Yang Wangcheng: I think what kind of scholars should look at an enterprise from the perspective of scholars. Different scholars actually have different angles, mainly because he has his academic background. Generally speaking, economists look at enterprises, management scientists look at enterprises, sociologists look at enterprises, cultural scientists look at enterprises, and political scientists look at enterprises. Different people may see different things when they look at the enterprise.
As a management scientist, he mainly looks at the management of enterprises, which is also the most mainstream way at present. He regards management as a mechanism or a function, which plays a leading role in the operation of the whole enterprise. Therefore, the growth, rise and fall and size of an enterprise are closely related to the soundness and health of its management functions.
Therefore, management scientists tirelessly explore what a sound management function is like. How does it work? The knowledge learned from it is in turn fed back into practice. Enterprise managers regard these things as theoretical weapons to construct their own management thinking mode. This mode of thinking is that he processes all kinds of information related to the enterprise and then transforms it into management decisions.
This (scholar) perspective is divided into many small and secondary perspectives. For example, when it comes to strategy, strategic management scholars emphasize that strategy plays a decisive role in management mechanism. So they think that strategy creates value, which is greater than tactics and details.
If he is a scholar of organization theory, he emphasizes the establishment of enterprise organization, the process of organization operation and the influence of organizational culture on enterprises. On the one hand, organization includes how to organize the decision-making process and what kind of people should participate. What kind of person makes decisions according to what process, he may consider these issues.
If there are scholars in human resource management, financial management and operation management in various functional departments, and they are divided into many small fields, the operating mechanism of enterprises and enterprises they see is very different.
However, * * * has one characteristic. As a scholar, when he went to see an enterprise, he tried to find some universal and regular things from one case to another. A scholar is seeking truth, but he does not seek the truth of a single enterprise, but finds something universal in a single enterprise case.
Therefore, entrepreneurs, I think more, look at other enterprises, push to their own enterprises, and look at their own situation as far as their own enterprises are concerned. He is not seeking universal truth. On the other hand, he wants to be specific about how to improve and operate the case. This is the first difference between them. Scholars' perspective is from individual to universal, and entrepreneurs' perspective is from universal to individual.
What about entrepreneurs? He always faces the future. What will tomorrow be like? How about the day after tomorrow? Facing the future, we should think, find and solve problems. So he is a future-oriented person, always looking forward, and what happened in the past can be used for reference in the future.
As an entrepreneur, he is not satisfied with the status quo. He always wants to change the status quo and make tomorrow's enterprises more progressive and better than today. This is the second major difference between the perspective of scholars and the perspective of entrepreneurs.
As an entrepreneur, he is not dealing with certainty. He has solved uncertainty through structured solutions, including procedures and rules. He is more focused on dealing with uncertainty. The uncertainty he dealt with is the most important problem faced by entrepreneurs, and he found a way out for the development and growth of enterprises.
In dealing with risks and uncertainties, it may be just a theoretical problem for scholars, but it is a matter of life and death for entrepreneurs. This is the third difference between a scholar's perspective and an entrepreneur's perspective.
In the field of economics, entrepreneurs are regarded as an important function of economic development. This is due to Schumpeter's research. His research is economic development. Thanks for breaking the balance. Who will break it? It is the innovation of entrepreneurs that explains the cycle of economic development, but it has never become a mainstream topic.
Among the schools, there is an Austrian school that has always regarded human behavior as a cornerstone of economic theory. In human behavior, including the behavior of consumers and the behavior of manufacturers, the behavior of manufacturers is more called the behavior of entrepreneurs, and this view has been paid more and more attention.
But in fact, even in the management part, a considerable part of the content belongs to the scope of entrepreneurial functions. For example, when we talk about strategy, one of the most important responsibilities of entrepreneurs is the formulation of corporate strategy. Because the strategy is to determine the development direction of the enterprise, the determination of the development direction itself is the most important aspect of the entrepreneurial function.
But in recent 30 years, with the rise of entrepreneurship research, entrepreneurship has become a field of management, that is, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs are more closely linked. Therefore, management has been extended to the study of entrepreneurs, but mainly to study entrepreneurs' entrepreneurial behavior. Because entrepreneurship is indeed the most full expression of entrepreneurial behavior, the most typical scene that embodies entrepreneurial behavior or entrepreneurial spirit. This is an academic development.
Then, as Guiran Academy, we should empower entrepreneurs from the perspective of entrepreneurs and change their mental models and even concepts. Because we have such a premise, the enterprise is an entrepreneur's enterprise, and the entrepreneur who founded this enterprise wants to realize his personal ambitions and dreams.
So the entrepreneur's own situation determines what the enterprise will develop into. His personal mission, his personal ambition, his personal ideal and his personal enterprise view are all things that he thinks enterprises should do, and the way enterprises operate are all entrepreneurs' own ambitions and values, which are transformed into his personal embodiment of building enterprises.
