From fuzzy management to performanceism: entanglement in the world, changing fate against the sky

　　The setting sun in the fifteenth year of Wanli

　　In the late autumn and early winter of the 14th year of Wanli (1586), with the arrival of cold weather in the north, Comrade Zhu Yijun, chairman and CEO of the Ming Empire, also dropped to a freezing point. So he started a gamble strike on the grounds that the dragon's body was not safe. The target of the struggle was the civil servant moral system established by the late emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Unexpectedly, I gambled for 28 years.

　　In the 17th year of Wanli (1589), Luo Yuren, a department-level cadre in the Dali Temple of the Supreme Court of the Ming Dynasty, took advantage of the wine and made a bold decision to write a copy of "Wine, Sex, Finance and Wealth" and pointed out without mercy that the odor of CEO Comrade Zhu Yijun was caused by the four words "Wine, Sex, Finance and Wealth", which was simply a naked swearing!

　　After receiving this report, Comrade Zhu Yijun was so angry that he vomited blood. He was worried that the impact would be too bad, so he secretly locked the report in the drawer. After enduring for 10 days, he was so angry that he asked the Secretary-General of the Cabinet, Shen Shixing, to discuss what crimes to punish Luo Yuren. As a result, Shen Shi turned big things into small things, and he ordered Luo Yuren to resign.

　　Luo Yuren established the image of a moral model official with his glorious deeds of daring to rebel against the dragon scale. In fact, it was not a big news for cadres of the Ming Dynasty to scold the supreme leader. As early as the 45th year of Jiajing, Hai Rui said in the "Public Security Memorial": "Your Majesty has been unrighteous for a long time" - You will never be the one in the world!

　　It can be seen that it became a fashion trend for cadres in the Ming Dynasty to scold their leaders. Every time they scolded them, morality was paramount and public opinion was surging. During the Wanli period, Comrade Zhu Yijun simply adopted the ostrich tactic and hid in the deep palace, without seeing it.

　　However, the magic is that the empire did not collapse during the 28 years of the CEO's strike. The root of this is that the empire relies on a civil servant moral system to maintain operation, not on the CEO's personal leadership.

　　I remember that in the classroom at Fudan University, my favorite course was "National Theory" taught by Professor Chen Mingming. Still remember a mantra:

　　"The imperial power does not fall under the county, but only the clans are under the county. All clans are autonomous, and autonomy depends on ethics. Ethics come from gentry, and gentry connects with China."

　　In other words, the management model of the feudal dynasty not only operated by high-rise buildings on the moral system of civil officials, but also as grassroots county-level governance, it also relied on the ethical system of "monarch, minister, minister, father, son and son" to be autonomous . There are clans and gentry who preside over daily affairs and do not require national intervention at all.

　　The advantage of taking morality and ethics as the fundamental law of the management system is that it can maintain the stability of rule in accordance with the inertia and solidified thinking after domestication. The disadvantage is that this is a vague management system that lacks both the legal spirit for qualitative description and the digital management for quantitative statistics.

　　In this way, the number of population, army, and food in the country is all vague; the size of the country's territory is also vague. Therefore, there is a saying in "National Theory": "Traditional countries have borders but no boundaries." What’s more serious is that the national rules and regulations and laws and regulations are also vague or missing. If moral models are used to replace the legal system, there is too much room for operation, which means there is no rules.

　　In the 15th Year of Wanli, Mr. Huang Renyu pointed out that the empire relies on moral rule without digital management, and everything operates in an inefficient or ineffective way. When natural disasters and man-made disasters occur internally, or the external environment is violently turbulent, and the empire cannot efficiently coordinate and dispatch national forces to deal with them, the country will perish.

　　02 The glory of the ten blue blood masters

　　In 1945, the end of World War II, Colonel Charles Thornton, who had just retired from the US Air Force, came to Ford Motor Company for the first time and was immediately shocked by the magnificent factory area in front of him! The factory is located on the banks of the Luzhi River, covering an area of ​​330 acres. More than 90 giant factories are like a group of steel monsters. The towering chimneys roll in the clouds, covering the sky and the sun.

　　There was no green environmental protection concept at that time, and Colonel Thornton thought this was the battlefield for men, which was simply too cool! Immediately decided to lead the "Blue Blood Ten" team to join Ford Motor Company.

　　On the first day after Thornton took office as Ford president, he brought the treasurer over and asked about the company's profit data last year. As a result, the financial supervisor asked Thornton tentatively: "How much profit do you think you should make?"

　　Thornton was inexplicably surprised and asked, "What does it mean?" The treasurer said, "We will write as much as the leader needs to make!" Thornton's eyes turned black, and ten thousand alpacas were rushing in his heart.

　　This familiar taste and familiar recipe reminded him of the glorious years before...

