In October 1990, Jiang Wei came to Feilong. At this time, Feilong was just a small factory with a registered capital of 750,000 yuan and more than 60 employees, producing a product called Feiyan slimming tea. Later, Jiang Wei developed the Life-Prolonging and Treasure-protecting Liquid.
In 1991, Feilong began bombing advertising in some cities. In 1992, Feilong invested 10 million yuan in advertising, and its profits soared to 60 million yuan. In 1994, Yanshenghubao Liquid was booming in the national market, and Jiang Wei won the three titles of National Outstanding Young Entrepreneur, China's Top Ten Outstanding Young People, and China's Reform Figure. On March 23, 1995, Feilong Group obtained the approval document for listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. On April 18, Jiang Wei suddenly announced that he would give up listing. In April 1995, Jiang Wei inspected the national market and discovered that there were huge loopholes in Feilong's management. In June, Jiang Wei suddenly announced in the media that Feilong Group had entered a period of rest. In October 1995, Feilong Group took off for the second time and got off to a bad start. In early 1996, Jiang Wei was forced to decide to withdraw from provincial capital cities and expand to medium-sized cities. However, he encountered obstacles at every turn and was ultimately defeated across the board. Later, Jiang Wei launched a rectification campaign within the company and eliminated 80% of the middle and senior cadres. In July 1996, Jiang Wei launched a 10,000-word review entitled "My Mistakes", detailing the 20 major mistakes of the CEO. After being published, the domestic media widely reproduced it. For a time, all kinds of rumors about Feilong spread. In June 1997, Jiang Wei announced at a press conference that Feilong Group’s liabilities were only 16 million yuan, and the expected recovery of payment was about 350 million yuan. In August 1998, Shenyang Feilong Company applied to the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce of China to register the trademark "Viagra", and the application was officially accepted in accordance with the law. At the same time, Feilong announced to the outside world that Feilong Group developed China's first drug for the treatment of male erectile dysfunction, Viagra Kaitai, in 1992. On February 1, 1999, Viagra Kaiqin was officially launched. It is said that sales reached 60 million yuan in the first month of the market. In April 1999, the State Food and Drug Administration issued a notice requiring local drug regulatory authorities to investigate and deal with the inferior drug Viagra Kaitai produced by Feilong in accordance with the law. On May 6, 1999, Feilong announced a lawsuit against the Liaoning Provincial Department of Health. In the same month, Feilong sued the State Food and Drug Administration in Beijing and filed a claim of RMB 126.775 million. In early 2000, Feilong’s lawsuit ended in failure. Jiang Wei's preemptive registration plan ultimately failed. In January 2000, Jiang Wei held a press conference in Beijing and announced his decision to sell the shares of Feilong 51. Feilong will take off again in April and May.
In 2006, Jiang Wei published a book "Changy & Thoughts on China's Harmonious Culture". He declared that he would enter the cultural industry and implement the plan to build a huge Internet cultural empire by building three major websites. Plan, these three major websites are: Temple of Humanity, Network Zhenneng Traditional Chinese Medicine and Virtual City Practical Animation E-Commerce. His goal is to surpass Chinese companies such as Baidu, Alibaba, and Shanda within 3 to 5 years, and challenge Google's dominance.
Jiang Wei's "Top 20 Mistakes of CEOs"
/Jiang Wei (published on July 6, 1996) 1. Romanticization of decision-making. In a company with many intellectuals, it is understandable to have a romanticized corporate culture inherent in intellectuals. However, the enterprise group is also an economic organization, and it is in a life-and-death economic competition environment. The fundamental purpose of an enterprise is to obtain profits, and every action of an enterprise must be calculated based on specific profit figures. During the six years of business practice, the president downplayed the profit purpose of the company and made decisions that were too idealistic and romantic. As a result, most of the cadres of Feilong Group also exhibited serious idealistic and romantic behaviors during the operation of the company, regardless of costs. Count the profits.