This is also a bit like the children at home, whose genes come from their parents. There are some behaviors that he learned and his parents learned. So from children, we can see parents' looks, parents' looks, parents' behavior and parents' values. The truth is the same.
Enterprises can be said to be the children of entrepreneurs. The appearance of an enterprise, its morphological characteristics, its behavioral characteristics and its value pursuit can show what an entrepreneur looks like.
The basic logic of Guiran Academy from the perspective of entrepreneurs is that if we want to change enterprises and make them grow up healthily, then the core and key thing is to make entrepreneurs grow up healthily. In other words, the healthy growth of entrepreneurs will bring about the healthy growth of enterprises.
And this logic is in line with the enterprise reality, that is, the enterprise reality we see. At the same time, there are deep theoretical reasons, that is, in theory. But as far as academic theory is concerned, the theoretical system of conceptual argumentation at present is not scattered, but at least it is incomplete, and there is no systematic theory to explain this argument well.
Yang Wangcheng: In my experience of coaching enterprises for more than 20 years, I have both lessons and experiences. In an enterprise I tutored, at some point, he changed his boss, that is, the entrepreneur's scepter was given to a new person.
Then I put forward some ideas in the process of interacting with this entrepreneur before. Specifically, I am concerned about the differentiated competitive advantage of this enterprise. The strategy adopted for this has achieved quite good results. But after I changed my boss, he continued to consult me. Of course, I implemented the strategy I proposed before, and it is a proven strategy.
Later, I realized that something was wrong, and this existing strategic proposition did not get the corresponding attention. The business decision made by the boss is really in the opposite direction, so I won't continue to do it with him.
After a few years of reflection, because from this perspective, it is not that I have lost anything, or that I have lost money. Why is there such a big difference in business philosophy when working with a new boss? This has nothing to do with people. We are all good friends.
It turned out to be a question of values. Between differentiation strategy and cost-leading strategy, it seems to be practical and has no values, but it actually implies values. Because after the implementation of differentiated competition strategy, the appearance of enterprises is different from that of low-cost competition strategy, and their behaviors are also different.
For example, if you engage in low-price competition strategy, you will be very economical. One of the differentiated competitive strategies is advertising investment. We know that there is a famous saying in the advertising industry that 50% of advertising expenses are actually thrown into the river. But why advertise? I had to do it because I didn't know which 50% was thrown into the river.
Then the waste of 50% advertising fees, if from the perspective of low-cost competition strategy, must be put an end to waste. Therefore, in the low-price strategy, he will be cautious in advertising. In terms of business behavior, the business behavior of the two strategies will be different.
Judging from the results, the results of the two strategies are different. To adopt the differentiation strategy, the corporate image should be familiar to the public, and the dressing and shaping of the corporate image should be more distinct.
If the low price strategy is adopted, some bosses may choose to keep a low profile. If he wants low cost, he will naturally keep a low profile, and he doesn't want the company's reputation to be great.
Why do some bosses want their businesses to be fresh and bright, and some bosses want their businesses to be unknown? Behind these two choices, entrepreneurs are leading.
It can be said that most of the people who want enterprises to be refreshing are entrepreneurs themselves, hoping to have social status, that is, individuals can be praised by stars. And the entrepreneur who wants the enterprise to be unknown can't win by hiding from socializing, which is the difference in values between the two types of bosses. They have different requirements for personal achievement and social status. If we want to explore this difference again, it may be closely related to his growth experience, local cultural concepts or his family education. These growth factors led to the formation of his current values.
This is the first major lesson I learned in my career of corporate counseling for decades. With this lesson, whenever I go to coach enterprises, I have to discuss a problem. What is the inner pursuit of entrepreneurs? What is your personal pursuit? I want to see the ambition of entrepreneurs, the ambition of entrepreneurs, and most importantly, what are the values of entrepreneurs? Because values guide his behavior pattern.
I looked at the entrepreneurs, and slowly I also summarized and mastered some methods. For example, I give business guidance to an enterprise. After several conversations, he said, I hope my future life will be a feather fan nylon scarf. Feather fan scarf is a way for him to express his business intention. He doesn't want to be so tired as he used to be, but it's not that he doesn't want to do business well. He wants to do business more easily. The black silk scarf of the feather fan, laughing and disappearing, was in a good state, which was what he wanted, so I gave him some corresponding countermeasures according to his ideas.
After the previous lesson, I have never failed in tutoring enterprises. The first is that I attach importance to the entrepreneur's personal situation and his pursuit. The second is that I have found some ways to discover the true thoughts of entrepreneurs. Therefore, from practice, it has been proved that the probability of success will be much higher if we start with entrepreneurs and give advice to enterprises.