When the economy is in a downturn, what should bosses focus on?

The economic downturn is an overall phenomenon. Everyone will be affected to some extent, but the impact varies. Some people can even take advantage of it to have a positive impact. Why? This article will analyze it. Please take a look if you need it.

I just finished a project recently and have more time. I will write more of my thoughts and hope they can be helpful to you.

The previous article about entrepreneurs creating their own media received a lot of resonance and feedback from entrepreneurs.

People gradually realize that it is necessary to measure the investment-output ratio of "starting your own media" and then ask themselves "What do I do? What am I best at? What should I do most?" The topic of what a boss should do most sounds a bit silly. Many articles, textbooks and courses are talking about: CEOs only have three things to do: find people, find money and find direction. This is true, but which CEO of an early-stage company doesn't personally engage in business? Doesn't he personally engage in product development? Doesn't he personally engage in marketing?

There is a joke that goes like this: "Our company provides one-stop meticulous service! Deal! Hello! I am the dragon~~~~~~~" This is the current situation of most early-stage companies.

What should this dragon catch in 2024?

Whether it is a small start-up or a large enterprise, when facing downturn and chaos, they are anxious. Which one should I want first? Which one is the most urgent? Everyone is faced with rethinking the question of "what is the core and how to do it right?"

Being a boss is hard. On the one hand, you are under tremendous pressure to perform well, and on the other hand, you have to balance your own investment, especially the investment of time and energy.

But people have a problem. When they are in a good mood and in a favorable environment, they can be orderly, sort out priorities, and build spiritual civilization. But when they encounter changes in the external environment, pressure, and downturns, they are often in a hurry and grab whatever they see. As the saying goes, "When you are in a hurry, you will try any possible means."

Regardless of whether you can listen to it or not, and regardless of whether you can wake up a person pretending to be asleep, I want to tell you, as a calm and objective observer and your counselor, the phenomena I see and the suggestions I make:

First of all, the economic downturn is an overall phenomenon. Under this overall phenomenon, everyone will be affected to some extent, but the impact varies. Some people can even take advantage of the opportunity to have a positive impact. Why? Don't just consider the overall situation and ignore the individual . As a participant in a large economic activity, an enterprise must secretly find its own opportunities while dancing with its scale, reduce waste and losses as much as possible, and improve the efficiency of each link. What should we do? What should we focus on?

1. Grab people’s hearts, people’s hearts mean efficiency

In the past, when it came to traffic, many companies said they had fans, customers, and traffic. But looking back, who were the "spectators" or the real "fans"? If a company wants to be efficient, whether it is sales efficiency (external) or management efficiency (internal), the key is whether people's hearts are here.

There are always bosses who say we need to take stock of labor efficiency internally and to look at ROI externally. These words seem concise, but if you think about it carefully, both labor efficiency and ROI are calculation problems. Bosses are still calculating the ratio between "input and output". There is a magical law about this ratio: the more you calculate, the lower its efficiency. Why? Because you are not paying attention.

Just imagine, when you count consumers as numbers and employees as heads, don’t consumers and employees have any sense? Some inefficiencies are not there from the beginning. Consumers want to buy things properly and employees want to work well. But when consumers find that there are too many routines and they are not sincere, and employees find that they do not agree with the direction of the company, the efficiency will be reduced.

True efficiency comes from consistent recognition from top to bottom, both inside and outside.

This recognition is not only in terms of reason, but also in terms of value and emotion. In the past, when the economy and traffic were booming, people could live without this recognition and grow. The situation was good and everyone could make money and grow.

But now is different from the past. If you don’t explain clearly to consumers/customers and don’t build real trust, and just do some superficial advertising and traffic, it will not make much sense, because they have too many choices. If you don’t form a real direction with employees, executives and various internal relationships of the company, and you don’t work in the same direction, they really don’t know what you want.

We have been working on brand axis alignment within many companies and have discovered that a company has to go through a lot of trouble to really explain what it does, its business model, and its annual priorities.

• Are the mission, vision and values ​​aligned? Are they really aligned internally and externally?
• Are the business model and business focus aligned? Have they been truly understood and received internally and externally?
• Are your strategies, actions, and steps aligned? Do you really know what you are doing internally and externally?

How to align information with internal and external parties? This is not a matter of traffic, nor is it a matter of influence, nor is it even a matter of management. The key point of this matter is: people's hearts. Can we really get the result of "people's hearts" under the path of value, pursuit, highlights, logic, methods, and rules? This is the core of building real enterprise efficiency.

