You Can Have Both The Fish And The Bear'S Paw -- Using Four Key Strategies While Pursuing Seemingly Antagonistic Goals.

Today's business leaders often face such a problem: how to achieve two goals that only seem desirable at the same time.

For example, on the one hand, we should lead the company to globalization, and at the same time reduce business risks as far as possible.

In fact, even conflicting needs can be met at the same time, and the key lies in leadership.

The leaders of the organization will use four strategies to make the company have both fish and bear's paw.

The business leaders face a complex business world. They need to accomplish a series of goals.

For example, in order to remain competitive, the company's products and services must be outstanding, but at the same time, the cost can not be too high.

For example, the company needs to fulfill its social responsibilities, but at the same time, it must be responsible for the interests of shareholders and maintain and increase their investments.

Senior management needs to be personally responsible for the company's performance, and is facing increasingly urgent licensing needs.

Today, if you want to successfully lead an enterprise, you must have the ability to handle multiple contradictions.

The contradictions mentioned here seem to be contradictions. Actually, they are not contradictions. To solve these paradoxical contradictions, we must first understand the three point: first, leaders often face many opposing demands.

For example, on the one hand, he has to work towards ambitious goals to lead the company to global challenges. On the other hand, he must reduce business risks.

Or, when developing differentiated products, we must also take into account the improvement of operational efficiency.

Second, most people will have doubts about the pursuit of two seemingly contradictory goals at the same time.

If senior leaders tighten control of the group, and at the same time claim that they will give more empowerment to employees, they must be very careful to convey such an intention, because dispelling the doubts of their employees requires strong persuasion.

Third, many so-called contradictions can actually find a solution to the best of both worlds.

A high-performance organization can pursue several goals that look like a shield.

If you want to find a solution to this problem, you need to remember that even the conflicting needs can be met at the same time, and the key lies in leadership.

As some experts say, followers hope to get comfort, stability and solutions from leaders.

But then again, leaders are not babysitter, baby leaders, real leaders will cause problems for employees, drive them out of the comfort zone, and then help them ease the tension and confusion.

Pressure often brings momentum, thereby igniting the spark of employee inspiration and finding solutions to problems.

However, it is not enough to create tension only. Leaders must use four key strategies to solve the dilemma faced by enterprises.

The effective way to deal with this situation is to creatively find a perspective to see the problem. Looking at the past from this perspective, it is not impossible to achieve the goal of two seemingly spear shields.

You can think of the two goals that seem to be the only one to be placed in the specific situations that the company is faced with, giving priority to achieving one goal and taking into account another goal.

From the following example, you can see what kind of method it is.

Brad Anderson, CEO Brad, a well-known electrical appliance retailer in North America, set up a new vision for the company a few years ago: becoming the first truly customer focused company in the retail industry.

To achieve this vision, the most important thing is to achieve two goals: first, aim at the most profitable customers, increase the contribution of such customers in sales volume; and create value for shareholders by two.

These two goals seem to be contradictory.

Customer centred approach may not bring good returns to shareholders in the short term.

How can Anderson coordinate these two contradictions?

Best buy requires employees to work towards such a goal, that is, to make customers happy.

This goal takes into account another objective, namely, creating value for shareholders.

Through careful analysis, the company subdivided seven types of high-end customers.

According to the market conditions and data analysis results of each chain store, each store is designated to target one or two customers.

Due to the right target, the income and profit of each store will increase significantly.

Not only that, best buy has implemented a control system in every store, which calculates the investment and returns of funds in a daily unit.

Employee training is also based on such a goal: how to add value to shareholders.

In this way, it is easy to distinguish between customer focus and return on capital.

When employees are called upon to make their customers happy, the minds of top managers are clear. These customers are those who can bring profits.

In turn, employees are waiting for customers when they serve customers. They also realize that what they are doing is creating value for shareholders.

The two seemingly contradictory goals, which make customers happy and create value for shareholders, are creatively integrated into a framework, which can promote employee empowerment, customer loyalty and bring more returns to shareholders.

The contradiction between the balance of organization and function and the process is a difficult problem for almost every company. A good leader must solve this problem.

It is a topic of debate that whether a company can set up an inter departmental business process within the organization is clearly defined.

The way to solve the contradiction is to first realize that every function that is good for a company is indispensable.

They provide the essential elements and knowledge for enterprises to operate smoothly and smoothly.

The optimization of departmental functions is part of the company's operation.

Secondly, for executives, their task is not just to focus on departments, but to focus on how to optimize the coordination process of various departments. These processes make each department closely link up with each other and accomplish what each individual department can not do.

By recording and disseminating best practices, the process can improve organizational efficiency and improve service quality, thereby avoiding duplication of labor in various departments.