　　On the eve of World War II, when Charles Thornton joined the US Air Force, he was surprised to find that the US Air Force system did not have accurate digital management. How many aircraft, parts, pilots and maintenance personnel are all a mystery. Every time the Air Force Headquarters meets, more than 10 departments claim to have mastered the data and information, but everyone's data is not up to par with it, and most of the time they are quarreling with who has the more correct numbers.

　　How can we fight in such a chaotic state? The times create heroes.

　　Charles Thornton led the establishment of the Statistical Control Office and recruited a group of elites from Harvard University, including 10 of the most powerful digital heroes, and later was hailed as the "Ten Blue Blooded Ten". By the end of World War II, Thornton had gathered more than 3,000 outstanding officers and 15,000 logistics personnel who had been specially trained at Harvard University, as well as 66 institutions all over the world. They used digital management unprecedentedly to become the computing and analytical brain of the US Air Force (there was no computer at that time).

　　Using this digital system, they threw 2057244 million tons of bombs at the enemy in air combat and fired 459.75 million rounds of gunfires at Germany, Italy and Japan.

　　They calculated that for the plan to bomb Japanese territory, the B-17 and B-24 bombers coordinated operations to drop 28 million tons of bombs, which would take about 90,000 hours; if the B-29 bomber was used, it would only cost 15,000 hours, and it would save 250 million gallons of gasoline a year and reduce the casualty rate by 70%.

　　After calculations, they found the most efficient way to transport 100,000 tons of arms from San Francisco to Australia. They found that 10,022 aircraft, plus 120,765 aviation crew members, can more efficiently complete the work currently done by 44 ships and 3,200 sailors.

　　They saved the US Air Force several billion dollars in costs and improved combat efficiency by more than a hundred times, opening a new era of digital management for the modern army!

　　Before them, Harvard was not a top-notch university; their success made Harvard Business School famous!

　　Thornton's thoughts returned to reality. The words of Ford's treasurer made him realize that he and the "Blue Blood Ten" team have ushered in a new mission to change the world - they want to introduce digital management into Ford Motor Company, and start the digital revolution of modern enterprise management!

　　Later, members of the Blue Blood Ten Team went their separate ways and each achieved success. The second-ranked person, Robert McNamara, also served as the US Secretary of Defense, and controlled the Vietnam War.

　　The last member of the Ten Great Deals to Leave Ford was Iowa Randy. He worked at Ford for 37 years, managed Ford using accounting analysis methods, and trained a large number of outstanding talents, making Ford the cradle of financial leaders.

　　By the 1980s, about 250 Ford executives had been poached to other American companies to serve as vice president or above. From the 1950s to the 1980s, as many as 16 Ford managers went directly to other major companies to serve as presidents.

　　In short, the Blue Blood Ten not only saved the recession of Ford's career, but also set a precedent for scientific management of modern enterprises around the world and promoted the most amazing economic growth cycle in American history.

　　03 Digital Heroes and Digital Religion

　　Randy retired from Ford's board in 1985, marking the end of a great era. Ford then found that one of Randy's biggest professional legacies was that he trained 14,000 financial personnel for Ford, which scared Ford so much that he quickly laid off half of the people.

　　The believers of the Ten Blue Bloods are spread throughout the American business community. They spread digital worship and financial control like religion, and have formed a unique power organization in many large companies - the Ford Gang. They have established models such as accounting systems, financial controls, budget compilation, production progress, organizational charts, cost and pricing research, and market research, which are the basic elements of modern enterprise management.

　　When these guys in suits and tie questioned the production managers wearing greasy work clothes, they didn't talk about favors, but only asked about data, cost, inventory, gross profit... every screw has to squeeze a few cents of profit.

　　David Coins, the president of Xerox, a Fortune 500 company, recalled gritting his teeth: "These eager Ford Gangs have obvious ambitions, but they are not people who work on copiers. What they know is that they think they can manage any company's systems, whether the company produces cars, bottle caps or copiers, their language is nonsense for financial freaks."

　　Why does David Coins "hate" the Ford Gang so much? Because success is Xiao He, and failure is Xiao He.

　　The digital management of the Blue Blood Ten Greatest People allowed early American companies to quickly liberate from the inefficient and chaotic quagmire, creating a miracle of prosperity and takeoff; the later Ford Gang developed financial analysis and control to a religious level, hindering the development of many companies, including Xerox, and putting them at a disadvantage in international competition and being trampled on the ground by their Japanese counterparts.

　　Why is this happening? For example: In the eyes of Bear in "Survival of the Wild", everything is only calories; in the eyes of the Ford Gang, everything is numbers. People who only stare at calories and have no time to appreciate food and scenery; people who only have finance and numbers in their eyes cannot understand human nature, the art of management and the soul of products. When all business elements are transformed into cold numbers, they will break away from the market and customers, turning corporate management into digital games and paper talks.

