Common sense wins the world: the common secret of successful people

Chapter 11 Common Sense of Competition--The Skills a Winner Must Possess (2)
"Although there is nothing now, it is just a blueprint, but please believe that as long as the funds are in place, we will be able to go public within 3 years, and it will be a global sensation at that time!"
Their plans are filled with magical miracles like the one above and Pollyanna, as if God is their obedient servant, and everything is in their hands: "I will win! I will not lose!"
Of course, we are extra vigilant against such financiers. There is no reason to invest money in them, not even a penny.Nor is it possible to convince investors of these naive youngsters.They are doomed to fail in a financing war. They can't even meet their competitors, and they lose in their own plans.These people underestimated the risks, naively thought that luck must be by their side, God must bless them, and hoped that they could win by luck, but the result was often - the worst thing happened!
I told my subordinates: "People who always think that they will succeed, you should stay away from them, and don't give them any chance, otherwise there is only one thing for sure, that is, they will definitely pull you into the water."
In 2011, I said yes to Hernandez's request for financing.He wants to open a cake supermarket chain in St. Louis. In the first phase, he plans to open at least 20 stores, and then complete the layout in New York, Washington and Los Angeles within one year.The plan is quite grand, requiring a capital scale of 1 million US dollars.Therefore, everyone is not optimistic, because there are many cake shops and the competition is very fierce. Many similar shops appear every day, and they open busily, but most of them are short-lived and closed within a few months.

But I stood my ground: "We're not investing in a business, we're investing in a person. In my opinion, this person must be successful." The reason is that he foresees danger, and he is very good at planning for the worst.Thirty-four of his 67-page detailed business plan are devoted to avoiding failure, not how to welcome success.

"I'm going to assume we can't sell a single cake," Hernandez said. "To deal with this possibility, we can't hoard too many finished products, and at the same time we have to reserve enough working capital. Regarding the strategy that competitors will adopt, we have to Thinking of all possibilities, we need to gain popularity, prepare to deal with an advertising war, hold promotional activities from time to time, and be prepared to deal with quality problems, otherwise we will not succeed and will only lose miserably!"
He fully demonstrated his sense of crisis, while embodying his self-confidence.I think such a person must be successful, so I persuaded the investor to meet with him, and after two negotiations, the financing agreement was signed.Sure enough, Hernandez did not disappoint me.3 weeks after the opening of his first store, the single-day sales began to be profitable; 2 months later, the 10th store opened; 2 years later, he achieved his goal, the business was booming, and the chain store was opened to Canada .

All the trials we encounter in life are like typhoons. You have to imagine it as the most violent and destructive level, think of a perfect plan, and make all preparations against typhoons. When the typhoon really blows, you You will not panic, and you will not suffer heavy losses because you are not prepared.For those who think of the worst and plan ahead, even if the tough test comes as expected, the loss can be guaranteed to be manageable.Of course, it is best not to encounter such difficulties, because losses can be avoided; if they are encountered, they can also gain rich experience in crisis management.

Lenovo's acquisition of IBM's PC business was a great success, but TCL, another domestic electrical appliance giant, encountered setbacks in its acquisition of Alcatel and Thomson color TVs.The results of the internationalization of the two are different, the reasons for which are different and there are many factors.But the most important one is that TCL's estimation of future risks is not enough, and it lacks enough objective preliminary research.The decision makers neither expected the worst nor prepared for the best.

Li Dongsheng, chairman and CEO of TCL Group, reflected on this and said: "Preliminary research and analysis are very important. We must anticipate possible risks and must not rush for success; we must have an objective assessment of our own capabilities. Rush to do what we can't do. The lesson is that we need to use experienced consultants to help us reduce risk."
In order to save costs before the merger, the management of the group gave up the inspection and analysis of the details, and did not entrust a professional consulting agency to find out the problem. TCL designed its own acquisition plan, which was full of blindly optimistic and irrational judgments. As a result, tens of millions of euros of losses occurred soon after the merger.

Where is the success of Lenovo's acquisition?Liu Chuanzhi later concluded: "All our experiences and lessons can be grouped into one: think clearly before taking action." He emphasized that Lenovo has prepared for the worst and has prepared solutions for all risks, even if it is personnel. For things that are relatively easy to solve such as loss, multiple records have also been formulated.In contrast, TCL left the deepest impression on people, probably only the grand goal of "becoming the world's largest" put forward by the management.Realistic issues like attrition, supply chain integration, and cultural integration are not well assessed and countermeasures formulated.They were too optimistic, lacked an objective understanding of the seriousness of the problem, did not take it seriously, and lacked preparation in advance, paying a high price for their carelessness.

