The ten things mentioned in the book are definitely not to be done. Any one of these ten things may bring disaster to the company.
When everything in Coca-Cola works normally, I feel uncomfortable all over. I will wander around the company and ask the executives: Tell me, why is everything going well? Nothing to worry about?
Drucker said that an important task of the management is to take risks carefully by using the company's existing resources to ensure the company's sustainable operation in the future.
If you are in a comfortable situation, then you will have a great impulse to give up taking risks, which is sometimes too strong for you to resist. Once so, failure is not far away.
Really stubborn people are not avoiding risks. Not only are they unwilling to take risks to make changes or innovations, but they also stick to their own methods. They firmly believe that they have mastered the key to success and feel that there is no need to explore other ways to succeed.
"The two companies compete. If you want to beat each other, the most important thing is to find his own unchangeable advantage to attack him."
When Pepsi attacked Coca-Cola with bigger packaging, Coca-Cola's reaction was rigid thinking, going its own way and unwilling to change. So Pepsi seized the opportunity to catch up.
The Innovator's Dilemma says that almost all subversive innovations are not initiated by the top three industries, and it is difficult for the top three industries to subvert an industry. Because the top three industries are easy to fall into rigid thinking, there are a lot of sunk costs and path dependence (doing so many things), which cannot be easily changed.
If you want to ask for failure, stick to your point of view!
Flexibility is an important part of leadership, and it is a talent who transcends simple management ability, operational ability and technical ability. I believe that flexible people have the habit of judging the situation and thinking. Once the environment changes, they will quickly adapt to the new environment.
There was once a CEO who built himself a Taj Mahal at the company headquarters. Can you imagine a middle-level person reporting to the Taj Mahal? Just looking at the furnishings inside, he was too scared to speak. Once a person falls into a mirage, he is unwilling to "go downstairs" again. He just sits in other people's visions.
Unfortunately, the most successful business elites in history have one thing in common, that is, they can blend in with employees at all levels. Dwain Wallace, the founder of Cessna Aircraft Company, walked into the production workshop. He could not only name more than 3,000 employees, but also know some of their family affairs.
If you are only with a few confidants or executives every day, their task becomes to please you and give you an illusory sense of success.
During World War II, Churchill set up a special office whose only job was to report bad news to him. On the other hand, Hitler only listened to good news. He always thought that the Germans had the upper hand.
Arrogance or fear is the main reason for isolating yourself.
If employees don't want to come to you, you should try to get close to them, or you will make a stupid mistake.
When a CEO makes a mistake, he has two choices, one is to admit that he made a mistake and correct it, and the other is not to whitewash it. Many times, there is no problem in packaging as a leader but there is a problem in execution, or there is no problem in the upper level but there is no problem in the people below.
The annual reports of many companies can be summarized in one sentence: Don't admit that you made a mistake. If the situation is bad, cover it up as much as possible. When the crisis breaks out in an all-round way, look for reasons from the external environment and put the blame on the scapegoat.
Every CEO makes mistakes. The key is whether he can admit it quickly and make up for it soon. I once intuitively and easily rejected the proposal to invest $500 million in East Germany to open up the market, but I didn't expect the head of German business to resign. It turned out that he thought I didn't understand how big the revival market in East Germany was. We went to East Germany, and when we came back, I decided to increase the investment to 654.38 billion US dollars.
Managers may make mistakes in decision-making, and the biggest fear is that there is no error correction mechanism. The most important thing in the system is the error correction mechanism. As the boss of an enterprise, you must consider what you have done wrong. If you do something wrong, admit it frankly.
If you want to improve your failure probability, you can deny the fact that your judgment is not 100% accurate, and you can arrogantly think that others know nothing.
Therefore, if you want to stumble, be an arrogant leader who loves to put on airs.
In the final analysis, the last straw for all companies is trust.
The customer should believe that the products of the enterprise are as good as he promised, the investors should believe that the management of the company is capable, and the employees should believe that the management can fulfill the promise.
Many companies disguise themselves to please Wall Street. The capital market stimulates people's greed, and they like to make quick money through the capital market too much, which leads to more corruption and deception.
If we only seek numerical changes and ignore the importance of business ethics or morality to enterprises, once we make mistakes, it will be a huge mistake.
Another reason for the problem is that the company's executives are eager to become celebrities, ignoring the management of the company itself and willing to make their appearance more glamorous. Often there will be many moral problems at this time, because you need to disguise a lot of information to maintain your good image in public. This is also a common problem in modern society.
Remember Drucker's point of view:
In fact, there is no business ethics, only morality, and there is no fault in all aspects of your life and work. If you have different moral standards on different occasions, then you are not a businessman.
Mark Twain: "What really gets us into trouble is not what we don't know at all, but what we only know a little."
