Author |Lv Feng is the director of the Institute of Modern Management, Nankai University
Associate Professor, Department of Human Resource Management, Business School, Nankai University.
Editor-in-charge |Qi Qing.
When analyzing the individual performance of employees from the most micro level of human resource management, there is usually such a formula:Performance = work attitude and work ability。It tells us succinctly: either the attitude to work is not enough (not wanting to do it), or the ability to work is insufficient (not being able to do it), or neither, in which case the employee's performance will be problematic.
This formula can also be used to analyze entrepreneurs, but it needs to be adjusted a little: the entrepreneur's work attitude is not at all about the passion of 996, and the entrepreneur's ability to build up the business for the enterprise, if these two elements are deficient in one or both are problematic, then the performance of the enterprise must also have problems.
Lying flat" is a word used to describe the working state of the new generation of employees, and it seems that it can also be used to describe the current state of some entrepreneurs. It's just that the entrepreneur's lying flat is more manifested in inaction, so the whole enterprise feels as if it lacks an "attitude" and becomes mediocre;In the past, business development relied more on entrepreneurs' insight and leadership of external opportunities, and enterprises did not establish internal organizational capabilities to match their popularity and brand, which made it difficult for enterprises to effectively respond to the changing environment.
However, negativity is not what life should be. As Mr. Lu Xun said, "A true warrior dares to face the bleak life and dare to face the dripping blood." "Although there are all kinds of unsatisfactory expectations, the pace of progress may be slowed down, but the real entrepreneur still has to move forward as always. Just to take the road to the future, entrepreneurs should think seriously about two things: rekindle passion and build capacity.
No matter how you define entrepreneurship, you can't avoid the most important ingredient – passion. Passion can take many forms: we can see that some entrepreneurs are still able to make exciting speeches when their business is at a low point, and we can also see that some entrepreneurs can exchange passion for the resilience to move forward with a load. Entrepreneurs with a certain degree of transcendent passion are more able to exude a unique style and charm.
However, after several years of the epidemic, the challenges of business and the pressure of reality have a certain negative impact on entrepreneurship. Considering that passion is the most direct factor in work motivation, leadership resilience, and team cohesion, the weakening of entrepreneurial passion will naturally affect the overall performance of the enterprise. From the perspective of society as a whole, the loss of entrepreneurial enthusiasm is a loss for social wealth creation, regardless of the reason.
The premise of boosting business performance is to rekindle the passion of entrepreneurs. So, where does the passion of an entrepreneur come from?After the Hawthorne experiment in 1933, George Elton Mayo, a professor of psychology at Harvard University in the United States, published a landmark work in the history of management thought, "The Problem of Human Nature in Industrial Civilization", which clearly put forward the "theory of human relations", which was specifically mentionedProductivity is largely determined by people's morale, which "comes from relationships between people in families, societies and businesses".。We might as well understand the general sense of "morale" described by Professor Mayo as the passion of entrepreneursThere are at least three **s that are important for the return of entrepreneurial passion: (origin) the family is more about emphasizing the innate conditions of the individual;Society refers to the opportunities and challenges under change;The relationship between people in an organization is the interpersonal relationship within the organization.
Through the performance of many good leaders, we must admit that the passion of entrepreneurs is largely innate. As frustrated as their passion may be, they can repair themselves as long as they are given a little time and as long as they don't hurt them consistently. For entrepreneurs, a temporary downturn or unhappiness cannot hide the power from the bottom.
Repair is a natural act, as if our bodies are repairing every day. In real life, between health and ICU, in fact, there is more self-repair of the body, as long as you can give the body more time and conditions, the instinct-based self-recovery function can keep our body in good shape. Just look at Liang Wengen of Sany Heavy Industry, Dai Wenjun of Juewei Duck Neck, and Wang Ning of Bubble Mart to know that without strong self-repair, how can they persist all the way. AbsolutelyThis also has a premise, that is, not to push the limits of resilience. If some conditions can be created for repair, it will of course shorten the repair process. The so-called conditions are not complicated, they are nothing more than not disturbing, not interfering, being fair, keeping open, and letting new things happen constantly. True entrepreneurs are not afraid of challenges and difficulties, and their passion is even stronger because of it.
Today, people are accustomed to condensed the changing environment as variability, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, which is commonly referred to as VUCA (an acronym for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity). But, somehow,It is obviously unserious to place too much emphasis on the "u" in it, and even to cover all the characteristics of the environment with "uncertainty".
