In 2001, 20 years after the reform and opening up, China was participating in regional and global economic cooperation in an all-round way with full explosive force: it joined the WTO, held a high-level large-scale international conference APEC for the first time, and successfully bid for the Olympic Games for the first time.
The enthusiasm for economic construction has been burning step by step, and new ideas for enterprise innovation have also been born: China's first management monograph written by township entrepreneurs based on Chinese characteristics and personal practice, "100 Questions on Management Thinking of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises", has attracted more and more attention. This practical and leading monograph on enterprise management was very popular as soon as it was published, and it was reprinted three times in a row, with a circulation of 55,000 copies, becoming the champion of social science books in Shanghai that year.
The author of the book is Yuan Qinsheng, one of the first ten township entrepreneurs in Changshu. In the 80s, he became the director of an insolvent company, and soon after his arrival he turned a profit, paying off all the losses a year later. What is even more surprising is that the "people-oriented" management concept he put forward won the "Special Award for Innovation in National Ideological and Political Work in Half Moon Talk" jointly organized by the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee and the Xinhua News Agency, and Yuan Qinsheng quickly became famous in the Chinese business circles.
Over the past decades, Yuan Qinsheng has created and continuously improved the enlightened modern enterprise management system in China, among which, the "people-oriented" management concept proposed in his Chinese-English bound edition of the monograph "Enlightened Management and People-oriented" is 13 years earlier than the "people-oriented" governing concept proposed in the "Decision" of the Third Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
From a township entrepreneur to a leading figure of Chinese enterprise management thinkers, Yuan Qinsheng, who has great management talent, has used half his life to ignite the philosophical thinking of Chinese enterprises on "people-oriented management thinking".
Yuan Qinsheng's humanistic management thought is like a spark into a torch under the surging sky of the times of economic thought!
Mr. Yuan Qinsheng was awarded the image ambassador of Century Collection
Practice | Take advantage of the east wind to break the resistance and eliminate the weak points of the times
A "enlightenment story" about Yuan Qinsheng's humanistic management ideas is widely circulated on the Internet: in the early 80s, Yuan Qinsheng was newly appointed as the director of Jiangnan Instrument Factory, which coincided with the urgent use of yellow sand in the factory, and an employee recommended himself: I can find a way to solve it! It turns out that because the site where the yellow sand is stacked is usually on the riverside, it is windy and rainy every day, and the transportation and loading and unloading operations will flow into the river, and the yellow sand flow will affect the waterway, so it is better to salvage this batch of yellow sand in an emergency. This worker can organize people to go down to the river to fish, but at the same time he also put forward a condition: "Only during off-duty hours for salvage, the factory will send a custodian with a ruler to scrape the yellow sand at the mouth of the basket with a ruler, and calculate it at 5 cents per basket." Cash on the spot and don't owe money. Yuan Qinsheng, who was anxious, immediately agreed. After work, 19 workers were in place, 6 people were fully armed with waterproof rubber jackets to go down to the river, after more than 3 hours of hard work, a total of 48 baskets of yellow sand were fished, and 24 yuan was paid immediately, and the thorny yellow sand problem was solved. And these employees took their hard-earned money, but they immediately booked two tables of wine and food in the restaurant, and ate all of them at once!
How significant it is to "make good use of people" and "make people realize their own value"! For the first time, Yuan Qinsheng began to think about the most important and active element of "people" in the production relationship: "When we think about the management concept of 'people-oriented', we answer the questions of who to rely on, who to develop for, and how to develop. The answer is to rely on people, everything for people, while mobilizing people's enthusiasm, we are committed to improving the overall quality of people, and the unity of the two constitutes the complete content of 'people-oriented'. ”
It seems not surprising that the establishment of the core idea, from a historical point of view, occurred in an instant. However, with Yuan Qinsheng's subsequent innovation in practical management ideas, applicability to the Chinese market, and the perfect complementarity of rationality and sensibility embodied in practice, his management ability is full of unattainable talent.
His first all-round reform did not make the workers feel the legendary "pains" of reform, but the new factory rules were like "pie in the sky", always looking to find ways to "feed" the selfish desires of employees: employees can complain to anyone, including Yuan Qinsheng, the rule-maker; Any employee or cadre thinks that the leader's speech is false and empty, and Yuan Qinsheng agrees with you to use dozing off to protest civilly; Elementary school apprentices do not need to be transferred to technicians after 3 years, and they can be re-graded after the assessment standards are passed; Employees can register and report to you as soon as possible for what job position they want; The first procedure for cadres at all levels is to self-report, so they don't have to feel embarrassed; The employees who were fired by the previous leaders and wanted to roll up and leave were stopped by Yuan Qinsheng's leaders: "Come on, let's discuss the rules and discipline of the factory together...... Yes, in his eyes, doing bad things is usually "forced", so it's okay for you to work on a small matter like being active, he will wait until the day when you are really positive!
