经济学人：Mao and the art of management
12月22日的封面文章[img]http://www.bestxian.cn/attachments/month_0712/20071224_8802029ad91161ee1b2fPoMMnSQ8PcAW.jpg[/img]
[b]A role model, of sorts
[/b]Books on management tend to define success in the broadest possibleterms—great product, happy employees, continuous improvement, gobs ofprofits, crushed competitors. Even when words such as “excellence” and“success” are omitted from the title, they are often implicit. A casein point is the book which many would say defined the genre, AlfredSloan's “My Years with General Motors”, published in 1963 when GMwas still an iconic company and Sloan correctly acknowledged as thearchitect of the well-run, decentralised, global corporation.
But focusing on how the best produce the best has its limits. Mostmanagers, after all, do not stitch an industrial triumph from a vastbankrupt junkyard, as Sloan did. They do not delight their customer,crush competitors and create vast wealth. They struggle. They stumble.
Where is the book for them? Who can help the under-performing,over-compensated chief executive fighting to survive intrusivejournalists, independent shareholders and ambitious vice-presidents whocould do a better job? Where is the role model for the manager whoreally needs a role model most—the one who by any objective measure ofperformance cannot, and should not, manage at all?
An obvious candidate is Mao. Yes, he was head of a country, not acompany. But he self-consciously carried a business-like title,“chairman”, while running China from 1949 until dying in office in1976, having jailed, killed, or psychologically crushed a succession oflikely replacements and therefore created the classic business problem:a succession void. He thought of himself as, in his own words, an“indefatigable teacher” and the famous “Little Red Book” drawn from hisspeeches is packed with managerial advice on training, motivation andevaluation of lower-level employees (cadres); innovation (“let ahundred flowers bloom”); competition (“fear no sacrifice”); and, ofcourse, raising the game of the complacent manager (relentlessself-criticism).
Mao still has at least a symbolic hold over the Chinese economy,even though it began to blossom only after death removed hissuffocating hand. His portrait is emblazoned on China's currency, onbags, shirts, pins, watches and whatever else can be sold by theinnumerable entrepreneurial capitalists that he ground beneath his heelwhen in power. No other recent leader of a viable country (outsideNorth Korea, in other words) is so honoured—not even ones that did agood job.
It was not a nurturing management style that won Mao this adulation.According to Jung Chang's and Jon Halliday's “Mao, the Unknown Story”,admittedly an unsympathetic portrait, he was responsible for “70mdeaths, more than any other 20th-century leader”. But why stop at the20th century? In Chinese history, only Emperor Qin Shi Huang, whostarted building the Great Wall (in which each brick is said to havecost a life), was competition for Mao; and since the population wasmuch smaller then, Mao is likely to have outdone him in absolutenumbers.
Botched economic policies caused most of the carnage. Deng Xiaoping,Mao's successor, turned the policies, and eventually the economy,around. Yet he does not even merit an image on a coin.
The disparity between Mao's performance and his reputation isinstructive, for behind it are four key ingredients which all badmanagers could profitably employ.
• [b]A powerful, mendacious slogan[/b]
Born a modestly well-off villager, Mao lived likean emperor, carried on litters by peasants, surrounded by concubinesand placated by everyone. Yet his most famous slogan was “Serve thePeople”. This paradox illustrates one aspect of his brilliance: hisability to justify his actions, no matter how entirely self-serving, asbeing done for others.
Psychologists call this “cognitive dissonance”—the ability to make acompelling, heartfelt case for one thing while doing another. Beingable to pull off this sort of trick is an essential skill in manyprofessions. It allows sub-standard chief executives to rationalisehuge pay packages while their underlings get peanuts (or rice).
But Mao did not just get a stamp from a compliant board andeye-rolling from employees. He convinced his countrymen of his value.That was partly because, even if his message bore no relation to hisactions, it expressed precisely and succinctly what he should have beendoing. Consider the truth and clarity of “serve the people” comparedwith the average company's mission statement, packed with a muddle ofwords and thoughts tied to stakeholders and CSR, that employees can barely read, let alone memorise.
Deng Xiaoping's slogan, which he used in his campaign to revive theeconomy, had similar virtues. “Truth from facts” is a sound-bite thatSloan would have loved and every manager should cherish, but you won'tfind it chiselled on a Chinese wall. It doesn't have the hypocriticalidealism of Mao's version—nor was it pushed so hard.
• [b]Ruthless media manipulation[/b]
Mao knew not just how to make a point but also how to get it out.Through posters, the “Little Red Book” and re-education circles, hismessage was constantly reinforced. “Where the broom does not reach”, hesaid, “the dust will not vanish of itself.” This process ofself-aggrandisement is often dismissed as a “personality cult”, but ishard to distinguish from the modern business practice of building brandvalue.
Yet within China economic growth was pathetic and living conditionswere wretched. So why did a vast list of Western political, militaryand academic leaders accept the value of Mao's brand at his ownestimation? Even Stalin, no guileless observer, believed in and, to hislater regret, protected Mao. The brand-building lesson is that a clear,utopian message, hammered home relentlessly, can obscure inconvenientfacts. Great salesmen are born knowing this. Executives whosestrategies are not delivering need to learn it.
