How to tap into the traditional culture of enterprises

Tapping into the traditional culture of enterprises can start from the following aspects.

First of all, the general principles of our traditional culture are still applicable now. For example, our ancient Confucianism and Legalism on the governance of society's general proposition, one is "virtue", one is "law". Compared with foreign countries, we in China also have an additional element of "propriety", with Confucius emphasizing the principle of "restoring propriety to oneself". "Virtue" focuses on self-discipline, while "law" emphasizes other-discipline. These three important concepts of traditional Chinese culture, namely "virtue", "law" and "rites", are still the general rules of governance in today's society. For modern enterprises, these three concepts should be used as the coordinates for corporate culture innovation. "Virtue" is the philosophy and values of your enterprise, and "law" is the system of your enterprise. Another thing that should be emphasized is "propriety". Today, some enterprises pay attention to the system, but do not pay attention to the formation of a good habit of the employees, "ritual" is a habitual system, not a hard system. "Ritual" is a dimension that is lacking in some of our enterprises' corporate culture construction.

On the surface, "etiquette" is not a kind of hard constraint, in fact, its influence on people's behavior is very far-reaching. Traditional culture cannot tell us specifically how to build corporate culture in modern enterprises, but we can find the basic idea of corporate culture construction and innovation from traditional culture. From the "virtue", "law", "rites" of these three concepts, these three words are very simple, but if their deep connotation and spirit of a thorough understanding, you can use them as a Coordinates to find out what I lack in this enterprise, is the lack of "virtue"? Is it the lack of "law"? Or is it the lack of "etiquette"?

On the relationship between traditional culture and modernity, we can also use those great ideas in traditional culture to examine the problems of modern society. For example, our traditional culture of "unity of heaven and mankind" concept is to emphasize the harmony and unity of man and nature, which for our modern society, whether it is to engage in the economy, or to engage in business, are very guiding significance. Western countries previously engaged in industrialization, did not take into account the protection of the natural environment, took a detour, industrial development is very fast, but the natural environment has been destroyed. People can not bear this evil consequence, and now especially emphasize the protection of the environment and return to nature. From this point of view, some of the concepts in our traditional culture have modern significance, the key lies in how we implement it into the practice of modern society, the implementation of corporate culture at the operational level.

We can use some of the concepts of traditional culture to solve some complex problems in modern enterprises. For example, modern large and very large enterprises have a common management problem, which is the so-called "big business disease": the organization is too large, the affairs are too complicated, the decision-making is not flexible, and the response is slow. It is necessary to study how to solve this problem. The business community in Western countries and the theoretical community also put forward a lot of solutions, such as flattening and so on.

Zhang Ruimin said: "in business management can be good use of traditional Chinese culture is good, "University" in the "three outlines and eight purposes," the three outlines is 'Mingde', 'pro-people', 'pro-people', 'pro-people', 'pro-people', 'pro-people', 'pro-people', 'pro-people'. 'Pro-people', 'to the highest good'. Ming Ming De' means that I, as the head of the company, should set a good example, and the interpersonal relationship of the whole team should be transparent; and 'Pro-people' means that every employee, i.e., the SBU, is able to innovate; and 'To the best of the best' is embodied in our company's 'Three Principles and Eight Objects'. ' is embodied in the spirit of our business - the pursuit of excellence."

People and Harmony, Material Harmony, Profit and Harmony, Reason and Harmony

In reality, China's corporate culture should be a fusion form of culture. That is to say, the enterprise culture is the combination of the concepts of our traditional culture with the western enterprise culture and western management experience.

Ai Feng introduced us to the experience of one of China's mega steel enterprises.

This company combines Western corporate management with traditional Chinese culture, emphasizing the word "peace" in its corporate culture. They also believe that corporate management should be strengthened, but the key lies in what concepts are used to strengthen management. They put forward the concepts of "harmony of people, things, profits, and reason" in their corporate culture.

The first one is "people and", they believe that the highest state of enterprise management is to realize "people and". In many enterprises in the country are practicing "staff reduction and efficiency", they did not reduce staff. Of course, reducing the number of employees can reduce costs, but also to a certain extent to increase efficiency. However, they are a mega iron and steel enterprise, is a steel city, employees laid off after no place to find a job. So, they are not in the reduction of staff to do work, but in the expansion of business, increase jobs on the brain, think of ways. It is not "reduce staff to increase efficiency", but "increase things to increase efficiency". From the point of view of realizing "human harmony", it is better to "increase things to increase efficiency" than to "reduce staff to increase efficiency". Reduction of staff not only involves the employees who have been reduced, but also involves their families. No staff reduction, realize the "people and", the formation of a good working atmosphere, more conducive to increase efficiency.

The iron and steel enterprises are resource-consuming, in the production process will also produce some waste. In this regard, they put forward the concept of "things and". They believe that the so-called "waste" is a misplaced resource. So they utilized waste water, waste gas, waste heat and waste materials and turned them into new products. By combining the traditional cultural concept of "harmony" with the modern concepts of "resources" and "environmental protection", they have solved the pollution problem and created new benefits.

The third is "Lihe", the core value of their corporate culture is "Relatable, Trustworthy, ***Creative, ***Winning". They advocate that from the upstream suppliers to the downstream customers, from the country, society to the community, in short, to let all parties concerned feel that they are this enterprise can be relatable, trustworthy, to let all parties concerned and they together *** win, *** with the benefits. Take their relationship with suppliers as an example, their production of high-quality ore required mainly imported from abroad, some years ago, the steel industry recession, foreign ore is difficult to sell, but they still maintain the legitimate interests of foreign ore suppliers, abide by the contract. Later, when the steel industry prospered and the demand for good foreign ores exceeded the supply, the foreign ore suppliers were the first to guarantee the supply of them at a reasonable price. The foreign ore suppliers said: "In the past, you took care of our interests, now we should take care of your interests, we are a long-term cooperative partnership." That's "profit and harmony".

The corporate culture of this steel company is based on the traditional culture of China, but with the integration of modern western advanced management methods and corporate culture, such as the modern advanced management methods promoted by the National Enterprise Confederation of China, which they are also learning and applying.