In the eyes of municipal leaders, Yuan Qinsheng is a benchmark model born for the turbulent era of "openness and backwardness": he can lead everyone to get rid of poverty and become rich and lay a solid economic country, and he can take the lead in initiating the construction of spiritual civilization, and the cadres and the masses can build a spiritual home together. The standards of spiritual civilization formulated by Yuan Qinsheng are much stricter than those of economic management: playing with money regardless of the occasion or object, as long as there is one yuan to win or lose, it is gambling; In the event of a dispute between people, they can only discuss the matter on the facts, and they must not expose the historical pain of the other party, even if the facts are hurtful; Even the toilets are stipulated to have soap and toilet paper at all times, workers and cadres are equally on duty in turns, and the toilets have a very elegant name: Shuyuan.
He summed up his own set of practical management methods as "four reforms and one infiltration": in the economic aspect, it emphasizes a new distribution system of "one fixed, two test scores, and three rewards", so that labor remuneration and labor results are closely linked; In terms of employment, the distribution system of on-demand recruitment, open recruitment, and distribution of types of work based on personal expertise and hobbies is implemented; In terms of personnel, the simple system of deployment and appointment will be abolished, and a new system of self-reporting, evaluation, and selection and appointment will be implemented instead. In terms of production and marketing, we should break away from the rules and regulations of the planned economy and instead implement the newly established socialist market economic system.
In one fell swoop, the "four reforms and one infiltration" have broken the weak points of the times: they have broken the dogma of the state-owned big pot of rice, changed the extensive management of township and town enterprises, moved forward rapidly by turning to the socialist market economic system with Chinese characteristics, and comprehensively infiltrated the ideological and political work that has been thoroughly improved into the entire process of the four reforms. Xinhua Daily published a long newsletter entitled "Cultivating a New Generation of Talents Here" to show the whole country his management ideas and the new style of the factory.
His practical approach was so "advanced and innovative" at the beginning of China's reform and opening up. A series of "people-oriented" new regulations, like a bomb, have made the entire instrument factory blow up an almost unparalleled reputation in the country.
Yuan Qinsheng was featured on the cover of the New Era Scientist magazine
Writings | Seek truth, study works, and fill in the gaps in thinking
Jiangnan Instrument Factory has been successfully reformed and has become a benchmark for local township enterprises, and Yuan Qinsheng has also become a star entrepreneur.
When he ran out of the house, he basically rushed to report to the party members of the Changshu municipal organs, or to make special reports for the grassroots cadres of more than 30 townships and more than 10 municipal systems in the city. Hundreds of thousands of people from more than 20 provinces and cities across the country flocked to Yuan Qinsheng's factory to ask for a visit, and then continued to invite him to give a report.
In the fifteen years from 1983 to 1997, Yuan Qinsheng received more than 1.2 million visitors from home and abroad! And he soon discovered that no matter what he said, his approach to practice captivated listeners every time.
He began to think: which of the two is the greatest contribution to contribute excellent management ability to a factory, or to contribute excellent management ideas to the whole society? Does China's economic development need more "management thinking with Chinese characteristics", or does it need a factory?
The answer is clear.
He began to try to translate practice into "thought words".
A small paper "People-oriented Integrated Incentive Work Method" was recommended by the Municipal Party Committee, the Suzhou Municipal Party Committee and the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee, and won the "Special Prize of the National Ideological and Political Work Innovation Award for Half Moon Talks".
Then I tried to sort out the recordings of my usual lectures word by word, summarized the entries and supplemented the materials, and collected and published the first monograph on enterprise management in my life, "100 Questions on Management of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises". In 1990, as soon as the new book was put on the shelves, it became the No. 1 social science book in Shanghai! It has been supplemented and issued three times, and has been featured in CCTV's "News Network", Xinhua News Agency's domestic and international news. The front page of the overseas edition of the People's Daily also published Yuan Qinsheng's people-oriented enterprise management ideas with Chinese characteristics.
The impact of the book is so great! There are only more than 100 people in a factory, but there are tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people in the whole society! He is diligent in practice, and has a new career blueprint in his heart - subsequently, Yuan Qinsheng and Nanjing University professor Yang Dongtao based on the practical experience of Jiangnan Instrument Factory to seriously summarize, the theory of "people-centered management" is more systematic, more theoretical and highly presented, and the professional work "people-centered management" was born! More than 390 special presentations related to the book were held, with an audience of more than 250,000 people.
