"Knowledge economy is people-oriented economy" and "human resources are the first resource"

"Knowledge-based economy is people-oriented economy", "human resources are the first resource" and "talent competition is the fundamental competition", which we hear every day. However, where does people-oriented management begin? The answers vary. Gallup, the world's top consulting organization, said that starting with a new understanding of human nature.

Gallup spent 25 years investigating more than 80,000 professional managers from different companies, industries and countries. Some of them hold high positions, some are front-line supervisors, some work for fortune 500 companies, and some work for small private enterprises.

The results show that excellent managers generally believe in the same management philosophy: "People will not change, and it is not easy to make full use of their existing advantages, rather than trying to make up for their own shortcomings." To paraphrase China's jargon, instead of asking everyone to "do a line and love a line", we should advocate "love a line and do a line".

As far as people are concerned, excellent managers only do four things, which Gallup calls the four keys to successful management: selecting talents, making clear the results, giving full play to their advantages and teaching students in accordance with their aptitude. General Electric, Disney, Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, China Construction Bank, China Petroleum ... these famous Fortune 500 companies are all adopting this concept to guide management.

Selection first: Talent is always more important than experience and IQ.

Traditionally, managers should choose employees according to their experience, intelligence or will. Excellent managers believe that talent is a prerequisite for the success of every position. No matter how carefully you choose people with the same experience, intelligence and will, some people can make a profit of 15%, while others lose 30%.

Each of us has a neural "filter" that makes you excited about some stimuli in your life and work, but indifferent to others. No matter how much training "Smile School" takes, it is impossible to turn a person who is nervous when meeting strangers into a familiar person. The angrier a person is, the more incoherent he is, so no matter how hard he tries, he can't stand out in the debate.

Your "filter" is your talent, and the key to achieving excellent results is to match your talent with your job. Human nature determines that job seekers will always try their best to sell themselves and whitewash their shortcomings in interviews. However, excellent managers have invented some skills to bypass obstacles when selecting employees with the required talents, and then realize the matching between employees and positions.

1. Adapt to the organizational characteristics of the company.

Even in the same industry, companies with different organizational forms need different types of talents. What a well-regulated company needs most is "discipline", that is, the ability to work in a strictly controlled environment. Other talents, such as "independence", have become weaknesses. In a high-speed iterative company, the most needed talent is "pursuit", that is, the desire for independence, and employees who follow the rules will feel lost and lonely.

Study your star employees.

In the traditional concept, "good" is the antonym of "bad"; To understand "Excellence", we must analyze "failure" and then do the opposite. But by studying their star employees, excellent managers have overturned this misunderstanding.

They found that the best waiter was as opinionated as the worst waiter. The difference between the two is that excellent waiters are good at adapting to the different needs of customers at each table according to their rapidly formed views, while the worst waiters are rude. In contrast, the average waiter doesn't have his own opinion, so he always boasts to every table.

Take the time to get to know their star employees, understand the reasons and ways of their success, understand their personalities, and then choose similar talents.

3. Make up for the team's shortcomings

If the team members are down-to-earth and need drama and excitement, then you need to find someone who has the ability to "encourage" communication and inject drama into the progress and achievements. Maybe your team members are friendly, but they lack the courage to tell the truth and face it calmly, so you should find someone who can help and dare to lead others.

Definition result: resist the temptation of power and don't be a "broken mouth mother-in-law"

To tell the truth, excellent managers are often in the most difficult position: on the one hand, they know that they can't force employees to do a job in exactly the same way; On the other hand, the basic duty of managers is not to help employees grow, but to promote employees to create performance, and they are unwilling to completely delegate power to employees.

In view of this dilemma, there is a beautiful and effective solution: define the correct results, and then let each employee find his own way to achieve these results. This scheme seems simple, but if you ponder it carefully, you will find its power.

In real life and work, the shortest path between two points is not a straight line, but the path with the least resistance. The most effective way to turn talent into performance is to help employees find the way to meet the standards with the least resistance, so that excellent managers can resist the temptation of power and not be bitches.

So, how can we define the correct result? How do you judge what your employees should do among all kinds of things they may do? Of course, we cannot provide a step-by-step solution. What we can give you is just a few seemingly simple rules summarized from some world-class managers.

Rule 1: What's good for your customers?

This is the first question you have to ask, because no matter what you think, if the customer thinks a result is worthless, it is worthless. Nevertheless, many companies are intoxicated with their habits and professional knowledge and forget that customers are the ultimate judges of value.

