Chinese Application Of "Weak Management"

Managers are not always strong.

Although managers have more power than subordinates, these powers are often subject to many restrictions and restrictions.

On the surface,

Weak managers can actually be seen everywhere.

For example, you are a "airborne".

Resistance may come from all sides.

Maybe because he is a relative of a senior executive, maybe he has many dead friends in the team, and maybe even he is the boss who sent you to supervise your "secret agent".

Again, you are a "star cadre" who has been promoted and promoted.

But you will soon find that some of the older subordinates do not put you in the eye. You are polite to them, and they will play the opposite role. If you are angry with them, they will do it openly.

The traditional idea is that the problem lies on these managers.

Therefore, a series of paramilitary measures, such as strengthening education, refining the system, improving supervision, and strictly controlling heavy penalties, will not be ideal.

Many managers almost invariably find that the "routines" in Western textbooks or the "successful experience" of the top 500 enterprises are actually difficult to solve the problems and difficulties they face in reality.

Even more dangerous is that when managers continue to step up efforts to implement these "high pressure" means, sometimes they will be subjected to fierce resistance from managers, or even serious retaliation.

The position of the light is not guaranteed and the development of the enterprise is backward.

In fact, from a different perspective, the answer will become simpler.

We must shift the focus of attention from the managers to the managers. Since managers have strong and weak points, the way of management should of course be different from "high" and "low".

The so-called "low pressure" is a kind of contingency means adopted by managers who are not strong enough in power to achieve good management results, which I call "weak management".

Why do we need "weak management"?

Why should we adopt "weak management"?

This is because many managers themselves have "congenital deficiency".

There are three sources of power for managers: succession, election and appointment.

The supreme administrator of the feudal dynasty was mainly inherited from power; the president and the Parliamentarians of the western society came from the election; in today's enterprises, most of the power of the management comes from appointments.

At this point, you must be clear: your power comes from superiors, superiors can authorize you, or you can always take power back.

For example, if you fail to achieve an ideal sales performance, or because your "high pressure" makes marketing team lax, then you may become a victim of "indignation" for enterprises.

In this case, you have to balance all kinds of relationships. The management methods can not be single minded, and can not go straight.

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The standard of judgement comes from "strong management" or "weak management".

Generally speaking, managers have five kinds of power.

In enterprises, if you find that you have a lot of shortcomings in these aspects, it is almost inevitable to adopt "weak management".

First of all, the right to control resources: organization adjustment, cost input, direction of personnel use, and product pricing. Do you have enough voice?

Secondly, the right to reward and punishment: according to the performance of the work, reward and punishment for the promotion of subordinates, do you have the right of suggestion or decision-making power, is it really the right thing to say?

Again, the right to information: do you know more about industry information, enterprise information and competitive information than others? Do you become the pooling point of information exchange?

Third, professional power: how well do you know about marketing, management knowledge and methods? Are your professional skills excellent enough to have a generally accepted expert level?

Finally, the right to personality: do you have the ability to take the lead in doing things, to give credit to yourself, to care for your subordinates' hardships? Do you have the unique charm and centripetal force on your personality?

Needless to say, many managers are more or less deficient in these aspects, which indirectly proves that "weak management" is more common in reality.

How to carry out "weak management"?

Disadvantaged management needs to deal with four relationships, which seem to be "low", but sometimes better than "high-pressure means".

First, absolute and relative relations.

There is a marketing manager who has just landed in a private enterprise. The most troublesome thing is that when the meeting is held, the subordinates are always late, sparsely and poorly organized.

After repeated orders, he took strong management measures.

Write a review, pay a salary, or even stipulate a direct elimination of three times in a row.

But in fact, the root is not workable.

Among the many latecomers, there are both "sales champion" and "entrepreneurial elder", and even the boss's brother-in-law.

These people unite to sue and rebel and end up with nothing.

This makes him very upset, internal meetings, people can not get together, how can the market battle win?

The solution is actually very simple, that is, it does not use absolute indicators to manage, and adopts relative indicators.

At nine o'clock, there was a few minutes late and even one hour late.

But no matter how many people are late, they only start with the last one.

At this time, managers and managers are one-on-one, and the managers give full play to their own rights, though they are weak, but after all, they are superiors, and how to punish them in reason.

After narrowing down the attack area, other latecomers will not be concerned about themselves. They will not be able to see the phenomenon of Baotuan resistance management.

Everyone is afraid of being the last one.

A few times, the last one from an hour late to ten minutes late, and eventually everyone arrived on time.

This method is also applicable to channel management.

Those enterprises whose brand influence is not big enough, their technological strength is not strong enough, and the network construction is not perfect enough, they should adopt more relative indicators to manage the channels.

"Other dealers can do it, why can't you do it?" -- this way of "using the rule of the sovereign" is more effective, and if we set the absolute index of "should be so", it sometimes means forcing many channels to compete with ourselves.

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Two, the relationship between process and result.

As mentioned earlier, a weak manager must have some deficiencies in his power structure, such as the lack of comprehensive information of managers or the lack of personal ability of managers.

At this time, we should strengthen the research, fully empower, give play to the strengths of subordinates, pressure the good and bad assessment on subordinates, and let the department deal with subordinates.

Instead of making decisions on everything, let everyone deal with you.