At this time, the resounding fame of Yuan Qinsheng's personal and written works had moved from the local to the central.
In December 1999, Yuan Qinsheng joined a delegation of Chinese township enterprises to visit India and joined the World Association of Small and Medium Enterprises in New Delhi; the Indian state secretary found in the list that Yuan Qinsheng was the first entrepreneur in China to publish a management monograph, so he took two ministerial-level officials of India's small industry and rural industry to the collapsed hotel to ask Yuan Qinsheng for a book; the head of the delegation immediately joked after seeing the Chinese book: "This is brought by the Eastern Tu Tang Dynasty, and you can't understand the scriptures (in Chinese characters)." ”
After this incident, the National Economic Management Cadre Training Center of the State Economic and Trade Commission simply directly assigned Yuan Qinsheng the task of writing, asking Yuan Qinsheng to customize a monograph for the training materials for national economic management cadres and materials for foreign cultural exchanges.
Being able to customize management teaching materials for Chinese cadres is the country's greatest recognition of Yuan Qinsheng's contribution to the idea of "people-oriented management".
In 2003, Yuan Qinsheng's new monograph "Enlightened Management and People-oriented" was born, and "luxurious configuration": bilingual in Chinese and English, published by China Economic Publishing House, held a launch ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, with a preface by Hu Daiguang, former dean of the School of Economics of Peking University and a famous economist in mainland China, and Dong Fuqi, a senior researcher at the Central Policy Research Office, inscribed the title of the book.
After the launch ceremony of "Enlightened Management and People-oriented", the sample book was presented to the cultural counselors of embassies in China. In 2005, when Yuan Qinsheng visited Spain with then President Hu Jintao and his wife Liu Yongqing, he also brought this bilingual edition of the monograph to the first Sino-Spanish Business Summit and the EU Association of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.
Yuan Qinsheng's management thought is rapidly taking root in the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and it is shining in the treasure house of enterprise management ideas with Chinese characteristics!
Win the material, promote the spirit, and use the shining point of human nature
On November 8, 2017, the Academic Committee of the Chinese Academy of Management Sciences held the unveiling ceremony of the "Yuan Qinsheng Management Thought Research Center" in Beijing.
In 2019, the "Yuan Qinsheng Management Thought" exhibition hall was also officially completed in Changshu City - the 200-square-meter exhibition hall in the form of 20 wall plates, with a large number of text and picture materials, showed three levels of content: "enterprise humanistic management with Chinese local characteristics, ways and means to improve ideological and political work in the new era, and measures to implement the core values of socialism at the grassroots level", media across the country have continued to report and article on "Yuan Qinsheng's management thought" for decades. The contents of the ideological reports of 49 vice ministers, vice governors and above, as well as hundreds of thousands of cadres at all levels and teachers and students of colleges and universities across the country, were also partially displayed.
Why does he have such a "unique" honor?
In the words of Zhou Sanduo, dean of the International Business School of Nanjing University and a well-known management expert, "Many people will say that the management of mainland enterprises is backward, but this is a fact. However, it is also a fact that Yuan Qinsheng's "people-oriented" and "open-minded" management has been at the forefront of the world's management trend. ”
Humanized management is a short board in the West and even in the world, and in the theory of socialist management with Chinese characteristics, Yuan Qinsheng's achievements of "walking in the forefront" are reflected in the innovation and synergy of the close combination of ideology and theory.
For example, the fine system that is popular in the whole country from enterprises to organs, this is a very common management method, Yuan Qinsheng made a reflection on the principle of humanism: the means of fines are the root of all people's attention to money, and it is the tyranny of workers in economic management, and if cadres "use money to manage everything", the quality of managers will gradually decline! Nor is it possible to use bonuses, which tend to become enlarged egalitarianism and privileges.
After thinking about it, Yuan Qinsheng decided to "replace punishment with rewards" and completely ban the fine system: he set up a number of small reward goals that employees find interesting and accessible, such as "self-knowledge award", "correction of mistakes award", and "safety hazard discovery award". Of course, these small rewards are only the appearance of humanistic management practice, and the theoretical basis behind it is the summary of twelve incentive types such as "Beloved Work Incentive Method", "Participation Management Incentive Method" and "Meritorious Incentive Method" founded by Yuan Qinsheng! Workers can be self-motivated by looking for their own shortcomings.
