Tao Te Ching and Wuwei Management

Chapter 9 2 "The movement of the opposite way": the opposite direction is often the breakthrough
Smart people do not take the usual path, and entrepreneurs must have reverse thinking.

The opposite is the movement of Tao. —— "Tao Te Ching" Chapter 40

The development of things always transforms into its opposite.Therefore, managers must have a kind of reverse thinking, think and observe problems from the opposite direction, and if the front door is blocked, the back door can be used to discover the cause of things.When a decision is faced with a dilemma, if you cannot get rid of the interference of the inherent program or process, it is better to reverse the program or process and think about the problem from the back to the front.

There is a street in Paris where three skilled tailors live.However, because the distance is too close, the competition among the three is very fierce.In order to attract more customers, the three tailors made a fuss on the signboards at their respective entrances.

One day, a tailor put up a sign saying "the best tailor in Paris", which attracted many customers.After seeing this situation, another tailor was not to be outdone, and the next day, he hung a signboard of "The Best Tailor in France" at the door, which also attracted many customers.The third tailor was very distressed. The signs hung by the first two tailors attracted most of the customers. If he couldn’t come up with a better solution, he might become the “tailor with the worst business”.If you put up the signboard of "the best tailor in the world", you will undoubtedly be ridiculed by others and ridiculed by your colleagues.In the end how to do?At this moment, he had an idea, wrote a few words on the signboard with a pen, and hung it up.

The next day, customers flocked to the third tailor's shop. What is the reason?It turned out that he wrote on the sign of the shop that it was "the best tailor in this street".

Ordinary people's thinking is linear thinking, starting from one point of view, and drawing a one-way conclusion, but the third tailor in the example did the opposite. Others started from the "big" place, but the third tailor Make a fuss from the "small" place, so as to be in a superior position in the competition.The way of thinking used by the third tailor is reverse thinking.

Reverse thinking requires people to look at problems not only from one angle and one direction, but also to explore the multiple possibilities of the existence and development of things from different angles.The use of reverse thinking is conducive to changing people's linear cognitive mode, can quickly stimulate people's thinking enthusiasm, and thus greatly improve thinking ability.As an entrepreneur and manager, using reverse thinking can change your behavior and management mode, which is of great benefit to improving management efficiency.In terms of corporate decision-making management, Mengniu's Niu Gensheng successfully embodies the charm of Lao Tzu's decision-making of "the opposite is the way, the weak use the way" with his own practice.

Niu Gensheng, the founder of Mengniu Group, is a legend. In 1999, he founded Mengniu Group, but then its development speed was astonishing. As of 2005, Mengniu's GDP increased by 6 times in 292 years!When Niu Gensheng was awarded CCTV's "Chinese Economic Person of the Year", the judges said humorously: "He is a 'cow', but he ran out of the speed of a rocket!" So how did the "cow" run out of the speed of a rocket?
This is due to Niu Gensheng's unique thinking mode, which is typical reverse thinking.

When Niu Gensheng founded Mengniu Group, he used reverse thinking to put forward the theory of "build the market first, then build the factory" and the cooperation model of virtual alliance.

In 1999, five months after Mengniu was registered, Niu Gensheng raised more than 5 million yuan.

How will Niu Gensheng use the money to start a business?According to the development idea of ​​a general enterprise, first build a factory building, import equipment, produce products, and then advertise and do sales promotion. Only when the products are well-known can they have a market.Niu Gensheng calculated that if he did this, the money might not even be enough to build a factory building and buy equipment.When the product comes out, the day lily is cold, where is the money to develop the market?So he put forward the idea of ​​reverse operation.

Niu Gensheng believes that it is necessary to break the conventional growth path of ordinary enterprises, and he puts forward the concept of "build the market first, and then build the factory".He saw that many enterprises spent huge sums of money to build factories and buy equipment. After the enterprises spared no expense to build factories and introduce equipment, the depreciation of equipment began. A large amount of funds were consumed in fixed asset investment, so enterprises lacked funds to Develop markets and optimize operations.

Niu Gensheng's plan is to use the limited funds for market promotion, and then turn the factories across the country into his own processing workshops.He found that many dairy companies were in a downturn. These companies did not lack factories and production equipment. What they lacked was advanced market development experience and standardized management concepts. These are the advantages of Niu Gensheng and others.The eight cadres who started the business with him have all been engaged in dairy production and operation in Yili for more than ten years. They are very familiar with the context of the dairy market and are proficient in enterprise management.

With the concept in hand, Niu Gensheng and his team began to implement their plan.Niu Gensheng first used more than 300 million yuan for advertising in Hohhot, because Hohhot is not a big city, more than 300 million yuan is enough to cause an overwhelming advertising effect.Almost overnight, many people became aware of "Mengniu".

After Niu Gensheng implemented his idea, a brand-new cooperation model came into being, which he called virtual union.The characteristic of this mode of operation is that it only cooperates with the other party, uses and controls its equipment and personnel, but does not transfer assets.All the equipment of the enterprise is still owned by the enterprise. Niu Gensheng just uses these resources, uses his own management and his own brand to make both parties mutually beneficial.For example, it has jointly developed a series of new products with the Chinese Nutrition Society, and then cooperated with domestic dairy factories to invest in brand, technology, formula, and use trusteeship, contracting, leasing, commissioned production, etc. to brand all products as "Mengniu". brand.In this way, there is less investment and quick results, and you can also create your own crystal brand.

Mengniu's venture capital is only 1000 million yuan. It must be known that the milk industry is a traditional industry that is relatively dependent on resources and capital. If you follow the conventional thinking, Mengniu will face many difficulties in order to develop.However, Niu Gensheng used his superb management experience and business operation methods to operate a capital of nearly 8 million yuan, relying on his unique way of thinking. "Build the market first, then build the factory" is the result of Niu Gensheng's full use of reverse thinking.Create a brand first, create your own market environment first, and then put it into production. This is a thinking mode full of wisdom and experience.Through virtual alliances, Niu Gensheng enables each partner to complement each other's advantages and achieve a win-win situation, thereby obtaining the maximum resource organization ability with limited resource investment.

The way of reverse thinking is by no means a simple "reversal", but a clever decision-making art of seeking progress and turning negatives into positives.Its brilliance is that it is not limited to adverse selection in a straight line, but introspection at multiple levels and perspectives, thus putting forward higher practical requirements for leaders.The decision-making art of reverse thinking requires leaders to look at problems with sharp eyes and quick thinking, capture business opportunities, think reversely and creatively about things, and develop new ideas from realistic trends when making decisions.Others think about how to build a car, but you think about how to take a ride; others think that the road is blocked, but you can see that road construction is just profitable; others think about how to put vegetables in the basket, but you think Thinking about how to sell baskets... thinking determines the way out.With new and distinctive ideas, there will be broad prospects for the enterprise.Although it is contrary to common sense to do the opposite, and requires leaders to have extraordinary courage, as long as you try to figure out the market with your heart, you will have good performance.

(End of this chapter)