From an entrepreneur's point of view, "uncertainty" is precisely the most important element that stimulates entrepreneurshipIn other words, no true entrepreneur likes certainty. The complexity and ambiguity of the environment are not a problem for entrepreneurs either. But,The first element that is often overlooked, volatility, is the greatest harm to entrepreneurship. For example, abrupt adjustments in policy. Think about it, enterprises in normal operation must immediately make adjustments or even stop abruptly because of policy changes. The biggest problem with volatility is the crisis of trust. In fact, in recent years, people often discuss the business environment, which is to bring a certain degree of stability to the local part of the commitment of all parties, which allows production and business activities to be carried out smoothly, and is also an important measure to stabilize the mentality of entrepreneurs.
Management research borrows a Buddhist concept - "mindfulness" - to describe people's perception or awareness of the internal and external environment, which is an open, receptive, and focused objective cognition of the present, that is, mindfulness is a comprehensive and unconditional cognition of the internal and external environment. Observe external things without any preconceived judgments and evaluations. This is actually very difficult, because past experiences and preferences can easily lead people into a state of selective attention. Once selective attention is attained, individual judgment and behavior inevitably enter a more intolerant state. Leaders who lose mindfulness tend to be more self-centered and take business decisions for granted.
Today's entrepreneurs not only know that the environment has never been "certain", but also that the environment is in a state of "change", and the inflection point may be in the next quarter. For the volatile nature of the external environment, entrepreneurs should not easily live in the opinions and judgments of others by maintaining mindfulness. In this way, you can better protect your passion.
Weakened enthusiasm seems to be contagious: entrepreneurs lose motivation, business operations fall into mediocrity, middle managers start to get by, and employees start to make "lying flat" a normOn the other hand, when employees ignore the various systems of the company and start to "fish" for fun, the middle managers only enter a maintenance state under the target system, and the managers will feel more physically and mentally exhausted. I often hear entrepreneur friends say, "I can't bring it, I can't bring it at all!."I often say that we should be like a bullet train, every car should have power, but the employees are waiting for your motivation. Speaking of which, who inspires us?"In any case, the employee's response to the passion of the entrepreneur has a significant impact on the entrepreneur's mentality.
It is a fact that in the third decade of the 21st century, the relationship between enterprises and employees is changing in organizations where the "post-00s" are about to become the main body of work. Not long ago, Dongfang Selection was experiencing a personnel turmoil. In fact, at the beginning of the 20th century, the relationship between companies and employees was already changing. Taylor, the "father of scientific management", repeatedly emphasized that "gentlemen, this is the beginning of the great psychological revolution and the first step towards scientific management." The so-called psychological revolution, Taylor made it clear that the purpose of management is to make the cake bigger together, not to think about sharing the cake. In the past year, when coaching companies, one of the questions I often ask executives is:"Now, there's always a discussion about how to motivate employeesAs if it were a one-sided issue. However, have you ever considered motivating your boss?”Such a question is easy to be ambiguous, and even will be labeled as extremely negative, so the answer to this question must first be based on the adjustment of the concept, if you still insist that employees only receive wages through work, you will naturally feel that this is a very boring question, but if it is under the concept of "community of destiny", this is of course to be seriously faced. In fact, employees also know that if the boss closes his doors, he may be able to accumulate wealth without worrying about food and clothing, but for more employees, they need to find a job from scratch.
Historically, many stories have repeatedly illustrated that when many leaders are in a difficult situation, or even wavering about the future, the performance of subordinates can boost their confidence. In the Battle of Jinggang, watching his newly formed Hunan Army soldiers being tortured and killed by the Taiping Army, he was powerless to return to heaven. Zeng Guofan was full of grief and despair, so he committed suicide by jumping into the water, but fortunately he was rescued by his subordinates in time. At that time, Zeng Guofan's mood can be said to be extremely low, but another Hunan army attacking Xiangtan fought bravely under the leadership of Taqib and inflicted heavy losses on Lin Shaozhang, an elite unit of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. This also somewhat restored Zeng Guofan's confidence and prestige, and also strengthened Zeng Guofan's determination to reorganize the army.
Today, the entrepreneur and his employees are in a mutually fulfilling relationship. Or, to put it a step further, not a boss and an employee, but a passionate man and his buddies. When the entrepreneur is in a slump, his partners cannot sit idly by. In the Analects, "the monarch envoys the ministers are courteous, and the ministers are loyal", a good relationship depends on each other's sincere dedication. If the first two suggestions are written for entrepreneurs, then this one may as well be transferred to employees, please also think carefully about how to "care" the precious passion of entrepreneurs.
Passion alone is obviously not enough, after the ups and downs of recent years, entrepreneurs must seriously consider the issue of organizational capacity building. In the same storm, it is the stronger ships that can safely sail to the other side;In the same financial crisis, it is the stronger companies that can stand. Here, we try to simplify as much as possible and deconstruct the organizational capability into two parts: the basic ability for the enterprise to exist and the track ability for the enterprise to develop.