Businessmen only aim to make money; philosophers, artists, and visionaries cannot exist in enterprises.
2. The ambiguity of decision-making. Doing nothing without familiarity is one of the rules of business. However, for a period of time, the president overemphasized industrial diversification and got involved in many unfamiliar fields. At the same time, there were many things that the president was not familiar with, and there were no talents familiar with them. implementation, so blind decisions and vague decisions often occur. Make decisions based on irrational judgments such as roughness, estimation, roughness, and seeming.
3. Impatience in decision-making. The market economy has only a beginning and no end. All businessmen must participate in the endless market competition with a calm mind. In the past six years of corporate development, especially during the critical period of corporate development, the president has often been in an impatient, frightened and unbalanced state of mind, causing all cadres to also be in a frightened state of mind. In this top-down mentality, there are one-sided decisions, wrong decisions, and dangerous decisions. The root cause is that if you often think about and prepare for the overall development, especially if you have a mature preparation for upcoming situations, you will be able to make decisions without hesitation. If you are prepared, you will be calm; if you are foreseeable, you will not be nervous.
4. There is no long-term talent strategy. The essence of market economy is the competition of talents. This is a commonplace issue. Looking back on the development of Feilong Group, except for strictly recruiting marketing talents from the society in 1992, it has never seriously strategically designed the talent structure. The phenomenon of recruiting people randomly, recruiting people based on favors, and even recruiting abnormal people such as relatives, families, marriages, etc. has occurred, and this has continued for three years. As a company that has developed into one of the top pharmaceutical and health care products companies in China, it is unimaginable to outsiders that the company does not have a complete talent structure and complete rules for selecting and cultivating talents; a cutting-edge enterprise in the market economy competition does not have a complete talent structure. To realize the marketization of talent management, talent competition and talent use, the low quality of personnel has caused the enterprise to be in a low-level and low-quality operation state. The enterprise's talent quality is single and its knowledge complementary ability is very weak, and it cannot become an organic and rapid development whole. The unreasonable talent structure also leads to uneven development of various departments of the enterprise, such as weak planning, large market, weak quality inspection, large production, weak finance, large marketing, etc. The development of uneven or uncoordinated development often occurs due to the imbalance of talent structure. Unreasonable, resulting in a situation where the weak talent department hinders, destroys and stagnates the rapid development of the strong talent department. In the end, the entire company's development slowed down or even stagnated. Since there is no long-term talent strategy, there is no talent reserve concept. When an enterprise develops and enters a new industry or enters a new stage, it is suddenly discovered that there is no talent preparation. Therefore, in the development of the enterprise, it is often in a situation of talent shortage, rushing to sell products on the shelves, and often paying heavy tuition fees. In short, the mistake in talent strategy is the most influential mistake in the six years since the group was founded.
5. The talent mechanism is not market-oriented. Feilong Group has two mistakes in its outlook on talents: first, talents do not flow easily, and second, it cultivates talents by itself. There are objective reasons for the formation of these two views on talent. In order to maintain corporate cohesion, a stable environment for talent is needed, so the mobility of Feilong people is very low. At the same time, because Feilong is a private enterprise and lacks legal protection, the reliability of talents is the first priority, and over time it has formed its own practice of cultivating talents. However, the recruitment and use of mature talents in important departments, key departments, and urgently needed departments have been neglected for a long time, which has led to the current mistakes of low personnel quality and difficulty in high-quality operation of enterprises.
6. Single talent structure. Due to the characteristics of the profession, we have blindly recruited a large number of professionals in the field of traditional Chinese medicine since 1993 without designing a talent structure, and placed them in all departments and institutions of the company, resulting in a single knowledge structure at the top and middle levels of the company. The unreasonable talent structure of an enterprise seriously hinders the development of a large enterprise.
7. Poor talent selection. In March 1993, a senior leader's mistake caused the director of the marketing center to leave the company, and the marketing center fell into chaos for a time. This incident reflects a common phenomenon in the Feilong Group - weak commanders and strong generals.
