After studying Apple, Procter & Gamble, Nike, Disney, etc., we summarized two key words for business management:

Have you ever had this kind of trouble: after a new project has made some progress, you have invested a lot of material, human and financial resources, but the overall effect is still not good? The author of this article answers this question from the two points of "streamlining" and "focusing", hoping to bring you some help.

Many entrepreneurs and managers told me:

After a new project showed some improvement, the company invested a lot of material, human and financial resources to support it, but the overall effect was still not good and the progress became slower and slower.

Why? Too much means too much, and too much means chaos.

There are two things that must be paid attention to in business management: streamlining and focusing.

01

I believe everyone has had this experience:

During the college entrance examination, the teacher repeatedly emphasized that one should write down the steps when answering big questions, because even if the result is wrong, correct steps can still give extra points.

So, even if you have the optimal solution, you will still solve it step by step in order to get points.

I call it "process theory." It infers the process based on the results and overemphasizes the importance of the process.

What's the meaning?

Since it is uncertain which steps will receive points, please describe them in as much detail as possible.

But you will find that some steps are not scored, and you will not get any points if you write them down, and they may even take up the points that can be scored later. This will cause "process overload".

Over-processing means complicating a process that should be simple.

For example, a project that can be solved by 6 people must be assigned 10 people to participate;

A decision that could be made at two levels must be approved by five departments;

The content that can be clearly explained on one page must be described in dozens of pages;

…

This extra part is called redundancy and does not generate any value.

what to do?

Be concise. Take what you can and cut out the rest.

For example, a friend who is a designer was cutting out pictures. I asked him why he cut out the pictures. He said, "You always cut out pictures when you take photos." I asked him why. He said, "It's because there is an unclean background next to it."

In that case, why not just clean up the background before taking the photo?

Cleaning up the background means subtracting the parts that cannot create value.

An interesting phenomenon: big companies are keen on subtraction, while small companies are keen on addition.

Many startups tend to fall into a misunderstanding at the beginning: they always feel that they are lacking everything.

Today there is a lack of products, tomorrow there is a lack of operations, and the day after tomorrow there is a lack of management, so we keep adding staff. Later, when there are enough staff, we keep looking for resources and negotiating cooperation. The organizational system becomes larger and larger, and the company becomes more and more complex.

What's worse, the company does all kinds of projects, doing this today and that tomorrow, but they only try them briefly and keep changing.

The boss of Yuanqi Forest once said: "The fewer resources you have, the easier it is to succeed. The more resources you have, the easier it is to become dependent on others, which makes it harder to succeed."

The success of many large companies lies in their ability to do subtraction.

For example, when the first generation iPhone was released, there was only one physical button on the front of the phone. This was something that many mobile phone manufacturers could not imagine, as they believed that a mobile phone had complex buttons, including at least a dial button, an end button, a menu button, and a return button.

However, I believe there is no need to elaborate on how common touch-screen mobile phones are today.

Similarly, Tesla is also pursuing minimalist design. Not only that, when covering multiple price ranges, Tesla's SKUs are always streamlined.

02

How to simplify? First learn to classify .

Classify and organize the complicated things, then remove the branches and roots and eliminate them.

After Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he used the four-quadrant classification method to drive Apple back to its glory days.

He used a square coordinate axis as the standard, with "consumer-grade" and "professional-grade" on the horizontal axis and "desktop" and "convenient" on the vertical axis. Based on these two classification dimensions, Apple's products are divided into four categories:

Consumer-grade desktop products, such as iMac; consumer-grade portable products, such as iPhone; professional-grade desktop products, such as Power Mac; professional-grade portable products, such as MacBook Pro.

Products outside the classification will be eliminated.

The purpose of classification is to find the main trunk and prune the branches and leaves.

However, many companies have a problem: they can simply classify but fail to grasp the main points.