For example, most airlines require flight attendants to put safety first and safety first. Others, such as friendly and thoughtful service, have become a dispensable ornament. Southwest Airlines has different goals. Their enthusiastic president, Herb kelleher, will naturally be considerate of the passengers' feelings. He knows that it is impossible to eliminate the fear and irritability of every passenger. What he can do is to encourage every employee and make every flight as interesting as possible.

It is for this purpose that there are songs, jokes and games, and the so-called "out of line color". Herb kelleher's intuition made Southwest employees pay attention to the right results. (Note: Southwest Airlines has been making profits for 33 consecutive years, setting an unprecedented record in aviation history)

Rule 2: What is good for the company?

Make sure that the results you define for employees are consistent with the company's current strategy. You may think this is a great truth, but in the rapidly changing business world, it is sometimes difficult for managers to do this.

The key here is to distinguish between mission and strategy. The mission of the company should be persistent, and no matter how employees update iterations, they have clear meaning and goals. The company's strategy is a method to accomplish its mission, which needs to be constantly changed according to the business climate. For example, Disney's mission has always been to stimulate people's imagination by telling wonderful stories. In the past, Disney has always relied on two strategies: movies and theme parks. Nowadays, in the face of increasingly fierce competition, they have expanded their business to cruise ships, Broadway shows, game boards and retail stores.

As upload and release managers, they must explain the new strategy to employees and then translate it into clearly defined performance results. If the company's new strategy focuses on expanding market share rather than pursuing profit, then everyone should pay attention to "sales" rather than "profit rate per order"

Rule 3: What is good for individuals?

Dennis rodman is basically the "rebounding king" in the history of basketball. At the same time, he is definitely the best athlete: his hair changes a color every week; He likes women's clothes and is a sadist; He is irritable and unpredictable ... if you are a coach, how should you manage him?

In the first three seasons, because of Rodman's troubles, the Chicago Bulls could not let him play at least 12 games each season. 1997- 1998 season, the club signed a contract with him, which can be said to be the most inspiring stroke in NBA history-Rodman's basic salary is $4.5 million, and if he does not make trouble all season, he can earn another $5 million.

This method made Rodman and Chicago Bulls successful. At the end of the season, Rodman missed only one game because of violation of discipline, won the "rebounding king" for the seventh time, and the Bulls also won the championship.

Although this example is very expensive, this concept applies to every employee: identify a person's advantages; Define the results that can give full play to its advantages; Find ways to calculate and evaluate these results; Then let the staff do it!

Play to your advantage: Spend the most time with star employees.

Ordinary managers want their employees to play well and often focus on correcting their weaknesses. They mercilessly pointed out the shortcomings of each employee, convinced that employees can change these shortcomings and become omnipotent. In the eyes of excellent managers, focusing on making up for shortcomings is half the effort. They are good at identifying everyone's talents and helping him to develop them.

Role assignment is the key.

If you want to turn talent into performance, you must accurately locate everyone and ensure that you pay him to do what he is naturally good at. You must put him in the right position. For example, according to Rodman's strong physique and funny personality, it is obvious that the Bulls hired him to rebound rather than assist.

Assigning jobs according to employees' talents is the secret of success for good managers, and sometimes it is very simple. For example, send your aggressive and arrogant salesman to a field that needs development; At the same time, the patient and well-connected salesmen are sent to a market that needs careful cultivation.

The workplace does not believe in "empathy"

Remember that golden rule? "Treat others as you want them to treat you." Top managers don't recommend this, because you can't assume that everyone is breathing "spiritual oxygen" like you. Just because you are competitive does not mean that employees are also competitive; Just because you like being praised in public doesn't mean employees like it.

Some people will ask, "How can I master the unique requirements of each employee?" Senior managers have their own way, ask. Ask your employees about their goals: What do you pursue in your current position? Where is your career development? How often do you want to discuss your progress face to face? ...

Without this information, you will close your eyes and be bound by stereotypes, patterns and wrong answers of "fairness and equality", but with this information, you will have a focus. You can give full play to everyone's advantages and turn your talents into achievements.

Why do excellent managers have preferences?

