Today’s difficulty is that the organization itself requires relative stability, and the external environment requires you to be dynamic. The difficulty of management lies in finding a balance between dynamics and stability. “Value symbiosis” is for this reason. This article is from the WeChat public account: China Europe Business Review (ID: ceibs-cbr), interview: Zhou Qi, Interviewed: Chen Chunhua, head picture from: Visual China
Professor Chen Chunhua has spent more than 10 years trying to understand and study the characteristics of organization and management in the digital revolution we are experiencing. She found that the new and unfamiliar era has clearly arrived, and the modern world that we used to take for granted has become The past has nothing to do with reality. The core of organization management in the digital age is the symbiosis of values between people and organizations, and the symbiosis of values between organizations and organizations.
Only by reconstructing the value of the organization through value symbiosis, especially the value of the managers themselves, can people find new organizational value in the uncertain digital age, so that the individuals in the organization, the organization itself, and the The organization’s related partners have achieved value release and created new value.
The following is a dialogue between China Europe Business Review and Chen Chunhua.
China Europe Business Review (hereinafter referred to as CBR): For non-digital companies, what are the main challenges facing digital transformation?
Chen Chunhua: The digitization process is very challenging for traditional enterprises or non-digital native enterprises, which are mainly reflected in three aspects.
The first is business logic. The previous business logic is actually based on the traditional industry logic. After the arrival of digitalization, a very big change is “cross-border subversion”, which means that the operating rules of each industry have changed, so I often Speaking to companies, under digitalization, there is actually no way to simply use the logic of competition to make strategies. You may have to discuss the logic of “symbiosis”, because you don’t know who your opponents are, and there are often cross-industry people coming in.
The second is the management mode. The original management model may be the various systems and systems we follow, which we call “management experience.” The digital age puts forward high requirements for enterprises to respond to changes, No enterprise can create value independently, so it involves the issue of the distribution of benefits among stakeholders.
The third and biggest change is the individual. In the digital age, you will find that people have also changed. We even joked that in the future, in the organization system, you will have to cooperate with robots. Especially in the industry, the possibility of cooperation with robots will be greater. .
CBR: What changes will happen to the specific management methods?
Chen Chunhua:We used to be easier to manage, in fact, we used information asymmetry-people above have more information, people below have less information, people above With decision-making information, the people below have executive information. In fact, the information is completely asymmetrical. After the arrival of digitization, one of the main carriers is information sharing. Only on the premise of information sharing can digitization be truly discussed.
For organizations, the real challenge comes from the following three aspects.
First, in terms of management methods, you may have to transform from an authoritative management approach to a “partnership must be established” management approach. We may have said before that you have to listen to me no matter what. why? It’s because I have decision-making information. If you don’t listen to me, I’ll be unlucky. Almost all the information is now public, and it’s impossible even if you want to close this information channel. Therefore, authoritarian management has failed. It must be a partnership. May contribute together.
Second, if there is no effective way of communication, there is no way to form a consensus. Everyone is a self-media era. Diversity is not difficult, but consensus is difficult. The core of management is to form a consensus. Without consensus, there is no way to reach a goal together. A consensus must be achieved through communication, and an effective way of information transmission and communication must be formed within the organization.
Third, A platform for communication must be fully provided. I remember when I was the president, a young man who was newly hired asked, “How can we talk to you directly”. As a company of 70 to 80 thousand people, more than 2,000 new employees are recruited at one time. Such direct dialogue is actually a very big challenge, but if you don’t set up a communication platform, you will not be able to attract young people. he.
CBR: How should organizations evolve in a more conscious direction? Organizations cannot “evolve themselves”. Is it one of the reasons for the failure of digital transformation?
Chen Chunhua: There are two concepts in the organization system, one is called “self-organization” and the other is called “other organization”.
“Other organization” becomes orderly by external force, “self-organization” can respond to various changes and become orderly without external force. The body is a typical self-organization, and it will heal automatically if it is cut.
Why should the concept of “self-organization” be emphasized in the digital age?
In the industrial age, the state of organization is basically “other organization”. In the digital age, data itself forms a very open and shared flow, and it is easy to form a valuable closed loop through data sharing. This valuable closed loop is called a “self-organizing” state.
The concept of “self-organization” is one step forward, which is “self-evolution”. “Self-organization” means that without discussing external forces, one can form a closed loop of value. But in fact, the external environment is constantly changing, and all organizations are in an infinite connection. If you want to keep up with this change, you must “evolve”, so the words “self-organization” and “self-evolution” come from this way.
If “self-evolution” is not enough, there will be problems with transformation. Because the process of transformation is very important to give up the past experience and the things that were successful in the past. In this process, if you do not have the ability to plan by yourself, but you are struggling, it is actually tantamount to refusing turn. Everyone supports the person who makes new things together, makes him grow well, and makes him succeed. This is the real change.
CBR: One trend of digitalization is flat management. Internet companies used to implement flat management on a trial basis, but when it develops to a certain scale, there will also be a tendency toward bureaucracy. Will bureaucracy in the digital wave eventually be eliminated, or will it coexist with flat management?
