The Complete Works of Wolf Road

Chapter 43: Be a good leader wolf (2)
This thinking is reflected in Southwest's relationship with its employees and customers: When the company needs to hire employees, Southwest Airlines looks for employees who derive pleasure from serving customers.Kelleher said: "We are looking for employees, first and foremost, have a sense of humor. Second, we are looking for people who are good at satisfying themselves and performing well in the relationship with colleagues." .We don't care too much about education and experience because we can teach them to do what they have to do. We hire with attitude."

This philosophy pays off in customer service.Customers love the wit of Southwest employees, such as flight attendants hiding in overhead bins, painting a plane to look like a great white shark, or being able to see Kelleher himself dressed up like Santa Claus for Halloween Greet customers.Deborah Franklin, a flight attendant with 23 years at Southwest Airlines, said: "At Southwest, everyone gets to be who they are. They don't try to cram you into a mold.” Customer satisfaction is reflected in 3500 monthly compliment letters and a No. 2 ranking ahead of Disney, Saturn, and Nordstrom in phone customer service reviews.In order to understand how customers' needs changed, Kelleher personally read every letter, whether it was praise or criticism.

The payoff for this "employees matter" philosophy is also reflected in cost reductions, which have given Southwest a cost advantage.Although 80% of Southwest Airlines employees are union members, and their compensation is the highest in the industry, their high efficiency still reduces Southwest Airlines' costs.This high efficiency made it possible to maintain a positive relationship between the company and the union, which was promoted by dealing with problems in good faith and a policy of not firing employees, which allowed Southwest Airlines to adopt more flexible work rules, encouraging Employee morale is high and strikes are avoided.

Kelleher is truly a business leader who leads by example.Southwest employees see what their CEO says is important and can see that he actually lives it.They learned from its leaders how Southwest Airlines was profitable and how they contributed to the company's performance.It made them do things in a way that supported Southwest's strategy, and when Kelleher told them what to do, they trusted him.

To earn the trust and respect of your people and get them to support your strategy with action, you can never say something is important while focusing on something else.It's easy to focus on "the other stuff" if you know how to do it better or how to have more fun with it.However, if there is a gap between what you say is important and what you actually do, two things will happen: Your employees will focus on the less important things because they see you doing it ; when they compare what you say with what you do, it can damage your credibility with employees.

So you have to make sure that what you spend most of your time doing is really important to the business - identify which task is critical and focus on that.Afterwards, you can rest assured that your employees are spending their time on the things that matter, and your credibility will be intact.

4 Focus on key issues

In 1897, the Italian economist Pareto accidentally noticed a strange thing in his research: the wealth distribution of the British in the 19th century showed an unbalanced pattern, and most of the social wealth flowed to a few people.

This in itself was nothing surprising in society at the time, but what really excited Pareto was that this pattern of imbalance would recur, across time and across countries—whether it was early Britain, or other countries of his time, or earlier sources—and the pattern of imbalance is statistically accurate.

帕累托从研究中归纳出这样一个结论：如果20％的人口拥有80％的财富，那么就可以预测，10％的人将拥有约65%的财富，而50％的财富是由5％的人所拥有。

The point here is not just percentages, but the fact that the pattern of wealth distribution is uneven and predictable.

So 80/20 became shorthand for this unbalanced relationship, regardless of whether it turned out to be exactly 80/20, because strictly speaking, an exact 80/20 relationship is unlikely.

Later generations have different names for his discovery, such as the Pareto principle, the Pareto law, the 80/20 rule, the 80/20 law, the [-]th rule, the law of least effort, and the principle of imbalance.

The 80/20 rule affects our lives all the time, but people know little about it.Joseph Ford said:

"God plays dice with the whole universe, but these dice are passive hands and feet. Our main purpose is to understand how it is passive hands and feet, and how we should use these methods to achieve our own goals."

What does the 80/20 rule mean for managers?
We have learned that with 20% of the effort, we can get 80% of the return.The question below is, what is that 20% of effort and work?What should managers do?

In company management, if you want to use the 80/20 rule to adjust the management strategy, you must first see clearly which aspects the company is profitable and which aspects are loss-making.Only with a comprehensive understanding of the situation can we prescribe the right medicine and formulate strategies that are beneficial to the company's development.If you don't know where the company makes money and where it loses money, you will have a "confused account" in your head

, There is no way to talk about the application of the 80/20 rule, and those trivial and useless things will continue to occupy your time and energy.