This is essentially a kind of control over "expectation psychology"-can I do one thing well, can I do it better than others?
We will have a pre-positioning.The higher your expectations, the greater the sense of loss after failure; on the contrary, the lower your expectations, and you are prepared for this, you will be able to deal with failures calmly, because there are plans in advance and solutions thought of in advance.Therefore, only by preparing for the "worst case" can the "strongest response" be produced and the crisis management ability of a person or a company can be trained.Keeping this kind of mentality often can adjust our psychology well, overcome various setbacks, and complete difficult tasks.

Build Sustainability, Don't Gamble
When we do things, the idea of ​​"success or failure depends on the battle" must be wrong, and people are well aware of this. A philosophy of life.But in actual actions, they are no different from those whom they persuaded. Many people have this strong gambler mentality.

"I will succeed this time, luck must be on my side."
"I'll take a gamble and see, how will I know if I don't try?"
"What others can do, I can do too, just watch this once!"
Whether it is the handling of work, the choice of career or the decision-making of enterprises, they all have a speculative mentality-trying to win everything through one effort, without considering the issue of "sustainability".

For example, managers of football clubs always want to achieve results immediately, surpass their competitors, and win the championship.In order to achieve this goal, he spared no expense in recruiting, invited big-name coaches, invested huge sums of money, and hoped to see results in a short period of time.What if the goal cannot be achieved?Fire the coach, change a group of people, and gamble again.A few years later, he discovered that the team not only failed to establish dominance, but was unable to make ends meet, and management became a problem. This is a gambling-style business idea that lacks sustainability.

What is the gambler mentality?It means that if you lose, you want to win back everything you lost, but if you want to win everything back once, you have to bet a big one, so many people will choose to bet all of themselves.Specifically, this kind of mentality exists in almost all fields, and it has become a kind of human instinct-some people gamble on money, some people gamble on marriage, some people gamble on opportunities, and some people gamble on positions , and some people risk their lives to achieve some illusory goals.

Why do gamblers have such a "ridiculous" psychology?
Of course we know this kind of people very well-those who are gamblers are actually good at self-dissection. They have their own "logic" and their own calculation rules, or a common sense of gamblers.That is, the less their expectations are realized and the opportunities are smaller, they are willing to redouble their bets and fight desperately, thinking that the chances of success will be greater.They don't want to rigorously and carefully calculate the probability of success and prepare for the process of success.

To put it bluntly, they just want to succeed in one battle: either get rich overnight, or become famous in one fell swoop.They are impatient and lack long-term thinking.

Götze Manning has been a sales executive for an electronics company in London for three years.Recently, he ushered in a good opportunity for promotion. The board of directors decided to promote some young cadres to the newly established large marketing department, give him more power and annual salary, and have the opportunity to be stationed overseas as senior executives of branches in third world countries.

This is a good opportunity, and at least 10 people from all over the company are eligible to compete.In order to stand out in the fierce competition for promotion and win the favor of the management, Manning decided to use some unconventional methods to improve the performance of the department. He borrowed 30 pounds from his friends and registered some virtual accounts on the Internet. Twitter account, paid to recruit people to buy the product his department is responsible for selling: a new type of car Walkman.

At £75 each, the Walkman isn't expensive, but Manning's goal is to increase sales by 5000 units a month.This means that he needs to come up with 375000 pounds by himself - all of which are paid by him, and that does not include the labor costs he has to pay.

Is Manning crazy?His investment might have been worth it if he did the math.If you are promoted successfully, the increased annual salary will make up for this loss within 4 years, and there is also a huge temptation to become an executive of an overseas company.But he is indeed an out-and-out madman's behavior. Although this tactic is very effective in terms of performance, even if he can successfully "deceive" the management and let him get more impression points in the competition, it is not sustainable .Not only has he hurt his own honor, he's sure to ruin the department.

Therefore, Manning's plan was doomed to fail before it even started.Fortunately, he reined in the brink, returned the money to his friend, and then seriously thought about how he could build a solid performance and earn the appreciation of his boss with pragmatic work.He said: "I suddenly discovered my own ugliness. If I become a brazen speculator, even if I become the company's future CEO, this experience will become an indelible stain in my life. Not allowed. Therefore, I decided to be honest with myself and give up this desperate play."
He sent an internal company email announcing his withdrawal from the competition on the grounds that he hadn't figured out how to take on more important responsibilities, and now there are more jobs that he needs to learn, and he wants to ensure that he can have a long-lasting Only when you have the ability to make a greater contribution to the company will you be interested in a better position.

(End of this chapter)