How much does this cost? In my opinion, it doesn't cost any money at all. It just requires some trust and some thought.

But in this case, no matter how hard you shout, you can't wake up the person who is pretending to be asleep.

2. Grasp the brand, the brand is the idea

I said that brand is a concept , you may not believe it, let me give you an example:

Have you all read Journey to the West? If we regard Tang Seng's journey to the West to seek Buddhist scriptures as a business venture, how many problems did he encounter? Were the difficulties difficult? In the process, he had to appease the team, defeat the monsters, beg for alms on an empty stomach, and travel day and night. Imagine that now, you are Tang Seng, and your team is the team that went to the West.

Bajie said: I am starving. Sun Wukong said: This is too slow. I might as well carry you to the west on my back. It would save me the trouble. Sha Seng said: Why do you always let me carry the luggage? Why don't they do it? Passerby A said: This group is probably scammers. This month we have encountered the eighth wave of monks like this. They are here to cheat people out of their money.

At this time the monster jumped out and said: You worked so hard to get that little bit of food, why don’t you merge with me and we get married, then you won’t have to worry about food and drink in the future.

If you were Tang Seng, what would you do?

In the past, I have imagined countless times that when I was Tang Seng, and encountered everything he encountered, I honestly felt that Tang Seng's concentration, perseverance, and strategic ability were unmatched, and I was ashamed of myself. Because any difficulty in the middle might have caused my management to go astray.

Is Tang Seng really a very capable leader?

Of course not. We all knew when we were little that he was not as good as Wukong in terms of martial arts, not as strong as Sha Wujing in terms of physical strength, and not as flexible as Zhu Bajie. So why can Tang Seng lead this cause to success, while the others cannot?

Because Tang Seng has clear ideas.

Throughout the entire Journey to the West, although Tang Seng doesn’t talk much, what are the two most frequently spoken sentences? “Amitabha, I came from the Tang Dynasty in the East, and I am going to the West to worship Buddha and seek scriptures.” “Don’t be rude!” These two sentences are the brand of the Journey to the West team. As the boss and CEO, Tang Seng is the most clear and thorough in implementing this. All of his management ideas are also based on this point.

"I came from the Tang Dynasty in the East" is about where we come from. This is the mission of the enterprise!

"Go to the West to worship Buddha and seek scriptures" is about where we are going. This is the vision of the company!

To save all living beings, so "don't be rude", this is about: what principles do we abide by. This is the value of the company!

Throughout the play, have you ever seen Tang Seng deviate from these three things? As long as you hold on to these three things and don’t deviate, you will find that it is useless for the other three team members to make a scene, for passers-by to laugh at you, and even for demons and monsters to attack you. In the end, the “board of directors” and “investors” (bodhisattvas of all kinds), as well as “loyal consumers” (the sentient beings who give them vegetarian food) will support this team with a clear brand.

Many bosses learn management today, set up an organization tomorrow, and manage operations the day after tomorrow. As a result, their overall thinking is chaotic. Chaotic thinking means chaotic enterprises. Chaos is the real waste.

3. Pay attention to details, details are money

Last year, I heard Huawei's Vice President of Strategy share this view at a closed-door event, which left a deep impression on me. He said: Why couldn't our (Chinese) enterprises produce high-tech in the past? Those high-tech bottlenecks. Is it really because we don't have enough ability or intelligence? No, it's because we don't care about details and quality based on details. Real high-tech is not about high IQ or high technical content, but about high quality in every detail.

The same principle applies to management and operations.

In the period of rapid development, enterprises tend to work hard and fast, and are used to "muddling through" and just being okay. I suggest you get the word "granularity" by heart. From now on, focus on the details of operations and things with finer granularity. Because the money and growth you want are all in the details.

What are details?

Details can be every word in the customer service interface in daily operations, damage testing of product packaging during transportation, a small adjustment during product development, or even a review and adjustment of the team meeting process. Although companies have always needed to pay attention to these details, it is inevitable that they will not be able to take care of them during the high-profile period. This year is a good opportunity to rethink along the main axis of the brand and the vein of corporate management.

Once you start to calm down and think about it, you will be surprised how much there is to do!

If you do what you need to do, opportunities and growth will come. Trust me.

I have written so much, but I don’t know how many people will really read it seriously. I also don’t know if there are still managers who can calm down and think systematically in this noisy and bustling video era.

Author: Li Qian; WeChat public account: Li Qian talks about brands