"Reflecting on the punishment system and turning to motivational thinking" has become one of the important contents of Yuan Qinsheng's management thoughts. He believes that "management" is the embodiment of a person's rights, and "reason" is a reflection of a person's ability - using this theory to guide practice, Yuan Qinsheng gave the ideological principle of "three incentives and three self": three incentives are "encouragement, incentives, and rewards", and three self are "independent grading, self-reporting and upgrading, and conscious practice", using this method to organically combine "management" and "management".
Yuan Qinsheng believes: "Management should be led by motivating people, and it should be based on 'advanced, middle, and backward; The rich, the well-being, and the poor' create hope for tomorrow, and anyone who sees hope for tomorrow is positive in their words and deeds."
Glory | Reason casts the soul, the history of the famous, and seeks the national flashpoint
Yuan Qinsheng has insisted on teaching and giving lectures for a long time, and has been employed as a special researcher and part-time professor by eight colleges and universities, including Nanjing University, Nanjing University of Political Science of the People's Liberation Army, and Jiangsu Economic Management Cadre College, as well as the Policy Research Office of the Suzhou Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Policy Research Office of the Changshu Municipal Party Committee, and was hired as a political and educational consultant by a certain unit of the People's Liberation Army.
For example, in May 1989, Yuan Qinsheng specifically proposed to Deng Liqun, former secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Central Propaganda Department, that "poverty must be cured at the same time"; In January 2013, just over a month after the conclusion of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Yuan Qinsheng pointed out that the anti-corruption struggle should be combined with "fierce governance" and "stable governance"! These statements have been quoted in various government policy meetings, corporate management meetings, and even policy documents.
In 1992, he became one of the "Top Ten Legends in the Business and Enterprise Circles of Jiangsu Province", and in April 1994, he was jointly awarded the title of "National Outstanding Enterprise Ideological and Political Worker" by the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee, the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, the State Economic and Trade Commission, and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. In 1997, he was awarded the honorary citizen of Albany, the capital of New York State, by the New York State Assembly, and in July 2012, he was awarded the "Meritorious Person for the Rise of China and the Construction of the Republic".
Yuan Qinsheng was awarded the title of National Outstanding Enterprise Ideological and Political Worker
Won the title of civilized pacesetter
Yuan Qinsheng's honorary trajectory has moved from the local to the central government, and from the central to the world.
Many people believe that his uniqueness lies in the fact that since the founding of the People's Republic of China for so long, there is no Chinese entrepreneur and thinker like him who is capable, able to speak, and write, and has a high degree of thinking. However, the employees who are familiar with his leadership and have been taught by him think that it is not appropriate to define his value with the "success theory", and that the success that a thinker wants to achieve must be that his ideas are accepted by society and glorified by history.
In the early years, Yuan Qinsheng once said: "The role of township enterprises is not simply for money, but through the development of township enterprises and the management of industrial enterprises, we should lead the peasants to bid farewell to narrow-mindedness, arduous transformation, and move towards civilization, so as to drive rural families and radiate the entire rural society." At that time, his ideological goal was to improve rural society.
At the International Symposium on Township Enterprises convened by the United Nations Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Yuan Qinsheng made a speech as an observer and expressed his demands for decades: "It is necessary to build China's township enterprises into an important position for prospering the rural economy, cultivating new types of farmers, and improving the overall quality of the Chinese nation." At that time, his ideological goal was to improve the overall quality of the Chinese nation.
In 2023, Yuan Qinsheng began to say his current wish: "I have proposed to the relevant parties how to give full play to the advantages of the mainland system, use the 'three incentives' and 'three self' methods, formulate specific standards and requirements, and accelerate the implementation of the core socialist values at the grassroots level" - this is his current goal, to promote the wheel of the management system with thought!
Advocating the core values of socialism is the highlight of China's "Global Civilization Initiative", and it is a strong support and foundation for achieving high-quality development in countries with large populations and the steady and far-reaching implementation of Chinese-style modernization. On the premise of respecting people's wishes, we should give full play to the institutional advantages with Chinese characteristics, enrich the selection content of civilized units, correct and overcome all formalism in grassroots management, and guide and call on people's consciousness and behavior and ideological cultivation to gradually unify to the hierarchical improvement of core values.
Emerson said, "The most glorious and magnificent undertaking in the world is to make the individual stand up."
The glory of an entrepreneur may be the success of pursuing profits, but the glory of a thinker will definitely pursue the irreplaceable value of thought, the guidance and transcendence of the ideological journey, and the glorious pilgrimage in the history of thought.
Yuan Qinsheng spent his life pursuing the glory of his thoughts: lighting up the brilliance of human nature and helping an era shine; Let the humanistic management idea promote the progress of people in each era, and jointly write and realize the true glory of this era! Let China move from the rise of the spirit to the Chinese dream of the world! (Zhong Wei)