For example, some e-commerce stores divide their products into four series: spring, summer, autumn and winter. This seems fine. But the problem is that there are too many types of products. The winter series includes down jackets, cotton coats, sweaters, scarves, pants, etc., and even some outdated inventory from the previous year is included. It is difficult for consumers to quickly find the new products they want in the classification field.

Therefore, classification alone is not enough, you also have to control the quantity.

The essence of control is that you know the quantities of your products, people and management required, and understand which ones are necessary and which ones are redundant and can be eliminated.

For example, if you own a company worth tens of billions, how many people do you think you need to keep the team running?

The number of people involved in operations, management, and design should be at least a thousand, but Notion has built a billion-dollar company with only 300 people.

Therefore, more does not mean better.

Many times, we think more is better, but end up complicating things.

There is a story that a P&G employee handed a thick memo to his general manager, which was very detailed and thorough. The general manager asked him to simplify it into one page. To this day, the one-page plan is still being implemented within P&G.

Just as out-of-date clothing should be removed from the shelves, your business should also remove unsaleable products, redundant employees, and cumbersome to-do items.

For example, OPPO once had a long product line, but the multi-product market segmentation did not bring enough customers to the brand, but instead dragged down the company's business operations.

Soon after, OPPO began to cut its product lines, leaving only 4 product lines, with only 2-3 products in each line, and then achieved a single breakthrough by concentrating its superior resources to create popular products.

After streamlining the number of products, OPPO’s mobile phone sales immediately increased by 132.9%.

For example, Siemens, which once advocated an "addition" strategy, not only began to cut a large number of businesses after 2015, reducing the number of business groups from 16 to 9, but also significantly streamlined the organization, eliminated the entire middle level, delegated authority to regions and business groups, and accelerated the company's decision-making process.

Nowadays, doing subtraction has become another way for companies to choose to attack.

For example, when Lei Jun was slowing down Xiaomi, he said, "The fist is pulled back in order to punch out."

03

In addition to streamlining, you also need to focus .

If you try to catch two rabbits at the same time, you may not catch either one.

For example, Xiaohongshu and Douyin store visits are very popular nowadays. A hotpot restaurant owner said that he also wanted to set up a community, join Xiaohongshu, and do brand promotion.

There is nothing wrong with marketing promotion, but the key is who does it?

If you do it yourself, you should think about two questions first: Can you ensure good results? Can you ensure that both product and marketing are well taken care of? It is difficult.

If you run a hot pot restaurant, your core should be to make the hot pot cheap and delicious, and strive to improve your core competitiveness. Leave other things to the professional team. Moreover, if the product is good, naturally someone will be willing to promote it.

This is the importance of focus.

Alibaba has always adhered to the principle of catching one "rabbit". When e-commerce was in decline, Alibaba did not transform into a text messaging and gaming platform for profit, but continued to dig deep into it until now.

The success of many large companies lies in their focus.

For example, Disney's cartoon characters are its core assets, and creating these characters is its core business. Although Disney can use these characters to develop downstream products such as toys, games, and clothing, it does not directly own and operate these toy, game, and clothing manufacturing businesses, but rather does so through licensing.

Similarly, sports brands like Nike also focus mainly on product design and branding, while outsourcing manufacturing operations globally.

A friend who runs a steamed buns shop told me after listening to me that he was also very focused, getting up early and working late every day to sell steamed buns, day after day, year after year, but the results were still not good.

I would say that you can only call it single-mindedness, not concentration. Real concentration is to maximize the results of something.

For example, there is a company that also makes steamed buns, and they really focus on steamed buns.

Every day they study how to make the filling taste better, how to make the buns taste better, and how to make the buns faster and better. At present, using technology, this company can use artificial intelligence to control the machine to make buns, which is not only standardized but also very efficient.

Many bun shops like it only know how to knead dough and chop fillings every day.

As the saying goes, “The most difficult things in the world must be done from the easy, and the most important things in the world must be done from the details.” Only companies that know how to streamline and focus can go further.

above.

Author: Hong Zhixi; Official Account: Jingyan Brand Lab (ID: JingyanLab)