How can I have my own methodology when working in a small factory?

Students working in small factories always envy those working in large factories for having their own methodologies. Although they are versatile in small factories, they have no competitiveness. How can they form their own methodology and improve their competitiveness?

Students who work in small factories always can’t help but complain about themselves: Although they are versatile, they feel that they have no competitiveness.

Even if my classmates in big companies joke that they are just screws in the company, at least they have a better environment, more resources, higher salary, and have seen the world. More importantly, even if they are just screws in the company, at least they have professional skills in some aspects.

Students working in small factories envy their classmates working in large factories, learn the so-called large factory methodologies from them, and then turn around and apply them in their own small factories, hoping that a miracle will happen.

Students from large companies also think that if they want to start a business or join a startup in the future, wouldn’t that be a dimensionality reduction attack?

No matter what kind of idea it is, the final result is usually not very good.

In my opinion, there are three pitfalls of working in a small factory: few resources, poor allocation, and chaotic mechanisms.

These three pitfalls exist naturally. If you cannot change your mindset, you will not be able to achieve the desired results at work. Let's talk about them one by one.

01 Large factories have to choose their resources, small factories have to find their resources

I mentioned before that I used to work for a big boss. Because of my position and the large number of college student users I have, I usually have no shortage of so-called business cooperation resources.

These resources come from other companies, other departments, or some senior executive friends in the group. They will always introduce cooperation opportunities to you, so the resources are particularly concentrated and large in scale.

All I have to do is just screen out reliable resources to cooperate with.

When starting your own business or joining a startup, you often don’t have the resources and need to bring your own resources or have the ability to create resources.

Why do some startups offer higher salaries than large companies when recruiting? Part of the reason is that they pay for the value of the resources behind the candidate.

This also explains why some people from big companies who parachuted into startups feel out of place, or even have high expectations but low skills. This is because they are used to doing things based on resource allocation. When there are no resources, they are at a loss.

There is a huge gap between large companies and startups: a considerable part of the work in startups is to create resource conditions for the company.

So is the problem of scarce resources really unsolvable? Not really. To talk about resources, let’s start with the concept of resources.

What are resources?

When we talk about resources, we generally refer to business resources.

Business resources refer to various tangible and intangible assets and their combinations that have commercial value, including individuals.

So what are they specifically? Guests, venues, materials, skilled members, sponsors, media communications, professional training, funds, partner organizations, media, volunteers, executive staff, time, budget, etc. These are all resources.

So what should we pay attention to when looking for resources?

First, pay attention to the purpose of resources.

Many people complain that they can't find resources. Often it's not that they can't find them, but that they don't have a clear purpose. After all, as long as resources exist, they will be used. If you don't use them, others will use them.

Resources will not tell you that they will just lie there and tell you that they are your resources and are available whenever you need them.

To give another example, if you work for a long time, you will always meet some people who chat with you, and then politely tell you that there is a chance to cooperate, and then there is no follow-up. Even if you run your own media, you will receive some inexplicable information seeking cooperation in the background.

Do you not want to cooperate? Obviously not. Putting aside the interests, just looking at the content, you don't know why he wants to contact you?

If you want to acquire resources, at least make it clear what they are for.

Secondly, it is the resource cooperation model.

Spending money to buy resources is a capability unique to large companies. Small companies often have very limited budgets and not much room to spend money to buy resources, so they have to develop different resource cooperation models to obtain resources.

The following are some common modes:

The first one: resource replacement

It usually occurs between two or more parties, and usually means exchanging something useless to oneself for resources owned by the other party that are beneficial to oneself.

For example, some small companies will exchange their inventory for a sponsor booth at a high-quality conference. Large companies sometimes also use some small peripherals to organize activities for some partners to help promote themselves.

The second type: resource integration

In the context of small companies, it can be understood as a makeshift team. By combining two or more makeshift teams, new advantages can be combined to raise the scale and level of resources to a higher level, and then use this as a basis to leverage larger-scale cooperation.

The third type: combination of virtual and real

The "virtual" here does not mean nonsense, but rather discounts part of the future expectations into current resources for supplementary calculations.

For example, there is a situation where we need to use a venue with a higher budget. What should we do?

You can talk to the other party about paying part of the amount, and for the other part, you can provide some solutions based on their needs, such as directing traffic to their venue, or if the activity involves conversions, you can let the other party participate in the profit sharing.

Finally, be intentional about resource management.

If you are in a small company and don’t pay attention to resource management, it will still be very hard in the end. Because you have to "reload" every time, and you have to search and filter through a lot of unreliable resources again and again. This repetitive and worthless workload will overwhelm you.

It is important to remember that after any business activity, enterprises must remember to evaluate, screen, store, maintain and manage high-quality resources. The same is true for individuals. Only by using reliable resources can reliable results be achieved.

02 Expecting the company to give you an ideal configuration is doomed to disappointment

If we insist on saying that the world is a huge makeshift team, then although not everyone in a large company is an elite, at least the team is complete. Small companies, on the other hand, don’t even have a complete team, and even the available talent is very limited.

I haven't served many companies, but I have some small and medium-sized enterprise clients. The bosses of these companies all told me that if there is someone who can bring income to the company, the salary is not a problem.

Ideals are full, but reality is skinny.

Even if such people exist, they will generally choose to leverage larger and better platforms to amplify their capabilities and produce more abundant results, or choose to create their own results. They basically will not come to small companies.

If you want to convince people to come, you either have to paint a good picture or give them more money than they expect.

