Tao Te Ching and Wuwei Management

Chapter 11 4 "Do not strengthen the world with soldiers": make the cake bigger together

Competition does not have to be life and death, win-win is the last word.

He who assists the master with the way does not strengthen the world with soldiers. —— "Tao Te Ching" Chapter 30

The courtiers who assist the monarch should not encourage the monarch to be militaristic and belligerent, but should take the development and harmony of the country as their own responsibility.Therefore, entrepreneurs should be good at using the win-win dimension to achieve win-win cooperation, mutual benefit and common prosperity among enterprises, and maximize their own benefits.

In 450 BC, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus discovered a strange phenomenon in the Crocodile Temple in Obos, Egypt.He noticed that the crocodiles in the marble pool often opened their mouths wide after they were full, allowing a small gray bird to peck and pick their teeth there.This surprised him very much. He wrote in his book: "All birds and beasts avoid the ferocious crocodile, but only this kind of bird can get along with the crocodile. The crocodile never hurts this kind of bird, because it needs a small bird. The help of birds. After the crocodile leaves the water and lands, it opens its big mouth, allowing this small bird to fly into its mouth to eat small animals such as leeches, which makes the crocodile feel very comfortable.” This small gray bird is called “toothpick” Bird", also known as "crocodile bird".It looks for leeches, flies and food scraps in the crocodile's "bloody mouth"; sometimes, the toothpick bird simply builds a nest in the crocodile habitat and stands guard for the crocodile. Wake up the crocodile and get ready.Because of this, the crocodile and the toothpick bird can coexist harmoniously, forming a good cooperation situation of mutual benefit and common prosperity.

Animals know how to win-win and mutual benefit, but humans, as the "primates of all things", should learn to think win-win.

Taoism believes that "because it does not live by itself, it can live forever; because it is selfless, it can become selfish".Strategic alliance is a way of "living without self-growth" and "being selfish through selflessness".From many successful business alliances, we found that this kind of competitive and cooperative strategy of "selflessness" and "not using soldiers to strengthen the world" has finally "served its own interests" and achieved great results.

At present, the most successful alliance in the world is the Wintel alliance formed by the cooperation between Microsoft Corporation and Intel Corporation. will increase; similarly, when Intel produces faster integrated chips, Microsoft's software also has a better carrier to highlight its value.The alliance of the two parties has promoted the development of the entire IT industry, formed a new industry standard, and created two giants in the IT industry, finally achieving a win-win situation.

The win-win thinking emphasizes the maximization of resource utilization based on joint cooperation.The relationship between an enterprise and its competitors is no longer a bloody competitive relationship of life and death, but a relationship of mutual benefit, symbiosis, and win-win cooperation.Through win-win cooperation, resources can be fully utilized, so as to realize "1+1>2", and jointly make the cake bigger, so that all parties can get more benefits, which is conducive to sustainable development.

People who frequent McDonald's or KFC can easily find such a phenomenon. McDonald's and KFC are usually located on the same street, or opposite or adjacent to the same street less than 100 meters apart.The layout of many supermarkets also has this phenomenon. For example, on both sides of the road less than 15 kilometers away from both sides of the North Third Ring Road in Beijing, there are already about 10 stores of Gome, Suning, and Dazhong.From a general point of view, there is competition when there is agglomeration, and many businesses prefer to aggregate and operate in a business circle to compete for the market.

The aggregation of businesses will produce a "scale effect". On the one hand, it reflects the so-called "one-stop" consumption. The rich variety of goods meets the needs of consumers to reduce shopping costs, and a large number of peers gather to achieve the smallest regional differentiation. On the other hand, in order to adapt to the fierce market competition environment and seek a relative competitive advantage, dealers will continue to adjust themselves and benefit ordinary consumers while improving themselves through competition.It is precisely because of this that aggregated site selection enables merchants to give full play to their advantages and attract more consumers.

Enterprises in different industries can also cooperate to make profits. The following case is a model of commercial positive-sum game:

Supor is the No. [-] brand of cooking utensils in China, and Arowana is the No. [-] brand of edible oil in China. Both of them advocate a new concept of healthy cooking.If the two are combined, wouldn't it be possible to make "health" even bigger?
In December 2003, the activity of "good oil and good pot, leading healthy food fashion" was held simultaneously in 12 cities across the country.During the event, customers who buy a bottle of Arowana II blending oil or salad oil can receive a Red Lucky Double Scratch Card, and have a chance to win New Year’s prizes, including Supor’s high-end pot set, Supor’s 36cm milk pot, etc. prize.At the same time, if you buy Supor cooking utensils below 14 yuan with the red luck double scratch card, you can get 108 yuan in cash; if you buy Supor cooking utensils above 5 yuan, you can also get a bottle of 108ml Arowana second-generation blended oil.At the same time, Supor and Arowana jointly developed a new healthy recipe, compiled it into a book and gave it to everyone, and held a healthy cooking lecture to tell everyone how to choose healthy oil and pot.

The event coincides with the Spring Festival, and people's desire to buy oil and pot is high.This event not only gave consumers more benefits and made them happier shopping, but more importantly, taught consumers health knowledge and helped them clarify the selection criteria.Through high-quality products and healthy concepts, the quality of healthy life of Chinese people has been improved.Once this campaign was launched, it was immediately welcomed by consumers. Not only did the sales of Supor Hot Pot and Arowana Oil rise sharply, but the image of its healthy brand was also deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.Lao Tzu has always opposed vicious competition, and advocated "use the most soft in the world to gallop the most rigid in the world".The competition and cooperation strategy is a resistance to vicious competition, and it is an ingenious way to gallop between the softest and the hardest.Therefore, when an enterprise competes, it is necessary not only to learn the methods of competition, but also to get out of the limitation of "competition" and enter the realm of "cooperation", to discover advantages, tap advantages, and take what each needs with more superb cooperation skills and a broader mind. , Seek common ground while reserving differences, realize resource complementarity, and seek higher-level cooperation.

(End of this chapter)