How do you turn your organization into an "efficiency machine"? and the dual challenge of the "efficiency machine".
Sentence | Hōren
This article is the original article of Shangyin Society, please contact the background for reprinting
When reading history, you can gain some interesting perspectives by mirroring historical events in the current business world.
Recently, I read the history of the Warring States Period, which can be regarded as a period of turmoil in which various forces competed fiercely, and it was the Qin State that ended this history.
After accumulating strength for many generations, it took less than 10 years to destroy the Six Kingdoms, and its combat effectiveness and execution are amazing, and it is simply a powerful "efficiency machine".
If you use the knowledge of modern organizational management to dig deep into the origin of the super high efficiency of the Qin State at that time, you will find a lot, such as:
The strategic goals are simple and clear, with six generations focused on one grand strategy;
It has created a centralized flat management structure, and the county system enables Qin's government decrees to reach the bottom of society, and the Qin king can stick a pole to the end with an order, which has a strong social mobilization ability;
In addition, the high-level strategy is the "super brain" in the organization, and the atomized organization individuals obey and execute to the letter, ensuring the organization's strong execution;
In addition, the individuals in the organization are given incentives that exceed expectations, abolishing Shiqing Shilu, rewarding military merits, and increasing officials to knighthood are completely determined by the number of enemies killed, and at the same time, strict punishment and strict law, and frequent sitting;
There was also an incentive for human resources outside the organization, "waste well fields to open up Qianmo", promote private land, and encourage the displaced people from other six countries to reclaim the wasteland, and the reclamation is yours, so the displaced people from the six countries flocked to the Qin State, and the Qin State obtained the extremely valuable "flow" resources at that time.
In fact, this is very reminiscent of Pinduoduo, the "efficiency machine" of the contemporary business world.
Qin Guo and Pinduoduo can't fight each other, but if they are discussed under the proposition of "how to build the organization into an 'efficiency machine'", it will be logical.
Both have achieved extremely high efficiency and execution at a certain stage in different eras, with the former sweeping the Six Nations; The latter has become a pole of giants by squeezing the table of e-commerce giants with a "fixed pattern", known for its "extreme efficiency", and has attracted more widespread attention in the past year due to its substantial growth in performance and market value surpassing that of Alibaba.
Generally, when we talk about an organization, we will analyze its three elements - organizational goals, organizational structure, and organizational personnel, and I will roughly follow this framework below.
Pinduoduo's strategic goal is consumer first, high efficiency, and low price, while Qin's strategic goal is to centralize power and enrich the country and strengthen the army.
Organizational goals do not come out of thin air, they are generated according to the macro external environment and the micro internal environment, which constitute what we often call "potential", and organizational goals are built on the "potential".
Pinduoduo chooses high efficiency and low price as the strategic goal has been interpreted in a large number of articles, in general, in the era of uncertainty, after the judgment will enter the consumption downgrade cycle, and the existing e-commerce giants Ali and Jingdong are engaged in consumption upgrading, there has been a strategic misjudgment, Pinduoduo starts with efficiency and low price, and implements low-end subversion.
Similarly, the Warring States period was a history of fierce killing, fraught with greater uncertainty, and the choice of Qin's strategic goals was deeply rooted in the needs of that era.
In fact, there is nothing new and surprising about the strategic goals of the Qin State, and the other six countries also know that the monarch cannot be left in power, and the competition for territory is to rely on sufficient grain and grass and strong combat power, and even reforms have been carried out for this purpose, such as the Li Kui Reform of Wei, the Zhao Wuling King Hu Fu Cavalry Shooting of Zhao State, the Shen Buxiao Reform Law of South Korea, and the Wu Qi Reform Law of Chu State.
These changes have more or less some shadows of Shang Ying's reforms, such as Li Kui's reforms, which were the first to abolish the Shiqing Shilu system, also rewarded farming, and used the "Book of Laws" written by himself to regulate people's social activities.
When Shang Ying entered the Qin Dynasty, he brought a copy of Li Kui's "Book of Laws", and some of the theoretical basis for Shang Ying's reform came from here.
There is also the "sub-seal" under the military merit system, in fact, as early as the late Spring and Autumn Period, the Jin State had "the lower doctor received the county, and the upper doctor received the county" (at that time, the county was smaller than the county), and the Chu State also had the "Chu Jue" to reward military merits.
It can be said that the Shang Dynasty Reform Law was to select some of the most efficient measures in the reform of various countries in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and carried out combined innovation around its own organizational strategic goals, and resolutely implemented it to the end.
The other six countries also perceived this organizational goal and even reformed in this direction, so why didn't they stick to it?
A very important reason is that the Qin State was too backward and remote at that time.