Even if the other party is capable, it takes time to get used to the operating system of a small company, and most bosses cannot afford the time and money costs of this adjustment. So essentially, the boss does not have the money to hire better people (saying this will indeed offend some bosses).

In business, the key is that income should be greater than cost, so the remaining people recruited are actually considered by the boss as costs slightly lower than income. These people may not meet the boss's requirements, but they can be used. If they are more expensive, it will exceed the budget.

Only companies that make a lot of money, such as ByteDance, will choose to "over-allocate" when recruiting. In a startup, two members will receive the salary of 1.5 employees and do the work of 3-6 people.

In this case, you are in a small factory and you are faced with an incomplete team and members with low skills. What should you do if you are the manager of the team?

The answer is to grasp the core first, intervene in the key parts, and don’t expect too much from other parts.

Here is a recent example:

I found that my partner had some problems in communicating with the client's classmate who was responsible for private domain traffic.

From her perspective, she thought that the SOP and content materials that should be given were all given. However, the student in charge of the private domain thought that the materials were too empty, saying that he couldn't understand them and didn't know how to implement them (this student had almost no experience in private domain operations). In addition, many things were rushed on a temporary basis, so the whole collaboration process was a bit painful.

During the project meeting, I intervened a little. I did the following:

1. First, take stock of the existing work lines, main actions and processes of private domain students.

2. Find out where she is stuck in the action, what her motivation, expected state or unmet needs are.

3. Which ones can be adjusted later to meet her needs, and which ones require her to adjust her expectations now and accept the existing optimal solution.

4. Finally, make a confirmation action, including who to support, who will support, how to support, when to start pushing forward after getting support, and when to give feedback.

The collaboration process here is generally stuck in two stages: expression at work and understanding at work. But this is actually influenced to a certain extent by work style and some age differences.

There is a type of people who must have a very clear work plan and then execute it step by step. Another type of people cannot be comprehensive and watertight in the initial planning, so they often take action first and then gradually expand it. But in reality, in startups, the latter situation is often more common.

So there are two key points in my approach here.

The first key: first sort out the existing things that have been clarified, make them clear, and ensure their smoothness and execution (sort out the main line clearly, and then make clear direction adjustments).

The second key: When there are no clearer answers or better solutions for other parts, execute them according to the current best solution first (reduce hesitation and controversy, and clarify current expectations).

After dealing with the bottleneck issues in the collaboration, I communicated with the girl I was working with, adjusted her expectations (I didn’t expect her to write her own copy), and detailed the content that needed to be given. After that, things went smoothly.

In this process, you can see that my logic is as follows:

First, I usually choose to clarify the core deliverables and delivery standards of my work, and then see who will collaborate with me and who is responsible for each part.

Secondly, I check whether the content they deliver meets my requirements and standards. If it is not up to standard, but not a problem of principle, I will not criticize them directly, but habitually dig into their "brain circuits" and ask questions to see what logic they use to hand over such a thing to me, and I must get the answer here.

Finally, eliminate obstacles in understanding. Everyone has different working styles or habits, and there will be deviations in understanding the same thing. Therefore, after understanding the previous part of the "brain circuit", we must further explore the unmet demands of team members. Give support when it is necessary, and adjust expectations when it is necessary.

03 All mechanisms must grow in the right soil

Like all my classmates who work in large companies, I also went through some painful periods after leaving a relatively formal company. Because I had seen too many top-level designs and various good systems before, I thought I had more advantages in startups, but the reality taught me a lesson.

In the early days, I was eager to sort out a complete operating system for the company, so I adjusted the system and changed the organizational structure. In the end, the team complained bitterly, not only failed to achieve the expected efficiency improvement, but also disrupted the rhythm of some projects.

Fortunately, as my experience grows, I know that different systems should be adapted at different stages, and I can better understand why many companies make decisions from their perspectives.

For example, many SaaS service providers believe that they have more powerful functions and more professional personnel, so why is it still so difficult to win customers? The reason behind this is that they lack respect for the market.

What does it mean?

Enterprises cannot change their SaaS software service providers at will, because the entire enterprise management method is built on these software. Once they change directly, it means changing the workflow. And this process must have a business stall period, adaptation period, usage period, and operation period. The losses during this period are difficult to estimate, which is why it is difficult to win.

When I served corporate clients in my previous company, I was eager to introduce our powerful and comprehensive functions at the beginning, but I found that the effect was not good. Later, I paid special attention to understanding the core demands of the other party first, and then focusing on introducing the functions linked to these demands to arouse their interest. Then I made little adjustments based on their work processes and gave them clear expectations, and then things went smoothly.

Going back to promoting the construction of mechanisms in small companies, the same logic applies.

Don't try to improve a person who scores 60 points to 90 points by adjusting the mechanism all at once. Instead, make adjustments gradually and rhythmically from the local to the overall.

During this process, some people may leave because they cannot stand the adjustment, and some people may need to be recruited to fill the positions in time. The important thing is to make the new mechanism work in a rhythmic way.

The three biggest pitfalls of working in a small company: limited resources, poor allocation, and chaotic mechanisms.

Faced with scarce resources: we must clarify the purpose of resources, cooperation model, and pay attention to resource management.

When facing poor configuration: learn to focus on the key points and don’t have too many excessive expectations.

When faced with chaotic mechanisms: do not apply them mechanically, but make adjustments rhythmically from the details to the whole.

I hope today’s content is helpful to you.