Weak commanders cannot manage strong generals at all, and strong generals simply do not accept the management of weak commanders. In fact, it results in inability to manage and failure to manage, and warlords separatist power and occupy the mountain as king. Branch companies are actually in a state of independent marketing and independent marketing, and cannot carry out unified marketing management. The fundamental problem causing this phenomenon is that the internal competitive recruitment mechanism has not been resolved. Strong generals cannot become strong managers, and weak managers cannot retain their positions. The top position is originally a disease of state-owned enterprises, but it has spread in Feilong Group, a private enterprise.
8. Enterprise development lacks vision. In the process of business operation, we made the mistake of not having a long-term development plan and failing to improve the business operating structure in a timely manner. It is very dangerous for a company to have no development plan. As an enterprise continues to develop, it is necessary to constantly improve the organic management and operation structure of enterprise leaders so that the enterprise will always become an organically operating body. This problem has not yet been solved.
9. Enterprises lack innovation. Innovation is the foundation of enterprise development. An enterprise that has been developed for 5 years without innovation will inevitably decline. A product that has been sold for 3 years without innovation will inevitably die. This is an inexorable rule. However, in the past six years, the president has overemphasized the company's past glory and failed to seriously think about innovation, resulting in a lack of new ideas in corporate management and market development. In the future, entrepreneurship and innovation must be completed by replacing new forces.
10. The corporate philosophy is incoherent. Looking through the documents of Feilong Group in the past three years, the biggest feature is that the president talks a lot, but there is no guidance on how to do it. There is only theory but no concrete implementation methods, resulting in incomprehension of the theory and no specific methods. It is a waste to talk about it once. New ideas often appear and are inconsistent. The president himself has not found a coherent idea, which leads to the long-term failure of the company. Not a single coherent thought in time.
11. Management regulations are not true or detailed. Feilong Group has formulated numerous rules and disciplines during its six years of development, and the rules and regulations are relatively complete. However, most of these regulations do not have strict and detailed rules, and the specific responsible persons are not implemented, resulting in a situation where it is difficult to comply with the rules. To correct this mistake, we must start from now on. After all departments in the headquarters and each market company improve the existing regulations, they must add two aspects: the implementation details of the regulations and the implementation inspection rules.
12. Slow response to national economic policies. Before 1993, due to the use of ordinary invoices and legal restrictions, companies implemented ex-factory price sales to mobilize the enthusiasm of intermediate wholesalers. After the new tax system was implemented in 1993, the state implemented the value-added tax deduction for invoices, allowing enterprises to qualify for increased sales. At this time, the CEO not only failed to make a decisive decision to increase sales and increase the company's direct supply to retailers, but instead used reluctant methods to adapt to this tax reform. By implementing markup sales, the company can obtain a net profit of 16% in the market without increasing the retail price of the product, and the operating funds in the market will also experience a huge increase. If the price is increased in 1993, 20 million yuan in price increase funds will be obtained. The price increase in 1994 will receive 30 million yuan in price increase funds. On this issue, the president was restricted by conservative thinking. As a result, in 1995, the middlemen had huge arrears of payment, the retail link was ineffective, and there was a serious shortage of funds, and he was in danger of being eliminated.
13. Ignore modern management. In 1993, a certain national department visited twice to promote modern automated management procedures; in 1994, another department came to promote modern office management procedures, but the president turned him away all three times. The three companies completed modern management at this time. When the health care product market declined, they greatly benefited from this, and there was no financial chaos like Feilong Group. This lesson tells us that enterprises must continue to use modern technology to complete careful management of enterprises. Scientific management is not only based on scientific thinking, but also on scientific methods. The foundation is technology.