We are tired of communicating with people, just like robots, constantly sending out streams of consciousness, creating more and more data streams, but no longer analyzing them. Few people will shut the door and turn off all the noisy equipment, sit still, reflect quietly and analyze the problem seriously.
If you take in a lot of information without thinking, there are three main problems:
1) information shock syndrome, your brain will reach the limit of failure;
2) undigested data will cover up the facts (you didn't go to the scene and misread the data);
3) It is foolish and sometimes even dangerous not to spend time thinking (think carefully before making a decision).
When I was a child, I learned to buy cows. Uncle Harmon told me, "The key is to look at cows, not people." This sentence is branded in my mind, and now it is the same when dealing with investment banks and buying and selling companies.
You don't have an in-depth judgment on the project itself, you just think this person is not bad.
This was the case when we decided to launch a new cola. A large number of experts have demonstrated the extraordinary charm of the new coke, and it seems that no one dares to pour cold water on the new coke. We decided to vigorously promote the new coke, which caused national complaints and even demonstrations, and I became the object of ridicule.
Sometimes the advice given by experts is not really feasible. Don't listen to experts easily if you are not sure.
Experts are very dangerous animals. When you meet an expert who wants to quantify human behavior, you should be extra careful, because management is always a human matter.
When I first went to work at Coca-Cola headquarters, the secretary began to cry because she couldn't get a few pencils. It turns out that if you want to get these pencils, you need to fill in the list and go through the process, and the person who fills in the list is on vacation again. The same thing happened to staplers, bookshelves and photocopiers. She collapsed, and I realized that bureaucracy was already serious.
If we want to hinder progress, let administrative procedures take the lead and advocate bureaucracy. Because bureaucrats not only do nothing by themselves, but also hinder others from carrying out their work. They will do their best to protect their land, prevent the effective communication of information, and destroy what could have been done for you, so that their position will be consolidated.
The person who can stand upright in the company should be the person who creates value for the company, not the person who manages everyone. The person who manages everyone serves everyone.
The turnover of most excellent employees is related to bureaucracy, and the cost of recruiting and training a middle-level cadre is at least twice his annual salary.
In 2007, Berkshire Hathaway owned 76 companies, with more than 232,000 employees and an annual income of more than 654.38+08 billion US dollars, but the company headquarters only had 654.38+09 employees. Even so, Warren Buffett complains that the company bureaucracy is too prevalent, because the number of employees has broken through from 16 to 19.
Many people in the enterprise have no concept of money, just a string of zero numbers. If this string of numbers is lost, he doesn't think it's much of a loss.
Fuzzy numbers and fuzzy information will make employees feel that they can make money no matter what they do.
In Las Vegas, if the casino manager sees a gambling table with $50 in cash exceeding 1 minute and no one cleans it up to make the cash disappear, the casino manager in charge of this area will be fired, because the casino manager does not want gamblers to think of real money when gambling, but there is no cash, so gamblers will not think that it is $50, but a small chip.
If you miss the pass, the responsibility should be on the passer, because he has communication problems with his teammates.
Therefore, there must be a clear and accurate information transmission mechanism within the team, and let everyone feel our cost and money and know what negative results such a decision will bring.
Many people think Malthus is the originator of demography, and I think he is the originator of modern pessimism.
The author of "Population Explosion" predicted that hundreds of millions of people would die of famine in the 1970s, and the Club of Rome wrote "The Limit of Growth" to describe the exhaustion of human resources, but so far none of this has happened, and we have passed one "doomsday" after another.
Many people's understanding of the future will be very gray, and it is difficult for these people to become leaders.
The problem with pessimism is that it always focuses on failure, and the media plays a great role in this. Because the media likes to report bad news, and the media doesn't like to report good news. Therefore, when people pursue safety, they like to look for excitement (looking for bad news) in the news, which will eventually lead a large number of people to feel gloomy and always look at the negative side.
In my opinion, any time is a good time to start a company. If you want to be the leader of the company, you just need to be an optimist. If you want to fail, you are afraid of the future!
We should not be full of fear about the future, but should treat him optimistically.
My neighbor Warren Buffett said:
I tap dance to work every day. I have the same attitude towards work. Twist everyone into a rope, not to make everyone have fun, but to make everyone work harder. If they perform better, employees themselves will get greater satisfaction.
When you can always be passionate about your work and make employees feel that it is interesting to fight with you, not just to change the book number, you will have more leadership and more effective management.
If you want to fail, you don't have to do anything with passion, just say to yourself, "That's good enough", "That's none of my business", "I don't care" or "I'm retiring."
If you want to succeed, you should keep telling yourself that the world is so interesting and there are so many things to explore.
A person without passion, no matter how good he is, is just a loser.
Rational people can adapt to the world, and irrational people try to adapt the world to him. Therefore, all progress depends on these irrational people.