Chief executives are not in a position to crush the media as Maodid. Nevertheless, his handling of them offers some lessons. He talkedonly to sycophantic journalists and his appeal in the West came mainlyfrom hagiographies written by reporters whose careers were built on theaccess they had to him.
The law constrains the modern chief executive's ability to imitate Mao's PRstrategy. Publicly listed companies have to publish information, ratherthan hand it out selectively. But many, within bounds, emulate Mao'smedia management; others, determined to control information about them,are delisting. Burrow beneath laudatory headlines on business andpolitical leaders, and it becomes clear that the strategy works.
• [b]Sacrifice of friends and colleagues[/b]
“Who are our friends? Who are our enemies? This is a question offirst importance,” Mao wrote. Sloan agreed. He worried that favouritismwould come at the expense of the single most valuable component ofmanagement: the objective evaluation of performance.
Mao had a different goal: he did not want people too close to him,and therefore to power; so being Mao's friend often proved moredangerous than being his enemy. One purge followed another. Promotionsand demotions were zealously monitored. Bundles of incentives weregiven and withdrawn. Some demotions turned out well. Deng Xiaoping'sexile in a tractor factory may have helped him understand business, andthus rebuild the economy, but that was an unintended benefit.
This approach makes sense. Close colleagues may want your job, andrelationships with them may distract you. Mao's abandonment of friendsand even wives and children seemed to be based on a calculation ofwhich investments were worth maintaining and which should be regardedas sunk costs. Past favours were not returned. According to Ms Changand Mr Halliday, a doctor who saved his life was left to die on aprison floor after being falsely accused of disloyalty. Mao let ithappen: he had other doctors by then.
Enemies, conversely, can be useful. Mao often blamed battlefieldlosses on rivals who were made to suffer for these defeats. The namesof modern victims of this tactic will be visible on the list of peoplesacked at an investment bank after a rough quarter; the practitionersare their superiors, or those who have taken their jobs.
• [b]Activity substituting for achievement[/b]
Mao was quite willing to avoid tedious or uncomfortable meetings,particularly when he was likely to be criticised. But maybe that helpedhim avoid getting bogged down. From the Anti-Rightist Movement of thelate 1950s to the Great Leap Forward, a failed agricultural andindustrial experiment in the early 1960s, to the Cultural Revolution inthe late 1960s, Mao was never short of a plan.
Under Mao, China didn't drift, it careened. The propellant came fromthe top. Policies were poor, execution dreadful and leadershipmisdirected, but each initiative seemed to create a centripetal force,as everyone looked toward Beijing to see how to march forward (or avoidbeing trampled). The business equivalent of this is restructuring, thebroader the better. Perhaps for the struggling executive, this is thesingle most important lesson: if you can't do anything right, do a lot.The more you have going on, the longer it will take for its disastrousconsequences to become clear. And think very big: for all his flaws,Mao was inspiring.
In the long run, of course, the facts will find you out. But who cares? We all know what we are in the long run.
[[i] 本帖最后由 城阙九重门 于 2007-12-24 09:33 编辑 [/i]] Ничего не хочу говорить о том. i can not make it clear how this kind of artical can appear here .very humorous! you subscribe to 'the Economist' as well?
There is a special edition of 'the Economist: Year 2008' which is really brilliant! There is a special China section analysing China in the year 2008.
As the only Western Media which sent out journalist in Xizang during 3.14, 'the Economist' gave relatively objective report on the break-out. It is really a nice weekly newspaper. The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd and edited in London. It has been in continuous publication since James Wilson established it in September 1843. Although The Economist calls itself a newspaper and refers to its staff as correspondents, it is printed in magazine form on glossy paper, like a newsmagazine. As of summer 2007, its average circulation tops 1.2 million copies a week, about half of which are sold in North America. Consequently it is often seen as a transatlantic, as opposed to solely British news source.
The stated aim of The Economist is "to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress." It practices advocacy journalism in taking a strongly argued editorial stance based on classical liberalism, promoting economic as well as social freedom. Subjects covered include international news, economics, politics, business, finance, science, technology, and the arts. The publication targets an educated readership and counts among its audience influential business and government decision-makers.
The Economist belongs to The Economist Group, half of which is owned by the Financial Times, a subsidiary of Pearson PLC, and the other half by a group of independent shareholders, including many members of the staff. A board of trustees formally appoints the editor and without their permission she or he cannot be removed. [quote]原帖由 [i]余辉残雪[/i] 于 2008-4-22 21:40 发表 [url=http://www.bestxian.cn/redirect.php?goto=findpost&pid=139402&ptid=6008][img]http://www.bestxian.cn/images/common/back.gif[/img][/url]
you subscribe to 'the Economist' as well?
There is a special edition of 'the Economist: Year 2008' which is really brilliant! There is a special China section analysing China in the year 2008.
As th ... [/quote]
i read a lot of articles from 'the Economist' before.
i don't think it is a pro-China magzine.
but i'm really surprised that how can 'the Economist' be so objectively to report what happend in tibet during the 3.14.
[[i] 本帖最后由 神都小帝 于 2008-6-17 14:29 编辑 [/i]]
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