14. The interest mechanism is unbalanced. Because the CEO has been influenced by the socialist big pot for a long time, he overemphasized the innovative development of Feilong Group and did not break the egalitarianism of the distribution system for a long time. In fact, enterprise cadres use gray or black income to make up for their own income shortfall. In this way, the corporate concept that the company spent 6 years building was completely destroyed. Everything that inspires people is defeated by the legend of gray income.
In 1996, the company began to break the balance of interests, but it also neglected to educate employees on the correct view of money, causing some employees to go from one extreme to another, resulting in the terrible phenomenon of doing everything for money. Feilong Group was originally a company brought together by aspiring young people. In the first five years, the group operated under a relatively low distribution system and relied on corporate belief to successfully complete its initial development. In the development of the new era, one concept should be clear: we need money, but we need a career even more.
15. Sprinkle funds with pepper. Feilong Group has been in a state of dispersed use of funds for a long time and cannot concentrate on using funds in a planned and large-scale manner. The scattered use of funds has resulted in serious waste of funds and a serious shortage of funds. Managing funds well is a crucial principle for enterprise development.
16. The same model of market development. After Yanshenghubao Liquid successfully entered the market, its model was regarded by the president as a universal standard model, and he mistakenly used the same model to promote new products developed later on a large scale across the country. The products are different, the performance is different, and the consumer groups are different, but there are no unique promotion tactics. This is a big mistake. On this issue, the CEO made a serious empiricist error. He was overly confident in his personal wisdom and failed to promptly activate major advertising companies across the country to use collective wisdom to complement each other. As a result, all new products were launched without new plans and methods.
17. Falsely booked market share. In the past six years of decision-making, overemphasis on market share and market sales has led to a serious situation of sharp increase in market receivables, confusion of goods, and devaluation of goods. Especially when dealing with the contradiction between the total volume of goods in circulation, the catastrophic impact of the total volume of goods in circulation is underestimated, which instead leads to a vicious cycle of increased receivables and poor collection of payments. Therefore, the supply and demand relationship must be stabilized for a long time, and it is better to reduce the scale of production and sales than to increase the inherent quality of enterprise operations.
18. There is no comprehensive market advancement rhythm. Any product has different cycles in the market. The eternal vitality of the product in the market lies in the overall advertising planning. Not having a comprehensive advertising plan is tantamount to declaring the product dead at this point.
19. Carpet bombing of ineffective advertising. The retail terminal of marketing is the most basic point of market attack. Due to the rapid development of the group, the president has neglected to focus on attacks on retailers, hospitals, and pharmacies in the past three years, and has unilaterally emphasized the three-dimensional advertising attacks across the country and in big cities. effect. The long-term existence of this error has resulted in a large number of ineffective advertisements, insignificant advertising effects, loss of advertising funds, a sharp increase in advertising payables, and a disproportion between input and output.
20. The idealization of international trade. We are not familiar with the laws of international trade, and it is serious empiricism to use domestic successful experience to export it repeatedly in the international market; we overestimate the sales volume and price of the international market, and underestimate the resistance to entering the international market. To summarize: The foundation of the success of the market economy lies in correct decisions and the implementation of correct decisions. How to complete the implementation of correct decisions? Enterprises need to innovate in the new stage of development, and their thinking methods and working methods must be constantly innovated. We must establish the concept that Feilong Group's past mistakes are valuable assets for the company and a valuable asset for future development. The mistakes of major companies in society are also wealth worth learning from. Information centers and intelligence centers should regularly collect errors from the enterprise itself and other enterprises. It is necessary to develop such a culture in the whole group: dare to admit mistakes and dare to analyze mistakes. Any behavior to resolve or conceal mistakes is stupid behavior and will lead to the failure of the enterprise. We have established a goal. When the goal is not achieved and fails, we should recognize that it is a mistake and avoid making the same mistake again. People must not try their best to find a few small successes from things that have failed. and a few small shining points as a reason to explain our failures and find psychological self-balance. Finally, I will end my review with a sentence from Mao Zedong: Mistakes and setbacks teach us and make us smarter, and we can do things better.