Jimmy Qiang Sen is the coach who led dallas cowboys to the Super Bowl finals twice. His speech to the players broke the "fair view" of excellent managers;

"I will always treat each of you, and I will treat each of you differently. The harder a person works, the better his performance and the more he can meet my requirements, the more I will let him go. If a person doesn't work hard or is not a good player, he won't stay long. "

In the company environment, this language may be a bit rough, but good managers like it. There is a simple reason. The real fairness in the workplace is to keep employees' achievements in mind and then reward them according to their work. If you focus on underachievers instead of your stars, stars may do less to make them stars. If a manager is busy helping backward employees barely reach the average level, then he has no time to take care of the really arduous task, that is, guiding better employees to Excellence.

Many companies spend time deliberately learning external experience, but ignore the most important revelation: go back and study their best employees. Disney, Southwest Airlines, General Electric and Ritz-Carlton did just that. These companies interview, track, film and publicize their star employees and learn from their best employees.

Poor performance of employees may just be "dislocation"

Giving full play to advantages does not mean being blindly optimistic. Bad things can happen at any time. Some people fail, some people struggle, and even star employees make mistakes. As a manager, you should ask yourself two questions when you find that employees are not performing well:

First of all, can poor grades be changed through training? If an employee is difficult to cope because of lack of necessary skills or knowledge, this can certainly be trained.

The second question is: Is this poor performance because the manager pulled the wrong trigger himself?

Every employee's motivation is different. You can't use competition to motivate a person who doesn't like competition, nor can you use public recognition to motivate a shy person. If an employee continues to perform poorly, the main reason is often not incompetence, stupidity or disobedience, but dislocation, and you use the wrong incentives. Maybe if you pull a different trigger, employees' real talents will be released again.

Use according to talent: create heroes in every position

Benjamin Bloom of Northwest University investigated the careers of world-class sculptors, pianists, chess masters, tennis players and mathematicians. He found that it would take ten to eighteen years for these different occupations to reach the world-class level.

However, the traditional professional concept teaches us that the higher the position, the better the salary, the more attractive the title, the richer the equity, and the spacious office with sofa. An employee should constantly "climb up" and constantly refresh his resume. He shouldn't stay in a certain position for too long.

If a company requires some employees to perform close to the world level in all positions, it must encourage employees to focus on developing their own expertise, rather than using the system to induce employees to blindly "climb up." Top managers know that one level does not necessarily lead to another, and everyone wants a raise, but promotion is not suitable for everyone. Their solution is to create heroes in every post, and through system design, every post that can achieve good results can be respected.

Performance rating system

No matter how insignificant the post is, it is necessary to formulate meaningful standards to help dedicated employees make continuous progress until they reach the world advanced level. In Philip Oil Company, if engineers are skilled, they can advance step by step on the professional road until the level of director, and finally they will be recognized as one of the most accomplished engineers in the company.

Broadband wage system

Make a salary plan that can fluctuate greatly for each position, so that the upper limit salary of low positions coincides with the bottom of high positions. If you are an excellent waiter in a luxury restaurant in Disney, your annual salary can exceed $60,000, while the starting salary of the manager is only $25,000.

What if the company system does not support it?

Most companies will not pay attention to the success of each position, and will not design a performance rating system or broadband salary plan. What should you do? Our suggestion is to deal with it calmly but creatively.

In the technical department of aviation industry companies, engineers with ten years' experience are generally promoted to take on more management work, but in fact not every engineer is good at managing people. As a result, they designed a new post-engineering expert, who only participated in the most complicated projects and served as technical consultants for each team, and no longer undertook any management work.

▲ The main point of this paper is compiled from "First of all, breaking all conventions-the secret of the success of the world's top managers" (China Youth Publishing House, 20 17 edition).

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Select talents, make clear the results, give play to advantages, and then encourage employees to display their talents in the process of growth, so that your department or company can continue to excel.

We all know that the truth is not that simple. It is difficult to manage others. The core of management is to balance the conflicts of interests among the company, customers, employees and even yourself. If you pay attention to one side, you will inevitably annoy the other.

We can't guarantee that miracles will happen overnight. When you go to work tomorrow, you will see that many employees are incompetent. We also know that traditional ideas are so ingrained that you can't change the world by yourself. You can only change the status quo of one employee at a time and talk about it again and again.

The company's search for value is the same as the employee's search for belonging, which is an eternal proposition. Since the birth of modern "company" 0/50 years ago, the interests of the company and its employees, which have been in opposition, are gradually merging. We can only guarantee that these four suggestions are an unprecedented and powerful start, and the top managers in the world set an example for you.