In the past few years, three of my best friends started several startup projects, I was honored to be part of these projects, as a consultant to help them set up their management framework - -- an area I am very interested at. Now it's a good time to share the experiences and my understanding about enterprise management.
Mission vs Vision vs Strategy
The very first few questions that came to them were: how do they inspire all staff (including themselves) to pursue something uncertain with constant devotion? How do they build consensus among three of themselves and focus in the same direction without being distracted? How do they explain to all team members what were they doing? Where are they heading? And how do they get there?
Mission & Vision
Mission answers the question: what are we doing now? It shows why we come to work every day, without a mission, we do not know which things we should focus on now.
Vision answers the question: where are we heading to? It shows what the future looks like as we fulfill our mission.
Mission and Vision can form one statement.The mission comes first and then ends with Vision.
The following is the statement from one of my friends' projects:
We're dedicated to building an online service to provide small size decorating goods to white-collar women to help them to make their working and living environment more comfortable.
The Mission should be quite challenge-able, while the Vision should be something hard to achieve. Otherwise, it's unable to motivate the whole enterprise constantly over a long time and unable to point in the direction where they're heading.
The Mission and Vision statement needs to be redefined if it's no longer able to guide the enterprise.
The following was Alibaba's Mission and Vision statements when it was founded:
Mission - "Make it easy to do business anywhere."
Vision - "Last 80 years and become one of the top 10 websites in the world."
Then, in 2010, they refined their Mission and Vision statements when they found they were not able to guide and cover the whole group's business.
Mission -"Rebuild a transparent, open, shared, and responsible business civilization."
Vision -"Become the number 1 data sharing platform, the happiest enterprise, and last for 102 years."
An enterprise is only one type of organization, and each organization should have a Mission and Vision.
Following is the statement from Communist Party of China (CPC) under its new leadership:
"Upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics, in order to become a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way and realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation."
Strategy
Strategy answers the question: how do we get from Mission to Vision gradually? There should be a series of strategies, one after another, moving the enterprise closer to its vision, and the most important one is the current strategy.
A strategy has the following aspects.
1 - Goals
What are the specific goals the enterprise wants to achieve in a certain time period?
2 - Strategy Code
A simple sentence that is easy to remember, so as to let employees, partners/shareholders and clients get the correct impression and understand how the enterprise is moving forward.
"Mobile first, Cloud first!" from Microsoft announced by their new CEO Satya Nadella in 2014[1].
“Five-In-One” and “Four-Pronged Comprehensive" strategy - from CPC to realize Chinese Dream[2].
3 - Strategic, Tactical, Operational Plan
This answers the "how" at different levels.
The strategic plan is very general high-level plan at the whole enterprise level, the tactical plan is more detailed mid-level plan and can be at the department level, business line level, or product level,and the operational plan is the lowest level that only needs to cover the very key areas at the operation layer that matter from a strategic view.
4 - Organizational Restructuring and Key Position Appointments
After having a new way (Strategy) to play the game, we need to adjust the organizational structure as well as to appoint the key positions. How the core team models the organizational structure shows which areas they will cover, and the appointments for key positions are very crucial to the success of the strategy.
5 - Motivation
When my friends tried to persuade themselves at the very beginning, why we wanted to spend our time in a seemingly endless struggle in an unknown world – at the cost of spending less time with my family and risk of failure – They asked themselves many times: were we looking to make a lot of money? Yes, perhaps the first few times, but it's not really all about money. It's something much bigger than money.
I'm working on a legacy and complex software product. I had an experienced colleague working for another team, and I saw he was a great fit for my team which was established to modernize the product. He was persuaded to join my team with the following words:
"Hey, we have been working on this product for several years, and we both know there are so many issues out there.Would you like to join our team to turn this product into a better one in the following 2 or 3 years? Then, we could leave this company with no regrets."
Motivated by Vision alone is not enough; an enterprise needs to define the mechanism to motivate people --- at least to find the good guys and reward them.
Culture (Values) vs Rules
As a newly established team, some of them were not working together all the time, the question was: how can they work collaboratively and smoothly among all the team members with the least effort and least surprise?
People who hold the same values understand each other and can see others in the same way as he expects others to see him.In an ideal world, where people hold the same values, there's no need to set rules.
When I recruit someone for my team, at some point during the interview, I clearly explain to the candidate the values we hold, and then ask him or her whether or not they are willing to hold these same values. I would rather choose someone less skilled for the position instead of someone less compliant to our core values, and I will ask the same questions about their values on the first day of on boarding. I will tell him or her to quit if they are not willing to keep our values, too.
In this way, I can expect the new joiner to work together smoothly with the other team members. If there is a problem, I can talk to him or her if the situation is not aligned with our values, and I can expect very little or no resistance when I ask him to do it another way in the future.
Rules are bottom lines that one needs to obey, and they actually should be the supplement to values instead of the replacement.
When a team is aligned mostly by rules, you have to set up one rule after another in periods of changing circumstances. You'll get more resistance, and then you will lose valuable members.
Enterprise Management Framework
The last question to them was how to design a framework which needed to cover all the aspects of an enterprise (albeit, a micro one), how to get the whole enterprise well organized and be operating properly, including defining and adapting mission, vision, and strategy, and lead the whole enterprise to move forward.
Above is based on Enterprise Management Theory from Legend Holdings (Lenovo's parent group)[3] and refinements according to my friends and my understandings and experiences.
Core Layer
The core layer is the foundation of an enterprise, just like the kernel of the Operation System of your computer; this is where key decisions are being made.
The core team is a small group of staff, who would be board members and C-level officers, just like the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, and the Cabinet of the United States Government.
System and Mechanism is key and the basic principal how this enterprise is set up. For instance, take a startup company. A contract is needed to define what's the founders' rights and responsibilities, how to quit, how to motivate, how to bring in new investors, and so on. Otherwise, the startup may be destroyed in a blink of the eye in the future.
Management Platform
The Management Platform is formed by the middle managers, the business workflows that link all the departments together, and resources like IT systems. It guides the staff in the next layer, offers support, tracks and manages the enterprise's execution.
Operation Layer
It includes the first line teams and equipment who work on the Management Platform to make things happening.
Interaction Layer
The Interaction Layer is the environment where the enterprise operates in, from macro environments like the global/national economic environment to micro-environments like the market condition that the enterprise is targeting. This also includes labor markets where the enterprise is recruiting talent, each of the department should be very familiar with their specific domain.
Ending
Above are many of the management theories and applications I learnt from that experience. It's quite high level in general, but I'll dive into more details for each part in the future.