　　Xerox's financial department has the ultimate decision-making power of the company. All judgments and product development for the market need to be based on the financial personnel's calculations. Finance is often confused about how to save costs and improve efficiency. The usual debate is "how many angels can be accommodated on a needle to dance". The marketing department is busy fighting with financial personnel every day, and the company lacks long-term vision and strategic planning.

　　The final result is that Xerox occupied 80% of the market share in the 1970s, and later dropped to less than 50%, causing an existential crisis, which is a masterpiece of financial personnel and digital worship.

　　The Ming Dynasty in China relies on ethical and moral systems to manage the country, and the Ten Blue Bloods used digital analysis and financial means to control enterprises. The former is the extreme of fuzzy management, and the latter is the extreme of quantitative management.

　　The name of the Blue Blood Ten Masters is now forgotten by many people, mainly because of financial control and digital worship, which cannot adapt to the needs of modern enterprise management. Management is both a technology and an art. It is a combination of rationality and sensibility. Digital management and financial analysis can only be used as tools. The core driving force for corporate development is efficient organization and talent echelon. In the final analysis, it is still a "people"!

　　04The merits and demerits of performanceism

　　The vague moral management system of the Ming Dynasty was completely thrown into the dust of history. Digital management in the West has become the mainstream in the world in modern times.

　　Based on digital management and quantitative evaluation, HP in the United States took the lead in creating a performance management model, and was later scrambled to learn from companies around the world.

　　When American companies were ravaged by Japanese companies due to digital worship, Japanese companies were also brought into the ditch by American companies' performanceism.

　　In 2006, Sony's managing director Tianwai Shilang retired from Sony, which had been struggling for 40 years, and wrote an article "Performance Destroys Sony", which caused an uproar in the management industry. The influence of that round of controversy among hundreds of schools of thought has remained in the past.

　　Sony founder Izumi Dao famous quote: "The reward for work is work." In the era of Izumi Dao, many people worked hard to pursue the joy of work, which resulted in the "passion group". Employees are driven by their inner self to exert creativity, thus giving birth to many world-first technologies and products, and achieving Sony's king status.

　　Starting around 1995, Sony gradually implemented performanceism, established special institutions, formulated very detailed evaluation standards, and determined compensation based on the evaluation of each person. However, after the implementation of performanceism, internal driving became external driving, employees gradually lost their enthusiasm for work, and the "passion group" disappeared.

　　To cope with performance appraisal, employees tend to set low goals, which also makes the spirit of challenge disappear. Moreover, the company has spent a lot of energy and time on quantifying various tasks to count performance, but it is perfunctory in real work and has a tendency to put the cart before the horse.

　　We all know that performance management has many disadvantages, but for half a century, we have not found a better means than performance management. In fact, although the financial control of Lanxue Ten Masters and the performance appraisal of modern enterprises both emphasize digital and quantitative indicators, there are essential differences.

　　The digital analysis and financial control pursued by Blue Blood Ten Masters is the top-down control of all aspects of cost, efficiency, profit, organization, personnel, production, and process. Employees only passively accept monitoring and execute according to the order. In fact, it is an external driving force and spur, depriving employees of their subjective initiative and creativity, suppressing the development of human nature, causing enterprises and organizations to become rigid , and eventually being eliminated by market competition.

　　The progress of performance management is to allow employees to participate in management, to participate in the formulation of goals, indicators, plans and tasks, so that everyone knows the goals and mission, and fully mobilizes employees' enthusiasm and creativity. It actually belongs to the combination of internal driving and external whip. Among them, KPI is suitable for mature process and operational positions; OKR is suitable for R&D and innovation positions.

　　First-class talents can be self-driven and do not require performance management, but such talents only account for about 5%; for ordinary people who account for 95%, performance management is a necessary management method. Due to the limitations of their own knowledge system, many companies' senior management and HR often talk about performance management without the modern enterprise management structure, so it is always difficult to overcome the disadvantages.

　　We should be clear that modern enterprise management is very complex, including a complete set of scientific management structures such as vision, mission, core values, strategic planning, performance management, planning and task system, organizational structure, business processes, talent echelons, job promotion, learning and growth. Performance management is just one link, and the scientific management system requires close cooperation among all parts to operate. "One move to fight the sky" does not exist.

　　In 2019, Jack Ma, who was in his prime, announced his retirement. He said: "What I am most proud of for Alibaba is not the business model, but the development of our talent echelon, organizational construction, and corporate culture today... If I were the first generation, our fifth generation leadership echelon has been completed."

　　Alibaba's 361 performance appraisal and elimination mechanism has not hindered the company's development. Because in Alibaba's modern scientific management structure, performance appraisal will maximize the positive effects and minimize the side effects.