Yes, for the reform of the law at that time, the extreme backwardness made the Qin State the most unburdened and most suitable country to implement the reform to the end.
From the perspective of the external environment, the Qin State was too backward, and from the Spring and Autumn Period, the Jin in the east and the Chu in the south squeezed the Qin State in the Rongdi region, and there was no room for development at all. Moreover, the Chinese countries regarded the Qin people who were "outside the Five Rings" as Yidi, and did not invite or even allow them to participate in the alliance at that time.
Moreover, the Qin state, located in the hinterland of Guanzhong, could not really connect with the Yellow River, the core logistics channel of the Central Plains, thus forming a relatively independent economic zone, and for the six eastern countries, westward expansion lacked material support. In other words, attacking the Qin State is too cost-effective.
Therefore, even if the Qin State changed the law, it would not be able to attract much attention from the six eastern countries. On the contrary, Wei, Chu, Qi, and Zhao, who had established hegemony one after another, often faced joint strangulation by the international community after becoming powerful or gaining hegemony.
In short, Wei, Chu, Qi, and Zhao were all too closely watched by competitors, and competitors did not allow them to dominate the family, and they would also be deformed by the movements of their families, and they should have recuperated, but they spent national strength to fight.
And from the inside, the aristocracy of the Qin State was the weakest. The nobles of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the titles were hereditary, the mining was private, and the monarch could not do anything about them, and they could even cause civil strife, such as the Tian dynasty of Qi, the division of the three families, and the division of the Chu State.
The remote and backward aristocratic class of the Qin State was not strong, and before the Shang Dynasty changed the law, they almost killed each other in various changes, leaving a large amount of land, which became a public land that could be controlled by the monarch.
For Wei, Chu, Qi, and Zhao, the aristocratic class formed under the feudal system was the basis for them to maintain the system of governance, such as the Qi State achieved the status of the co-lord of the world during the period of Qi Huan, "Jiuhe princes, one Kuang Tianxia", that is, the status obtained by the majority of nobles, and they would not rashly move the knife against the aristocracy.
In terms of modern organizational management, Wei, Chu, Qi, Zhao and other major countries have all fallen into their own value nets.
The "value network" means that the mindset of an organization is determined by the experience accumulated by the organization and external customers, competitors, suppliers, etc. This is the source of the organization's strength, but it is also like a big net that binds the organization's thinking.
Not only do the great powers keep a close eye on their opponents' movements, fighting at every turn, and consuming their own national strength to balance their opponents, but they also try to rely on old ideologies and organizational forms to solve new problems, which makes them constantly problematic.
For example, the State of Qi initially fought with the State of Wei, and then took advantage of the internal strife in Yan to attack the State of Yan, and later united with Han and Wei to attack the State of Chu and the State of Qin, attacking from all sides, and finally ended up with the end of the Five Kingdoms to attack Qi.
In fact, the state of Qi did not intend to occupy or rule more territory in many cases, but was only confined to the idea of hegemony in the Spring and Autumn Period, just trying to convince others and make other countries recognize its status as the "co-lord of the world". On the contrary, as a result, its military and diplomatic affairs are never following the same line, but its strategic objectives are vague.
Compared with the Qi State, the Chu State had the willingness to expand its territory, and it had been expanding in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, but there were serious problems in governance after the scale expansion.
Because the state of Chu did not change the organizational form of the period in a timely manner, it still followed the original idea of dividing the feudal system, and too many feudal divisions weakened the direct power of the king of Chu.
After Wu Qi implemented the reform in the Chu State, he imposed some restrictions on the power of the nobles of the Chu State, and the national strength of the Chu State was restored, but after the death of the King of Chu Mourning, the powerful aristocratic forces immediately rebelled and shot Wu Qi. Since then, the state of Chu has hardly expanded again, and has been digesting too vast a territory.
Therefore, the Qin State, which was not bound by the value network and traveled lightly, had a certain "heavenly time" factor at the beginning.
Similarly, when Pinduoduo started from the sinking market, Ali and JD.com had already occupied most of the e-commerce industry, and many people in the industry tended to believe that the competition in the e-commerce track had settled.
Ali and JD.com are keeping an eye on each other's dynamics, making great progress all the way, betting on consumption upgrades, because compared with white-label and unlicensed products, brands can bring more GMV and higher profit margins to e-commerce platforms, and low-end products are not strategically cost-effective for them.
And even if they agree with the value of the sinking market, and also agree with the e-commerce principles such as high efficiency and low price, but for the new rise of Pinduoduo, the two giants did not pay much attention, and even thought that it was "the strange and obscene skills of the traffic side", until Pinduoduo grew stronger, and the two giants only came up with the superficial products Taote and Jingxi to meet the battle, which gave Pinduoduo the opportunity to rise.