Chen Chunhua: Organizational management or organizational structure design is related to business characteristics, not digitalization. What kind of structure your business looks like.
The biggest feature of bureaucracy is to achieve stability and ensure efficiency. If you want to achieve linear and rapid growth in scale, bureaucracy is very useful. The characteristic of platformization is flexibility. If you want to innovate, platformization is great.
In a sense, bureaucracy is a theory put forward by Marx Weber, and Ford uses it best. Because of the large-scale production, there is a bureaucracy. You can see that almost all large companies nowadays are bureaucratic. Because the bigger the company, the more stability it requires, this is why After Internet companies got bigger, they returned to bureaucracy and began to stratify. To a certain extent, they found that after the level was solidified, it became rigid and then had to be dismantled. So it must be a process of dynamic adjustment. I personally think that bureaucracy and platforms Transformation is still a coexistence relationship, not “you without me”.
The difficulty today is that the organization itself requires relative stability, and the external environment requires you to be dynamic. The difficulty of management is to find a balance between dynamics and stability. This is why the “value symbiosis” is proposed.
CBR: When SMEs face digital transformation, they will not dare to transfer because of high input costs and uncertain results. What should they do?
Chen Chunhua: Discussing this topic today, I think it will be easier than before.
First of all, all digital companies want to be empowered, and they are shifting from the consumer side to the industrial side. There are a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises on the industrial side. In this process, the cost of tools and methods will come down.
Second, an important feature of digitalization is “connection”. For small and medium-sized enterprises, I think we should use external forces to make digital transformation, that is, to connect industrial partners or digital enterprises to jointly complete digital transformation. .
Thirdly, all small and medium-sized enterprises must first perform business transformation in their digital transformation. In a sense, business transformation is relatively safe, because you are more familiar with your customers and know how to estimate or define the cost of digital transformation by creating value for customers. Only when it is valuable after being tested by the business, investment will not be a waste.
CBR: In order to respond to rapid external changes, how can large enterprises improve organizational agility?
Chen Chunhua: When we talk about the agility of large enterprises, we are actually very cautious. The reason is that large enterprises have several very special features. First, large enterprises place great emphasis on risk control. ; Second, because large enterprises have a very large impact on industry and society, they are required toSelf-discipline and prudence; third, large companies already have a very mature system, and we have expectations for its stability.
Despite these prerequisites, today’s large enterprises must be agile, which is what the times require.
The agility of large enterprises is mainly reflected in the following aspects.
First, look at the business, whether your business can cope with external changes and is continuously competitive.
Second, agility is achieved by tools to some extent. For example, when your information sharing platform is very sufficient, the agility of decision-making and collaboration will be demonstrated. I think large companies are capable of building tools and launching platforms.
Thirdly, it is very important to establish an agile organization, in fact, to establish a good performance culture. We have always envied Huawei’s high efficiency and execution. In fact, Huawei highly values cooperation. It puts more emphasis on “you contribute to others” than “you personally achieve performance.”
The last one may be a bigger challenge. When large enterprises are doing organizational agility, they may really need to go through internal marketization.
CBR: While digital management improves efficiency, it also makes management lack of temperature. For example, some companies accurately calculate the time for employees to go to the toilet. How to balance the efficiency and temperature of digital methods ?
Chen Chunhua: From an organizational point of view, it must be performance-oriented, and an organization without performance must not survive. In an organization, there are only “roles” but no “persons”. If you value yourself very seriously, you will eventually find that the organization does not value you so much, and it becomes important that you are qualified for a role .
In organizational management, a very important requirement is in addition to achieving performance goals, organizations must take into account the meaning of people.
According to the traditional organization and management philosophy, there is no such thing as “taking into account the meaning of people”. Why do we need to emphasize this point today? Because of the rapid changes, the competition has become unprecedentedly cruel and complicated. People are trapped in the competition and easily feel powerless. The overload of information intensifies the inner anxiety of people.
Among organizations and individuals, I think that organizations are more proactive. The managers in the organization determine the performance of everyone, but as an individual as an organization member, there is actually not much initiative.
I want to emphasize two points in particular.
First, as a manager of an organization, you must have a “considering the value orientation of people”. If you only care about the growth of the organization and the goals of the organization, I at least think that it does not conform to the organization management philosophy I advocate.
Secondly, As an organization itself, it must also have its own values. Is the growth of the organization evaluated by scale efficiency, or “make society better” and “make employees also Become beautiful” to evaluate.
In the past, when evaluating an organization, it was only based on its benefits, returns to shareholders, profitability, and its position in the market. However, today, when evaluating organizations, we need to add other dimensions, such as whether Promote social progress, are willing to take social responsibility. I hope that more companies can not only “in business speaking business”, but “in business speaking society”.
(The interview is a small-scale group interview, and some questions are asked by other media)
This article is from WeChat official account:China Europe Business Review (ID: ceibs-cbr) span>, interview: Zhou Qi, interview: Chen Chunhua