits, pay incentives, and funds to stimulate them. The cost of maintaining this loyalty will become higher and higher. But this loyalty may not create performance, and a large amount of performance of the company may be dissipated by maintaining this loyalty. So Ren Zhengfei said that what I really want to do is to establish a struggler’s mechanism. The core of my distribution mechanism and evaluation mechanism should be to find the struggler and then share the results of the enterprise with him instead of Maintaining employee loyalty can not just be a reason to stay in the company by virtue of loyalty. I want to dissipate this structure and keep breaking order to maintain the company.Vitality. Therefore, breaking the original balance of the enterprise is precisely a value of the enterprise going higher and realizing a positive cycle.

    Inclusiveness-Keep your business alive

    American James Collins and Jerry Polas have studied dozens of outstanding companies and concluded that truly great companies always have a culture of extreme openness and tolerance. “That is the other” to limit themselves, but to use a compatible and eclectic approach to get rid of the dilemma, try to make two superficial conflicting forces or ideas coexist in the organization, so that they can simultaneously embrace two Extreme . For example, really good companies never seek balance between short-term and long-term. .

    So companies must build an open and inclusive culture and be able to accommodate all kinds of things. Although these excellent companies have a clear-cut religious culture, each kind of company maintains a very different strength. For example, IBM is very rigorous. When wearing a suit and tie, you must use standardized movements to customers. It is a very rigorous culture. But when looking back at IBM’s biographies, even in the harsh period of his entrepreneurship, IBM allowed those hippy employees to exist. He believes that I can tolerate this existence that is different from my company culture, and it is a manifestation of the company’s vitality.

    If you think about it, it does. Understanding management, our teacher Peng Jianfeng is a master. Because the excellence of Huaxia Cornerstone is tolerance. Within a day, 10 people with very different styles can tell 10 models and 10 methodologies. This may also be our vitality.

    Chaos-inspire new growth points

    How do you manage on a specific management level? This morning, I was inspired by Mr. Shi Wei’s lecture. We need to distinguish between different internal functions. If the company is chaotic, there may be innovation, but efficiency is sacrificed. When the enterprise is in order, it can make efficiency very high, but it is precisely the future that is sacrificed.

    What should the company do? For example, in new business, you really want to maintain chaos, you must maintain chaos in new growth points, and in mature business, you must generate order. Looking at Huawei’s Ren Zhengfei’s articles, they are all tall buildings, all on a philosophical level. But things written by the grassroots must be in order. ratioSuch as waiters, their training is very hard, how to pour water, movements are standardized. In the first 10 minutes, you have to pour it every 5 minutes. After 30 minutes, you can’t pour water, because everyone will be convenient. So in this case, in those mature business parts, you must keep strong order.

    Now many companies are just the opposite. In new business, the procedures are mature and the sales staff is contracted. The infrastructure of the basic staff, regardless of the process, turns mature business into results. In fact, for mature business, your model is clear. You know where the key points of this business’s success or failure are. As long as you control the action, the result will be produced. Lost the mature experience of the company.

    So, we must talk about order in mature business and chaos in new business, because new business is not yet mature and should be adjusted while doing it. Of course, it can also be said simply: high-level people should talk about chaos, and grass-roots people emphasize order.

    This article is from the WeChat public account: China Insight (chnstonewx) , author: Lighthouse seedlings