When it was found that the trend of consumption downgrade was becoming more and more obvious, and Pinduoduo became a real threat, the giants really wanted to change, but found that the huge organization with a scale of hundreds of thousands of people was difficult to form effective management, the human efficiency was getting lower and lower, and the internal interest groups were all over the place, and the original ideology and organizational form could no longer solve new problems.
In addition, similar to the Shang Yang Reform Law, Pinduoduo's low-price measures are not too original, and many of them are also used to combine the measures of other companies around the goal, and then carry out more extreme testing and selection.
History is always strikingly similar.
It can be seen that when the times are full of uncertainty or in the face of major changes, it has entered a certain stage of "reverse elimination": it is not who does bigger, more and more advanced, but who is more resolute and accurate to reach the goal, and who makes the least mistakes, who can have the last laugh.
From the perspective of organizational structure, both Qin and Pinduoduo adopted a centralized and flat management structure, which is extremely mobilizing and executive.
One of the important measures of the Shang Dynasty reform is to "abolish the division of seals and carry out counties and counties". The sub-feudal system of the Zhou Dynasty was that the Son of Heaven divided the princes, and the princes divided the princes, and the Qing doctors had the right to govern their own territory (caiyi), and the princes could not intervene, and the subjects of the caiyi were only loyal to the princes, not necessarily the princes (monarchs), so the efficiency and execution of such a structure could not be talked about.
After the Shang Dynasty changed the law, regardless of the lineage of military merits, the dignity and humility and titles were re-determined according to the size of the military merits. Moreover, even if he is a knight, he only has financial power over his fiefdom, and has no governing power, that is, he can only collect taxes.
The subjects who had belonged to the nobility were reorganized and placed under the administration of the magistrates appointed by the emperor, and became the households directly under the monarch.
Therefore, King Qin can stick a pole into the end with an order.
However, the centralized flat structure relies heavily on "rule by man", which is matched by the fact that the top decision-makers act as "super brains" to formulate strategies and point out directions, while the people at the bottom are separated from all organizations, and as atomized individuals, they do not need to have much insight, eliminate all external interference, and are highly subordinate to the leaders at the top.
When Shang Ying first saw Qin Xiaogong, he said something like this:
"And the husband has the deeds of a master, and the fixed view is not in the world; Those who have sole knowledge will see the people. The fool is dark in success, and the knower is in the unbudding. The people should not start with worries, but they can be happy. Those who are virtuous are not in harmony with the vulgar, and those who have achieved great achievements are not sought by the public. ”
In fact, it means that ordinary people are accustomed to the way of life they are accustomed to, and the opinions of experts and scholars are often confined to the narrow field of knowledge of their own specialty. These two kinds of people, teach them to be in their position, follow the rules, and deal with stereotypical affairs, and are superior candidates. However, we should not discuss with them the general plan and political policies. Wise people point out the direction, and ordinary people practice execution.
Therefore, Shang Ying believed that the "foolish people" who did not study, had no culture, were simple in farming, and abided by the law were the best management objects.
Pinduoduo's company hierarchy only includes first-level supervisors, second-level supervisors, team leaders, and employees. According to LatePost, the work status of its grassroots employees is like an atom, the information authority obtained is very small, the work indicators are dismantled very finely, and the implementation revolves around one or two indicators. Pinduoduo uses flower names for all members of the communication, and they don't even know their real names and genders.
Pinduoduo is screening pragmatic, efficient, and high-execution personnel who are suitable for the organization from the interview process, and some personal freedom can be sacrificed in order to make money, and only those who can accept high pressure and absolute obedience can stay.
Even if the leader makes a certain decision and needs to transfer someone from the Shanghai headquarters to open up business in other provinces, this person will quickly obey the arrangement and move to other provinces to do work that he was not familiar with before, and there are not a few people like this in Pinduoduo.
In fact, the "efficiency machine" is not only "atomized" human resources, almost all resources will be dismantled to the smallest detail, atomized calls and combinations, in order to maximize efficiency.
For example, in the Qin State, there was already a very fine "digital management", there were 12 assessment indicators for raising livestock, and even the prisoners were divided into 26 grades, and the rations of each grade had slight differences. Each person is also quantified as a part of the state apparatus in order to be called upon as human resources.
Even the operations of the Qin army have been dismantled minimally, and any person only needs half an hour of training to become a loader in the heavy crossbow soldiers of the Qin army, using the strength of the waist and legs to pull the bow of the heavy crossbow apart, load the arrows, and then hand it over to the shooter to fire. And the shooter is specifically responsible for aiming and firing.