The ability that an enterprise that can survive should have is the so-called basic ability. Just as a person's basic physical condition is the basis of immunity, the basic ability of an organization cannot guarantee that the organization will stand out from the competition, but it is the condition for the organization to function normally.
What are the basic competencies?There is a wide variety of research. For example, some people summarized the ability of production and technological innovation, operation and management, strategic management, etc. Here we might as well apply the basic system of "supply and marketing of people, property, property, and property" that people are very familiar with in enterprise management, this system is applicable to different enterprise scales and different industries, whether it is a small and micro enterprise that has just started or a giant enterprise group, whether it is a manufacturing enterprise or a financial service industry, these most basic systems are the support for the operation of enterprises, just like people who exist as biological individuals have eight systems. In a changing environment, enterprises need to carefully review the operational status of the basic management system from time to time.
The basic capability of an enterprise is a changing concept, because the basic capabilities required by enterprises at different stages or states are also different. For example, for marathon runners of different ages, the basic abilities required are naturally different. Therefore, our definition of basic competence is the corresponding most basic state of competence that should be possessed to complete its task.
If the core competence that entrepreneurs often talk about is anchored by competitors, and the academic concepts that emerge later, such as dynamic ability and organizational ability, are anchored by the enterprise itself, then the track capability we define here is the anchor object of the market and customers.
To survive in the face of adversity, what ability is important is not a unilateral self-talk of the enterprise, but to take the market as the basic anchor, which is the track ability that the organization must have. The history of biological evolution tells us that organisms that happen to have the skills to adapt to future environmental changes survived, rather than how strong they were, as dinosaurs and ants do.
Today's enterprise practice, in order to be able to understand customer needs can also be said to do everything, especially now with the help of Internet information and powerful computing power, big data analysis can help enterprises to do a clearer understanding of customer needs. Despite the increasing dizziness of technology, the logic remains the same:
Who will be our customers in the future?What is a customer need?Does the customer have an ultimate need?Does the customer need to be clear or vague?Does the customer need to be stable or changing?Are customer needs unified or diverse?Does the client need to be a real expression or a fake presentation?Does the customer know or do we know what the customer needs?
To make capacity building more discipline-based, companies need to be careful to look at capacity enhancement as a key element of their plans. The work plan is not only about the tasks accomplished, but also about the development of capacities through the completion of the tasks. The success of an enterprise is not because it defeats other enterprises, but because it has become a better version of itself, so that the success can be more durable, and such an enterprise can win more widespread respect from people, and also make the organization have a stronger ability to adapt to the environment.
Rekindling passion and building capacity also requires entrepreneurs to understand themselves correctly and overcome self-deception through in-depth reflection. This is not an easy task. However, it is only when a clear cause-and-effect relationship is established that more targeted ways to improve behavior can be proposed. Attribution theory points out that people often find a fallacy called "self-serving bias" when looking for causality, that is, individuals tend to attribute success to their own ability or effort, and failure to external constraints or variations.
If psychological misunderstanding is an inevitable natural occurrence, then entrepreneurs may wish to make a mandatory setting for themselves: internal attribution, that is, think everything from their own point of view. If so, what external factors have given support?What kind of reasonable behavior did you make?If you don't do it well, what is the reason for yourself?The external conditions are sufficient, but what is wrong with your own response?
Dialectics tells us that internal causes are the fundamental cause of the development of things, and external causes are the second causes of the development of things. This means that whether you succeed or fail, you can confidently or honestly look within yourself for the reasons. Only by taking "seeking self for ourselves" as the basic point for analyzing and solving problems can we achieve true growth.
At present, the difficulties encountered in the operation of many enterprises, in addition to the influence of external factors, are to a large extent the problems of internal management. In the past two years, people have begun to talk about "reducing costs and increasing efficiency", which is obviously because the previous development has neglected management, ignored details, and is not careful in planning. The success of many enterprises often depends on the foresight and business opportunities of entrepreneurs, but there is still a big gap in internal management. By "looking back for yourself", entrepreneurs can lead their enterprises from good to excellent in a more down-to-earth manner.
The great changes unseen in a century" is the inexhaustible source of entrepreneurship. Real entrepreneurs, they are the trendsetters of the times, they are supposed to bear extraordinary pressure in the midst of change, and they should create value for the changing society. I sincerely hope that entrepreneurs can turn to themselves and rekindle their majestic passion, which is the most important resource that entrepreneurs have, and it is the resource that catalyzes all resources. At the same time, we should establish the corresponding basic capabilities and track capabilities for the enterprise in a down-to-earth manner, so that we can achieve steady and far-reaching results. Every day when the sun rises, you can have the pride of this era.