Tao Te Ching and Wuwei Management

Chapter 57 6 "Extreme love requires great expense": Good at clearing the fetters of the "past"
Willingness, willingness, and willingness to gain.

If you love very much, you will spend a lot of money, if you hide too much, you will perish.

—— "Tao Te Ching" Chapter 44
Excessive care and greed will inevitably lead to big expenses and losses, and abundant storage will inevitably lead to heavy losses.This tells us that we should be willing when we should be willing, and we should give up when we should give up.For entrepreneurs, it is imperative to adapt to changing times.The successful experience of the past may just be the grave where you are buried tomorrow.Therefore, if you want to change, you must first be willing to break the rules and regulations, not superstitious about the past, but focus on the future, and adapt to the needs of the current era with innovative thinking.

There is an experiment about orangutans: the researchers put three orangutans into a big cage, and then hung a big banana in the middle of the cage.But as long as an orangutan reaches for a banana, the researchers spray all the orangutans with a high-pressure water gun until all the orangutans dare not reach for that banana again.Next, the researchers replaced one of the orangutans in the cage with a new one.The new orangutan doesn't know the "rules" in the cage, so he grabs bananas as soon as he arrives.Its behavior was against the rules of the cage, so the other two "old" orangutans attacked the newcomer until it succumbed.This punishment task, which was originally carried out by a high-pressure water gun, is now completely "personally" carried out by two old orangutans.

Using the same method, the researchers kept replacing the two old orangutans who had experienced the punishment of the high-pressure water gun with new ones until all the orangutans in the cage were latecomers, but they also worshiped the bunch of bananas as gods.Studies have shown that the "organizational inertia" deterred by the nozzles of the high-pressure water gun restrains every orangutan who enters the cage, causing them to shelve the bananas that are supposed to be a delicious meal.

This case vividly reveals the formation process of organizational inertia.In the ever-changing market competition environment, if an enterprise wants to gain an advantage, it must learn to quickly adjust its policies and systems with the development and changes of the times; otherwise, it can only be like the orangutan in the case, and it will be wasted on yesterday's lessons. A great opportunity for tomorrow.The decline of an excellent company is not because it is helpless in the face of changes, but whether the actions it takes can adapt to the times.

After an enterprise determines its business management model, its members can always find out its procedures in practice, and gradually use this procedure to solve various problems.Habits become natural. In practice, managers and employees rarely think about whether these methods are still reasonable and effective.Therefore, many successful companies attribute their success to having a mature institutional model.In the face of changes in market competition, corporate managers are often full of confidence and never doubt or deny the continued existence of their old systems.They take safety as the premise, use the constant to adapt to the situation as a strategy, use their existing experience to tailor things, think about problems, and deal with things without breaking through the shackles of narrow thinking.Because of sticking to the rules, the former glory of the enterprise has slowly degenerated into an obstacle on the road to survival, and has become a terrible organizational inertia.

I once saw a large company recruiting. The company planned to recruit 25 new employees. The company's recruitment system clearly stipulated that only those who scored in the top 25 cultural examinations were eligible to be admitted.There is a candidate with good character and personality, and has rich relationship resources, which can bring greater new business development opportunities to the company.But his recruitment test results were not satisfactory, ranking 26th.Faced with this situation, the company was confused: should it admit him or abandon him?The company's leadership weighed it over and over again, and finally decided to reluctantly give up.There is only one reason: the company's recruitment rules and regulations cannot be violated, this is the company's "iron discipline"!
However, the company's behavior has aroused doubts from many people in the society.What is the company's "iron discipline"?Iron discipline should meet at least two basic conditions.The first is the timeliness of the system, which means that the system must meet the development requirements of the enterprise to keep pace with the times, and meet the company's response to horizontal competition and the current market situation; secondly, the forward-looking nature of the system. Able to lead the enterprise to go ahead of other enterprises and develop in line with the trend of the times.If the company system cannot lead the enterprise to accelerate development, or even lag behind the trend of development, then such a system should have been shelved long ago.

It can be said that timeliness and forward-looking are the indispensable characteristics of the enterprise system and the foundation of its life.In order for the enterprise to truly have "iron discipline", the leaders of the enterprise must promptly and comprehensively sort out and revise all the rules and regulations that are not time-sensitive and forward-looking, so that the enterprise can develop in an advanced and scientific direction.In the case of this company's recruitment, it should be the fault of the company's managers, and the recruitment system should be continuously improved, so as not to let the company pass by the truly outstanding talents.

The market economy and globalization require entrepreneurs to be open-minded in all aspects, have a global vision, start from the development of things and interact with each other, inter-connect multi-variable and complex content, break the shackles of traditional concepts, treat experience correctly, use experience scientifically, Only in this way can we become an excellent leader in the new era.

(End of this chapter)