In contrast, to become a member of the cavalry and archery team of King Wuling of Zhao Wuling, you must first learn to ride a horse, at least 3 months, and then learn to draw a bow for 3 months, and then count the forage and grain consumed by training for half a year, which is quite much more expensive and efficient than that of the Qin State, and it is difficult to replicate it on a large scale.
Pinduoduo has also carried out atomic dismantling of platform merchants, and the crown stores and flagship stores of Taobao have become SKUs that blur stores and brands in Pinduoduo, and the amount of traffic obtained by merchants' products is purely judged by price, which is tantamount to a "abolition of the Shiqing Shilu and the military merit system" for stores and brands.
But this also means that the dismantled stores and brands not only lose their pricing power, but also lose their ability to compete with the platform. In addition, merchants are also strongly controlled by the platform, and the platform even launches the "automatic price follow-up" function, which lowers the price of merchants' goods at any time to maintain the lowest price.
The competitive resources of merchants as a platform are atomically cut, and then refined operations are carried out in order to efficiently call for a tragic attack.
In addition, in terms of rewards and punishments for people, the "efficiency machine" gives incentives and punishments that far exceed individual expectations.
The state of Qin is holding a military medal in one hand and a mace in the other, and the richness of the reward and the strictness of the law do not need to be repeated. Qin Law encouraged neighbors to denounce each other, but it did not say that evidence was needed, and there was not even a law to sanction false accusations, so that Shang Ying was finally framed for rebellion and had no right to defend himself, and his words were not clear.
It's a bit like a "refund only" feature, which doesn't require much evidence and doesn't give the merchant any chance of explanation.
This kind of reward and punishment method actually has rules to follow in management. In 1957, the American psychologist McGregor proposed in the article "The Human Aspect of the Enterprise" that human nature is lazy and averse to work, and the vast majority of people have no ambition and lack of initiative. The only way to do this is through economic gain as the main incentive and a harsh system of punishment.
It assumes that "human nature is inherently evil" and therefore believes that the most efficient way is to "carrot and stick".
In fact, the third way in addition to coercion and inducement is faith, which assumes that people have a part of good intentions and can be constantly stimulated, but it is very inefficient to stimulate people's goodwill by means of values and cultural output, so it is generally abandoned by "efficient machine organizations".
Why did the Great Qin Empire die?
I've seen a lot of explanations, such as the idea that the Qin model was actually a "planned economy" model that only applied to wartime situations. Moreover, with the end of the war and the expansion of the scope of domination, the amount and complexity of information increased explosively, which was not handled by the technical conditions at that time, and even the most brilliant super brain would be paralyzed.
And it was precisely the various free games and loose organizations that could deal with the diversity and complexity of the economy and society, and the competition between organizations was the organizational basis for the efficient operation of the economy, and the Qin state precisely eliminated all kinds of organizations, and eliminated the vitality and potential of social development, so it led to the collapse.
Some people also believe that even if the Qin State won the war, it still neglected the "inefficient" social moral construction and cultural construction.
There are also various explanations, not all of which are described. But this shows that we usually think that ultra-high efficiency or even extreme efficiency is not completely a good thing, everything has its two sides, the organization is the result of various factors playing and balancing with each other, and any one of these factors will bring certain consequences.
For example, there is a game relationship between efficiency and fairness.
Economics believes that efficiency is only relative to those who participate in the decision, for example, two people to consider the profit maximization of our business, as long as these two people can reach an agreement to achieve the Pareto optimal of the interests between the two of them, it is an efficient solution, if the other people are not involved in the decision-making process, the efficiency of the decision may not reflect their interests.
The ultimate efficiency of Pinduoduo is not the efficiency of the merchant, if the merchant deteriorates the quality of the product because of fierce bidding, it will not be the efficiency of the consumer, it will only be the efficiency of Pinduoduo; Manner Coffee wants to maximize profits with the least number of people, and if the staff is under too much pressure and has a fierce conflict with customers, it is not the efficiency of employees and customers, but the efficiency of Manner.
In addition, there is also a game relationship between efficiency and sustainable development.
A company must improve efficiency in order to adapt to the environment of the here and now, in order to survive and develop; But the more efficient it is and the better it adapts to the here and now, the less resilient it is to future environmental changes, and the worse it is to adapt in the long run.
For example, before Ali and JD.com's consumption upgrades, they regarded big brands as the ultimate, in fact, for more GMV, the efficiency of revenue, and the sinking market and consumption downgrade were despised by both as "inefficient" sections, thus losing the opportunity to explore more possibilities.
These are the challenges that high-performance organizations must face when they reach a certain stage of development.