Process improvement can take place in every corner of the company, from the most basic workshop to company supervision.

Tracing back to the source, many companies are not able to deeply implant process awareness into employees' minds. The most fundamental reason is that CEO and senior leaders have not done much in this regard.

Or they themselves are puzzled whether they should focus their attention on departments or processes.

CEO and senior leaders must give strong support to those responsible for process improvement.

When the latter makes achievements, they should give awards in a big way.

It is not easy to pform a traditional functional organization into a process organization, not to introduce new ways of work or change the organizational structure.

This will mean a change in corporate culture and change as a leader.

Five actions can solve the contradiction between functions and processes, and ensure that the two are organically linked within the company.

He is awarded the head of charge of process improvement, because these people often command those who do not directly belong to him.

It is also necessary to help these people establish informal authority - based on their knowledge and ideology rather than the authority of administrative rank and seniority.

Two, the most critical department in the whole process is placed under the leadership of the person in charge of process improvement.

For example, those responsible for equipment supply chain process improvement can also be the department heads of assembly and assembly plants.

Three, choose the right indicators to measure the performance of process improvement.

The success of process improvement should be clearly recognized by all departments involved in the process.

As a result, various departments will be aware of their responsibilities in process improvement.

Four, implement process assessment.

Assessment ensures that the correct process is carried out.

At the same time, it also provides an environment for communication and dialogue, so that the process can be more perfect and executed more thoroughly.

Five, ensure that every department in the organization has been optimized.

You can't talk about the process. Don't forget that the improvement of the process is based on the foundation of every department's efforts.

A wrong idea has long been permeated by many enterprises: attention to norms and structure is incompatible with the pursuit of creativity and innovation.

This view holds that standardization can increase productivity.

But it also stifle creative work, and the skunk group emphasizes flexibility rather than standardized form of organization, which is essential for creativity.

In fact, the standard innovation process can increase the chances of success of new products.

The reason is simple. Those ideas that are not good enough have been filtered out in the early days, and the company has been able to concentrate scarce resources on the most potential ideas.

With a standardized process, companies can focus their creativity on areas that need innovation most, such as product design.

The innovation process can also reduce the chance of waste of the company's energy and power, because people can objectively decide whether or not to continue the project by setting specific milestones for the project and evaluating the project according to objective indicators rather than feelings.

While encouraging employees to think more about new ideas, top managers should avoid spending money and energy on failed creativity.

An innovative process with meticulous planning can solve this contradiction well by combining creativity with standardization.

It is very important for the leaders of the company to play a leading role in solving conflicts.

As the "evergreen" has said, the leaders of a great company will not restrict themselves with "not only this, but also". Instead, they will be able to jump out of this predicament with an inclusive approach.

Leaders must lead enterprises to match the best companies and make them achieve this goal with all kinds of effective tools and methods, and authorize others in the organization to do so.

For example, many "traditional" manufacturing managers will tell you that in order to shorten the delivery cycle, the factory must maintain a higher level of inventory, so as to avoid any downtime.

Shortening the delivery cycle and reducing inventory costs seem to be an irreconcilable contradiction.

However, if we use the correct tools and methods, such as the use of WCM (World Class Manufacturing), namely, world class manufacturing, it is a set of methods summarized by the American scholar Sean Berg in 80s when she studied Japanese manufacturing industry, especially the Toyota Corporation, and reached the above two goals.

WCM launched from employees to managers, brainstorming everyone, digging deep into the root of the problem, trying to get beyond the obstacles of language and sharing the best practices with diagrams and methods, so as to systematize the workflow and standardize the operation of the workshop.

WCM gives excellent manufacturing practitioners an opportunity to prove that two seemingly clash goals can be pursued and achieved at the same time.

In the first place, we talked about the process of innovation - some of the less good ideas will be filtered out at all stages.

But this is not the same way. It is also possible that the good ideas with great potential and great benefits will be subject to internal questioning. The results of market surveys do not support it. However, it is a good idea indeed.

In this case, how and when do we open it up?

This is another way for leaders to play their role as leaders of thought.

However, this is less likely to happen.

The Walkman of Sony Corp and the idea of Tetra Pak of Tetra Pak are examples of this.

Although they were suspected internally, they were supported by the most senior leaders.

Leaders make correct judgments based on previous experience, knowledge, company culture, available financial support and other factors.

This kind of decision making is more artistic rather than scientific.

Its secret lies in supporting the pilot operation. When the pilot fails to achieve the desired results, it will be suspended.

Henry Ford once said, "if I ask people what they need before they build cars, they will never say cars, they will say that they need to be Ford".