What caused some enterprises to be eliminated?

In the Internet age, all industries are facing the risk of being redefined and reshuffled.

Six years ago, the most commonly used word was "change" to describe the enterprise environment. A simple word "change" can already sum up everything that happened.

However, three years ago, our key word was "uncertainty", because there were many multidimensional, complex and unpredictable events, which far exceeded the concept of "change".

Only one year later, the keyword was adjusted to "digital age", because a change far beyond everything suddenly appeared: everything was speeding up.

First of all, the speed of technology popularization has accelerated. For example, the telephone penetration rate rose from 10% to 40%, which took 39 years. However, it took only six years from the phone to the mobile phone, and it took only three years to get to the smart phone. Huawei announced the news of smartphones a while ago. I wonder if the speed of popularization will be completed within two years. In terms of user aggregation, the speed-up is more obvious: it took 10 years for QQ to gather 500 million users, while it took only 3.5 years for WeChat to achieve the same goal.

Second, industry adjustment has accelerated. JD.COM and Taobao have formed a comparative advantage over the traditional retail industry, which took 10 years. However, it took only three years for Didi and Uber to form a subversive advantage over traditional industries.

Why are some enterprises doing well or being eliminated?

One is the life cycle of the organization. We used to say that it would take about forty or fifty years to be a brand. But now you want to be a brand. If it is done well, it may be done in two or three years.

Second, the life cycle of products and services will become very fast. For example, I am not particularly willing to change my mobile phone, which is very troublesome. But I have to change now, because the mobile phone has become the carrier connecting everything. If I don't change it, I will be cut off from all contact.

Third, because the life cycle of products and services has been adjusted, the time window left for enterprises to compete for customers has become very short. This objective situation makes it necessary for enterprises to update their products frequently. When a new product comes out, enterprises have little time to compete for customers' attention, because similar products will soon flock to them.

The hardest thing for an enterprise is to be eliminated after doing very well. What is the reason? Because a person who has never been in this industry has transferred to this industry. In this case, enterprises are facing a great challenge, that is, a new element called "redefinition" has appeared in all industries today. In fact, the original industry can be based on linear forecasting. Later, it was found that some enterprises developed faster. We also call it "exponential growth", so there is Exponential Organizations theory. But now these two theories are not enough. Today's growth has been broken, completely interrupting the industry and taking away all the original growth of the enterprise.

To give a simple example, the new retail industry that is in full swing now is that people who have never done it before are doing retail, such as Alibaba, Tencent and JD.COM. In this context, the rules of the entire retail industry have been subverted.

People who do retail business know very well that traditional retail, value creation and value acquisition all depend on three things: people, goods and market. In other words, you must go to a place where people live, you must have all the goods, and you must have a shop. As long as you have the above three elements, you will basically succeed. So the core of retail is site selection, site selection and site selection again. As long as the location is right, this store is basically no problem.

New retail simply does not follow the above three rules. New retail doesn't need people and venues, just logistics, delivery and offline access. The new retail is about how to deliver goods to your door. So it doesn't consider whether there is a store. If there is, it should be an experience center.

Today, all the new retail, the most discussed is logistics distribution. The rules of the game in the whole retail industry have been subverted. If traditional retail enterprises are not aware of this change, they are likely to be eliminated, and the reasons are not clear.

What will control you, endless "uncertainty"

As an organization, an enterprise must have the ability of "changing and unchanging" to deal with uncertainty.

All industries are being redefined, and every industry may be subverted. As an organization, an enterprise must have the ability of "changing and unchanging" to deal with uncertainty.

First, activate everyone's potential and let the organization grow.

In today's organizational management, the most important thing is whether the individual strength of employees can be released, not how strong their control ability is.

Like what is empowerment? The company gives employees a position, a position that employees are willing to do, which is equivalent to a performance stage. With this opportunity, employees can release energy.

Once I went to an enterprise, an employee handed me a business card with the words "chief employee" written on it, and I immediately admired it. After the enterprise establishes the position of "chief employee" for this employee, this person can be an employee with peace of mind and will not consider other things. But our traditional enterprise won't even give a vice president or even a supervisor, and finally give you an assistant position. The consequence of this is that people will not feel anything, because such authorized employees are not willing to do it at all.

The management of traditional enterprises is very concerned about whether there is anyone to help employees, so we often see that leaders, like parents, always feel that it is more important to have someone to "protect" employees. However, with the deepening of the "authorization" process, the focus of this traditional management method will slowly shift to the self-management of employees, which will be a great change.

Secondly, it has discontinuous, unpredictable and nonlinear thinking.

Enterprises must develop a mode of thinking, that is, decide the present with the future, rather than looking at the future with the present. Enterprises must look back from the future to the present before they know whether what they do today can lead them to the future. If we can train this way of thinking, we can ensure that everyone can really cope with change constantly.

The most important requirement of this change is to change your life, which is the most difficult, but it must be done. What is the difficulty in changing your life? One is to break through your own way of thinking, the other is to get rid of past experiences, and the third is to overcome yourself.

I once took a company for a complete transformation. I require organizational transformation and business transformation at the same time, and I limit myself to three years. I made three major organizational changes, and all my colleagues were miserable. Even because of the change, our profits have fallen, which is something to bear. By the time of the fourth change, my colleagues were used to it, and then they asked me when the fifth change would come.

Therefore, if an organization forms the habit of accepting change, it will think that change is normal and will regard change as a part of organizational culture. The most important thing is whether the organization can develop the habit of self-change and take the initiative to accept change.

Third, tap the synergy of internal management.

The traditional management mode is decentralization, profit sharing and division of labor. But after dividing these things today, the efficiency of the enterprise may not be very high, because the performance of the organization is determined by the outside, not by the inside. After the enterprise divides everything, a cross-border person outside can kill you. What we are talking about now is to ensure the efficiency of coordination, which is a great adjustment. Enterprise executives should communicate with different people and not always stay inside the organization. If executives spend 90% of their time in the enterprise, this situation is still very worrying, and communication channels must be expanded.

I said "change" above, but there will always be "unchanged".

First, for business people, the only constant is customer value. As we said before, the only person who can fire everyone is the customer. Many people say that enterprises are eliminated by the times and technology, but it is customers who really eliminate us. This has nothing to do with technology, times, peers and cross-border, but your customers don't want you.

Jobs was quoted a lot, but what really touched me was one sentence. He said that we must start with customers and then go back to technology. This is the real product research. You start with the customer, and then go back to the technology. This is the real product development. If it is not such logic, you are not doing product research and development, and I quite agree with this view.

Second, under the premise of uncertain environment, the only certainty is yourself. We deal with change because we have the ability to deal with it ourselves.

Third, the only choice for enterprises is actually action. Everyone may know that I once had a point: there is no distance between ideal and reality. Why is there no distance? You just need to act between ideal and reality. As long as you put down your actions, you will be able to move from reality to ideal. If your ideal is not realized, it must be because you have not put down your actions or your actions are not persistent enough.

So I have three things to determine, one is customer value, the other is myself, and the third is action, so the key is to challenge myself.

There is a view that the change of enterprises may involve the adjustment of the whole organization and the division of power, and may encounter some resistance. The adjustment of organizational processes also requires enterprises to pay some corresponding economic costs. How to find a balance between change and invariance?

From xinhuanet.