Tao Te Ching and Wuwei Management

Chapter 40 1 "It's not a sign of danger": always trembling, always walking on thin ice

No one's life is smooth sailing, and the same is true for enterprises.Almost all enterprises will encounter unexpected crises during their development.Regarding the crisis, Lao Tzu put forward the dialectical views of "prevention before it happens" and "depending on luck and misfortune".This reminds operators, first of all, they must be vigilant at all times to nip crises in the bud; then they must have a long-term vision and calmly deal with setbacks;

An enterprise that always has a sense of crisis will not have a crisis.

Its unpredictable. —— "Tao Te Ching" Chapter 64
"Deal with conflicts before they arise", Lao Tzu's words are constantly confirmed by successful management practices.The management guru Drucker has a famous saying: "The primary responsibility of an enterprise is to live." The advent of the era of globalization has made the already crisis-ridden and dangerous enterprises even worse.Today, the yardstick to measure the success of an enterprise is no longer to become bigger or stronger, but to survive!To survive, you must have a sense of urgency, you must have a sense of urgency.

In the Disney film "Ice Age 2", the ice age on the earth is coming to an end, and animals, big and small, are celebrating the coming of the water world with joy, singing and dancing.As the ice is about to melt, the Earth's surface will further diverge into ocean and land—a new era is about to be born!All animals in the Ice Age were very happy and cheered to welcome the coming of the water world. Facing the wonders of fountains, clear water, rapids, and melting ice and snow, all animals were immersed in the joy brought to them by the water park.

However, Manny the mammoth, Sid the sloth, and Diego the saber-toothed tiger in the film are aware that the weather is changing drastically, and the huge glacier is collapsing on a large scale.They realize that the melting and collapsing snow mountains around them will form floods, and the paradise they live on will soon become a vast ocean. Therefore, they must take the responsibility of alerting all carefree animals and leading them to escape from the imminent destruction. The heavy responsibility of Wang Yang's disaster place... The film arranges a ship to rescue them at the end.Finally, the animals who survived all kinds of hardships finally boarded the ark and escaped the catastrophe.

This film is very instructive, and it brings us a sense of serious worry amidst the humor - under the seemingly majestic iceberg, there is an undercurrent, and the melting of the ice and snow will destroy the iceberg at any time.If you don't pay attention to these potential dangers and don't know how to deal with them, what awaits you will be an irreversible disaster.

The same is true for enterprises. The advent of global competition and the era of meager profits has also turned the feet of enterprises into icebergs that may melt and collapse at any time.Every business operator should be aware that the iceberg is melting and the era of corporate crisis has come.

Zhang Ruimin, CEO of Haier Group, also explained his business experience in this way: "Always be cautious, always tread on thin ice", pursue eternal vitality with an eternal sense of urgency, and realize Haier's spiral upward.Because of the sense of urgency, Zhang Ruimin repeatedly focused on management, key points, and improvement.Once you find any mistakes and loopholes, you will hold on to them and solve them seriously.He taught the "barrel theory" to middle-level and lower-level managers. The amount of water in a barrel depends on the height of the shortest plank.Grasping the mistakes and correcting the shortcomings is equivalent to replacing the shortest plank with the longest plank, so that the entire bucket can hold more water.

Mr. Wang Jialian is the CEO of CA Company in the United States and a famous Chinese-American entrepreneur.Once, when a reporter asked him during an interview, what is the most important thing for him, Wang Jialian said that the most worrying and uneasy thing is whether he can pay the full amount of next month's salary for his employees. salary!
Mr. Chen Tianqiao, CEO of Shanda Group, said when looking back on Shanda’s entrepreneurial journey, he has assumed the risks of others for ten years every year.Danger has been with Shanda since its inception.Sudden withdrawal of capital by investors, lawsuits with partners, large-scale attacks by hackers, and so-called tax evasion "reported" by competitors...

Mr. Ren Zhengfei, President of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. has repeatedly emphasized: "What I think about now is not how to maximize profits, but how to survive and how to improve core competitiveness." These words seem low-key and conservative, but Think carefully, but it is the wisdom that a responsible entrepreneur should possess first.Telecommunications is an industry with brutal competition. Many telecommunications companies in the world are either developing or dying. There is no third way to go.

Ren Zhengfei often sounded the alarm to all employees: "If one day, the company's sales decline, profits decline or even go bankrupt, what should we do? Our company's peace time is too long, and there are too many promotions in peacetime. Our disaster. The 'Titanic' also sailed out of the sea with cheers. And I believe that this day will come."

Generally, those companies that can develop evergreen have a sense of crisis management. They don't believe in past achievements, the market position they have occupied, and the assets they have accumulated.The only thing they believe is that the road to the future will be bumpy, and they must face the future "walking on thin ice", as Mr. Gerstner, the president of IBM, said: "Long-term success is only possible when we are always afraid. Don't Instead of looking back with pride on past successful strategies, we need to see clearly what will lead to our downfall in the future. This way we can focus on the challenges ahead.”

An army that has lived in a peaceful world for a long time must be loose and loose and has no combat effectiveness, while an army facing a strong enemy will instead be tense and gear up because of tension, thereby improving its combat effectiveness.Entrepreneurs should also use this principle to run a business, let the sense of crisis stimulate the potential of the team, and even train the team in a real crisis.

The future is unpredictable, and people are not lucky every day. "Prepare for a rainy day and be good at cultivating the secrets", an enterprise, only when the leader takes the lead and the whole team is always prepared for danger in times of peace, so that the whole team has a sense of crisis and a crisis thinking, and then hard work and solid foundation, can calmly face the crisis, easily respond to the crisis, and then Make the enterprise stronger and bigger.

(End of this chapter)