Tao Te Ching and Wuwei Management

Chapter 56 5 "Using Strange Soldiers": Success Doesn't Take the Unusual Path

Break through the mindset and discover the blue ocean in the red ocean.

Use odd troops.

—— "Tao Te Ching" Chapter 57
Lao Tzu told us that we must lead troops in battle with a surprising method.Many people can't find the way to success, often because they can't break through their old thinking.On the contrary, excellent entrepreneurs are often able to break through people's conventional thinking, use tricks instead, work hard on the word "odd", come up with amazing tricks, and win amazing results.

Kmart is the originator of the modern supermarket retail enterprise.Beginning in 1990, in order to compete with the promising Wal-Mart, it spent $30 billion and spent three years renovating the original 800 stores and setting up 153 new discount stores.At the time, Wal-Mart was expanding from rural areas into the urban areas where Kmart was located.In response, Kmart's CEO also followed Wal-Mart's example and lowered the prices of thousands of products to improve his competitiveness, thus launching a direct attack on Wal-Mart.In order to make up for the loss of price cuts of other products, Kmart began to increase the sales of clothing that can bring higher profits to the company.Five years later, this costly price-cutting strategy proved unsuccessful.In Kmart's new stores, sales per square foot fell from $167 to $141 in the first three years of implementing the strategy.Clothes bought by Kmart are either in stock or on clearance sale.

This kind of direct head-to-head competition is a very tempting way of thinking, and it has been misleading people.The reasoning goes like this: If our competitors can make a change to succeed, so can we.We just need to emulate some good moves from our competitors to become the market leader.However, in fact, the changes made by competitors are not necessarily correct, and their changes are made according to their own conditions. Therefore, this impatient competition imitation strategy will mislead many company managers, and it will always target powerful companies. Competitor's advantage to attack.And only the companies that respond most sensitively to the market and use "unusual" tricks can occupy the best position, so as to be the first to obtain market opportunities and earn excess profits.

As we all know, McDonald's and KFC are representatives of the fast food industry, and their chain operation model has always been praised by the catering industry.However, we seldom see successful cases of chain operation of Chinese restaurants. Is it because the food in China is not as good as in the West?Of course not, the key is that our company lacks innovative thinking and resource integration awareness, but Tan Yutou can become a school of its own, making a hot pot restaurant a leader in the industry. Its boss Tan Changan uses innovative thinking to transform traditional industry practices, It is indeed worthy of consideration by entrepreneurs.

In 1997, Tan Yutou Hot Pot Restaurant was established. After its first hot pot restaurant opened, because of its exquisite workmanship and delicious taste, the restaurant was full of people every day, and dozens of people often lined up at the door to wait for a seat.

At this moment, an unexpected event caught the attention of the boss Tan Changan:

Due to the large number of people dining every day, customers often have to wait for a long time.One day, a customer waited for 2 hours, but he still hadn't arrived.He was very angry, so he called Tan Yutou's boss, Tan Chang'an.No matter how Tan Changan explained or how he expressed his apology, the guest was still furious, and in a panic, he raised his hand and punched Tan Changan.

However, Tan Chang'an could bear what others couldn't bear. Not only did that fist not make him angry, but it made him start a deep introspection.He thought, why is that guest so angry?It's because of waiting too long.The main reason for the long waiting time of customers is the slow speed of serving food.Restaurants use hand-written menus to transmit dishes, which is very inefficient.

Thinking of this level, Tan Changan came up with the idea of ​​seeking change. As the saying goes: "Change leads to success, and practice leads to long-term." To improve efficiency, from a small shrimp in the catering industry to a whale, you must first improve efficiency.So after some research, Tan Changan began to build IT systems in each of his chain stores.

The operation process of this IT system is: the restaurant uses the POS machine to order food, the printer in the background kitchen submits the order information of the customer synchronously, the inventory manager replenishes the goods at any time according to the material consumption in the order system, and the financial system according to the order system and the checkout system The data, accurate statistics on the daily sales situation.

In this way, the time from ordering at the front desk to preparing in the kitchen to serving the customers can be recorded by the system.Which dishes must be submitted to customers within a few minutes, Tan Changan made specific requirements according to the degree of difficulty.If the implementation is not in place, the waiter and store manager will be punished.

For the first time, Tan Yutou changed the extensive management of Chinese catering and realized refinement.Tan Changan said: "The reason for the transformation from traditional management to digital management is because of the needs of the enterprise. When the enterprise grows up, the management must also change accordingly. It is not that we want to do this, but the market requires us to do so." Tan Changan is precisely After facing the reality, he sought change and achieved success.

In recent years, Tan Yutou Catering Company has developed rapidly. Tan Changan decided to represent Chinese catering to the international market. An important prerequisite for going abroad and going global is to realize the corporate goal of "digital hot pot".From the very beginning of IT system construction, Tan Yutou chose IBM as his main partner. He fully absorbed IBM's system construction experience in the international catering field in terms of hardware equipment and application links in each store, and hoped that IBM With the assistance of the company, the dream of "digital hot pot" is truly realized.

In the traditional catering industry where IT application is very backward, Tan Yutou not only uniquely started IT construction first, but also chose to join hands with IBM.Through close integration with the most famous international IT companies, Tan Yutou has rapidly grown into a leader in the industry.

If it is an ordinary boss, if he is beaten by others for no reason, he will definitely get angry and lose his mind, but Tan Changan can endure the humiliation and find the crux of the problem; However, Tan Changan can understand the essence through the phenomenon, so as to face the market directly and calmly reflect on himself.It is his spirit of reflection that made him realize the reasons for the low efficiency of serving dishes, and innovate without hesitation, thus becoming a leader in the industry.Tan Yutou’s innovation experience tells entrepreneurs that any market needs a pair of eyes for discovery. The development of the Internet economy provides a broad space for transforming traditional industries. Entrepreneurs can discover opportunities as long as they are not constrained by stereotypes and stand alone. ,Seize the opportunity.

(End of this chapter)