A typical example is the misunderstanding of "three fires".

Throughout the ages, new officers who easily "ignited" tend to be mediocre persons.

If a smart official comes to a new position, he may listen more, think more and learn more. He will not jump to conclusions, make decisions and carry out reforms.

There are three reasons:

1., being unfamiliar with the situation will lead to the lack of basic information, and managers with the ability again are apt to commit low-level mistakes at this time.

2., without careful consideration, decisions can be easily changed, which will damage their image and create a bad first impression.

3. blind reform is easy to break the original balance and unintentionally hurt the vested interests, resulting in insurmountable resistance to reform.

Under normal circumstances, most of the new officers will have a "Internship" period, during which no one has asked you to make big achievements, but there must be no serious mistakes.

Eager to make achievements, they gave up rare research opportunities, exposing their unprofessional weaknesses and damaging their prestige and team confidence.

Even after the investigation stage, reform can not seek the whole picture quickly, but only to think clearly and not to change things. This is the basic principle of the new official appointment.

For those managers who are not strong enough, the information is not enough, and the professional level is not high enough, the subordinates should use the result indicators as much as possible.

"Do not talk about difficulties or hard work, I only recognize sales performance". This kind of "govern by doing nothing" is more effective, and if everything intervenes in the process, it must reflect "leadership authority".

Three, the relationship between Legalists and Confucianism.

An important feature of Legalist management is "ruthless law".

This is sometimes hard for Chinese enterprises to really achieve.

Companies that adopt legalist management are highly rigid, but managers can easily become the focus of conflict.

Confucian management is represented by three principles and five virtues. It stresses benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom, and faith. It stresses "no punishment to the doctor", and more embodies the affection outside the law, or even more than the law.

The combination of Legalists and Confucianism makes the management easier, which is especially important for the disadvantaged managers.

Let me give you an example.

An enterprise has been strict attendance, but one day, snowstorm, almost everyone is late. At this time, as a newly arrived business executive, what should you do?

The way of Legalists is "no excuses". Everything is done according to the rules of the system, and how much punishment should be fined. First, we should start with administrative cadres and double penalties.

The practice of Confucianism is "no more than one example". Who can do the master of heaven? Everyone does not have the intention to come late.

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In the former way, only the law has no feelings, although the employees are alert, it is unavoidable that they resent their hearts, and then they have "revenge" in other jobs.

In the latter way, only the love is not law, the long run, the system is nominal, and the value of management can not be reflected.

The way that the enterprise takes is that the boss himself goes out to the front door to greet all the staff, shake hands with the staff and brush off their snowflakes.

When I return to my office, I convene a meeting of department managers and criticize my subordinates. "The company system must not be abolished. Next time, the knives and knives must arrive on time."

We can see that this appearance of Confucian internal legalist management is more suitable for the current situation of Chinese enterprises.

This pattern has long been known as the "Yang - Confucianism - Yin Law" or "Confucianism - table law".

Usually, when the manager is in a weak state, the foundation of his own power is not enough. At this time, "act according to the rules" will fall into the awkward situation that is only good at the country, but not good at the body. Finally, "death and the state go out".

Managers should not only learn to "set rules" but also learn how to break rules. If the management system is well established, what should managers do?

The other side of the foreign party has sharp edges and corners, which is the management method that strong managers are qualified to use.

For the disadvantaged managers, the inner circle is an effective measure.

Four, the relationship between dictatorship and democracy.

There is a saying in "Sun Tzu's art of war": "listen to my plan, use it to win, leave it; will not listen to my plan, use it will fail, go away", meaning that obedient subordinates will stay behind, disobedient let them pack up and leave.

This is the practice of a typical strong manager. It is a dictatorial dictatorship.

But in reality, I believe that many managers also have excellent military capability and excellent level of actual combat.

Therefore, managers must seek a balance between dictatorship and democracy.

For weak managers, their leadership style should be more democratic rather than autocratic.

Managers generally have the following modes of decision making:

1. leaders make direct decisions and announce them to subordinates.

2. leaders make major decisions and sell them to subordinates.

3. leaders listen to subordinates' opinions and make decisions.

4. leaders make preliminary decisions and allow subordinates to make changes.

5. the leader puts forward specific requirements to authorize subordinates to make collective decisions.

6. the leader puts forward the target requirement and empowers the subordinates to make their own decisions.

We can see that in the above way, the closer we are to the dictatorship, the closer we are to democracy.

For those powerful managers, their horizons, abilities, qualifications and levels far exceed the average level of their subordinates. Proper dictatorship is not a bad thing, it not only improves the speed of decision-making, but also avoids the team going through many detours.

The weak managers do not have the advantages of the former, or these advantages are not prominent and lack enough prestige. At the same time, it may be more appropriate to adopt the following decision styles.

In those days, Liu Bangzhan, the White Snake uprising, together with Xiao He, Cao Can and others actually had the qualification to be the top leader, but because Liu Bang was bold and bold, he was the leader.

Because the power base is not solid enough, Liu Bang has followed the "weak management" for quite a long time, making joint decisions with Zhang Liang, Chen Ping, Xiao He, Han Xin, and Shu sun Tong, and promoting democracy, which has achieved some royal foundation.

As a manager, can we also get useful enlightenment from it?