Therefore, the first task of an operator is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the company, carefully examine every detail in the company, and sort out those parts that can bring profits, so as to formulate a set of strategies that are conducive to the company's growth.

You want to find out which departments in the company are performing mediocrely, which departments are generating higher profits, and which departments are generating serious deficits.Through these analysis and comparison, you will find out which factors play a pivotal role in the company, while others are insignificant.

In business operations, a small number of people create most of the value; projects that make 80% of profits only account for 20% of all projects in the company.

Therefore, you should learn to always pay attention to those key few, and always remind yourself whether to put the main time and energy on the key few, rather than on the less profitable majority.

However, in real business activities, many entrepreneurs have not yet realized the role of the 80/20 rule. They still use the outdated concept of management, thinking that everything in the enterprise should be devoted to all energy.They always generalize and disregard priorities on many things. As a result, 80% of resources and energy are consumed, but only 20% of value is produced.

For managers, understanding the 80/20 rule not only requires you to establish a few important concepts, but more importantly, to transform these important concepts into habits, and then use the 80/20 rule to think, use the 80/20 rule to guide your behavior.

Do something and don't do something.In short, in terms of business management, the guiding ideology advocated by the 80/20 rule is "do something, don't do something".

Taking 80/20 as the fixed ratio shows that the enterprise should not focus on details in the management work, but should grasp the key points in management, including key people, key links, key positions, key projects and so on.

Entrepreneurs with great ambitions should focus their management attention on 20% of the key business projects, take inclined measures to ensure breakthroughs in key points, and then use key points to lead to overall progress in the overall operation of the enterprise.

The reason why this enterprise management law is generally recognized by the international business community is that it reveals such a truth to entrepreneurs: If you want to create an excellent management model and bring benefits to the enterprise, you must make your own management outstanding. Focus, you must figure out what are the 20% of the backbone of the business, 20% of the key products, 20% of the key customers, 20% of the key information and 20% of the key projects, and then focus your management attention Focus on the 20% and take effective measures.

In some well-known international companies in the United States and Japan, the management team pays great attention to using the 80/20 rule to guide the operation and management of the company, adjust and determine the key business tasks of 20% of the company's stage at any time, and strive to adopt the most efficient method to make the subordinate companies The business focus can also be grasped indirectly, grasped in place, and achieved results.This is why American and Japanese companies, although large, are managed in an orderly manner and have excellent returns.

The essence of the 80/20 management rule is to make those key business tasks be managed prominently and effectively drive the overall development of the enterprise.

From the business practice of well-known companies in the United States and Japan successfully using the 80/20 rule, we get two benefits:
First, clarify what the 20% of your business's business priorities are.

Second, clarify what measures should be taken to ensure major breakthroughs in the 20% of key business tasks.Adhere to these principles, and your business will surely be transformed and rejuvenated.

5 Human Capital Discovery Key Points

Practice has shown that the productivity and future development of an organization often depend on a small number (such as 20%) of key talents, who can help the company obtain most of its profits.

Our traditional concept is that most talents make major contributions to the development of an enterprise.In fact, these people seem to be very busy, but they do not add any value to the company.It is actually a small number of people who make major contributions to a business or company, and it is these 20% who create most of the profits.

To develop human resources according to the 80/20 rule, the first step is to find the 20% key people.To find them, companies need to do a comprehensive 80/20 analysis, which includes:
Product or product group analysis; customer and customer group analysis; department and employee analysis; region or distribution channel analysis; financial and employee income analysis; data analysis related to enterprise employees; through various analysis, we will find out who is important, And which ones are minuscule.

Using the 80/20 rule to manage human capital may double the efficiency of human capital use.If managers do not have the authority or ability to construct a new system, partial application of the 1/80 rule under the current system will also contribute to the realization of organizational goals.

Finding members of the "key minority" is really about finding the people who contribute the most to the company.Unlike management costs and marketing costs, human capital is invisible and intangible. This requires managers to have "bole" eyes to find out those who can really make suggestions for the company.

It is necessary to find the "key minority" members, but it is more important to establish an effective profit distribution mechanism to prevent personnel loss.

For the "key minority" members in the organization and the team composed of "key minority" members, it is necessary to implement dynamic management, that is, to implement the survival of the fittest system, to employ outstanding talents bravely, to eliminate unqualified employees, and to establish a courageous management system.This is a necessary condition for maintaining the vitality of the organization and maintaining the core competitiveness of the organization.

(End of this chapter)