Author: Song Shanmu Publishing House: Enterprise Management Publishing House.

Keywords: a shortcut to effectively describe and communicate problems

★ Method analysis ★

The principle of QMW and HWWC is a unique communication mode, and it is also an important experience of Sam training that I have been promoting. Among them, QMW principle is a system that subordinates report to superiors specially formulated for Sam training, so it is also called QMW work/problem reporting method; The principle of HWWC is applicable to the orders issued by superiors to subordinates, so it is also called HWWC task scheduling method.

Now let's take a concrete look at the meaning of these two principles.

QMW principle:

The first letter is q: question. That is, the problem encountered.

The second letter is m: method. Is to encounter problems, we should actively find ways to give solutions, rather than directly pushing the problem to the leaders.

The third letter is W: Why? That is, when you ask questions and give methods to your superiors, explain the reasons for doing so, so that leaders can understand your ideas and make better decisions.

While promoting the principle of "QMW", I also vividly introduced that "QMW" is actually the beginning of "Please Touch Me" in Chinese, which means that employees should take the initiative to report the process of solving problems (or completing tasks) to their leaders, so that the leaders can understand the situations encountered by employees at work, thus helping you to improve the methods of doing things and improve work efficiency.

For example, the financial manager found that the employees of the company owed IOUs, and the phenomenon of long delay was serious, and he wanted to report the matter to his superiors. Therefore, the financial manager follows:

Question: Problems encountered-report the details of the problems to the superior in detail, such as how many people owe money, who, how much money is owed, how long it is overdue, etc.

M: Propose solutions-while stating the problems, give solutions for leaders' reference. For example, those who maliciously fail to repay will be deducted from their wages, those who have real difficulties will be appropriately postponed, and the review of borrowing money in the future needs to be more strict.

W: Explain the reason-explain your solution in detail, let the leader understand your thinking, make a decision on whether to agree or not, or give a more perfect method. For example, why should some people be allowed to overdue, and what is the institutional basis for directly deducting wages?

Doing "QMW" well can not only clearly reflect the problems, but also let the frontline subordinates supplement their own ideas and opinions, greatly speeding up the speed of information circulation and improving the accuracy.

HWWC principle:

The first letter is H: How. Make a solution, which can be given by the leader or discussed collectively by the team that accepts the task.

The second letter is W: Who. Who will do it? If the problem (task) is not implemented, it is equal to not being solved.

The third letter is also W: When. When will it be finished? Tasks with no time limit may be put on hold indefinitely and eventually disappear.

The fourth letter is c: check. The first three items have been achieved, and follow-up inspection is also necessary.

For example, if the general manager gives the task of troubleshooting the company's security risks, he should give the order according to the HWWC principle:

H: Formulate solutions-scope, categories, standards and steps of investigation.

W: Who will do it-designate the person in charge of each department as the first person in charge of the department, and the specific division of labor of the department personnel must be determined in advance, or arranged by the person in charge of each department and reported for the record.

W: When will it be completed-10/7/00 from 65438+8: 00 to14/00+65438/7: 00.

C: Follow-up inspection-June 5438+1October 65438+May arranged for the discipline inspection personnel to check and accept the results of potential safety hazards.

The two principles not only facilitate the communication between superiors and subordinates, but also play a very good role in mobilizing collective wisdom and clarifying related responsibilities. For example, the QMW principle, before the formulation of this principle, subordinates often directly push difficult problems in their work to their superiors, passively wait for their superiors to give solutions, and then act according to the rules. This practice has great disadvantages. First of all, the boss is not necessarily very proficient and professional in this job, so the solution provided is not necessarily the most scientific. Secondly, if everyone encounters problems and pushes them on the leaders, first, the time and energy of the leaders are limited, and second, the collective wisdom of employees cannot be brought into play. After a long time, it is easy to develop employees' inertia and dependence on the boss-there is a boss anyway! There will be a way up there. The QMW principle requires that when subordinates encounter difficulties and problems, they should take the initiative to propose solutions and explain the reasons when reporting to their superiors, which makes them have to start thinking about solutions themselves and dare not slack off.

★★★★★ Classic case

Inefficiency caused by poor communication

I know a company owner who started his business in Shenzhen almost at the same time. At first, his business was good. By the year 2000, the scale of the company had expanded several times. But at this time, the boss found that the work of various departments was getting more and more chaotic, the discipline was getting worse and worse, the company's products were quoted at will, the regional division was ineffective, the increase in output was seriously disproportionate to the investment of enterprises, the rejection rate was too high, and more and more customer complaints were made ... Finally, the boss couldn't bear it, and called all the employees to have a meeting. At the meeting, the boss lost his temper, listed various problems within the enterprise, and finally ordered rectification.

Three months later, he went to various departments to check and found that there was not much improvement. This made him even more angry, and once again called a meeting of all departments to question the reasons. Several department managers looked at each other:

"General Manager, I thought Manager Li had already done this."

"General Manager, we are dealing with this matter, but it will take time."

"General Manager, we have thought a lot of countermeasures, but the results are not great."

"General manager, we did manage it, but when we left, the employees became the same again. We can't always stare at them. "

……

After three months of fruitlessness, my friend had to smile helplessly.

Enlightenment from Motorola

Motorola recognized the importance of communication as early as 30 years ago, and constantly practiced and improved the communication system. The communication system of a company is based on such a basic principle: once a natural person or a legal person buys shares in a company, it becomes an associated person and has the right to obtain complete information of the company, including the company's financial report and even management information involving some business secrets.

Motorola managers have noticed that people in different positions need different ways of communication. The boss encouraged his subordinates to report to him. Colleagues want to share with them that subordinates need instructions from superiors. According to the organizational structure and information circulation direction, the communication system can be divided into upward communication, downward communication and parallel communication. Motorola's communication system is therefore divided into three parts: one is the monthly staff coordination meeting (upward communication); Second, the annual executive briefing (downward communication); The third is the annual staff meeting (parallel communication).

First, the staff coordination meeting and suggestion box

Thirty years ago, Motorola began to implement the staff coordination meeting system. In the meeting, managers and employees get together to discuss issues of common concern. Organize the coordination meeting of the company headquarters, branches and grass-roots units. If some problems in the communication process can't be solved at the grass-roots coordination meeting, they will be reflected step by step until they have satisfactory answers, and the trivial matters discussed at the grass-roots coordination meeting can also be very specific and realistic. But if it is the company's major policy, it must be decided at the chief representative meeting. In order to ensure that employees' opinions can be quickly reflected step by step, the grass-roots staff coordination meeting should be held before the high-level coordination meeting.

Second, the director's briefing.

Motorola's downward communication form is management briefing. Similar to the management's debriefing report, the difference is that the debriefing report is for the company's board of directors and the supervisor's report is for all employees. The director's report will be held once a year. After a year's work, the management of the company collated the operating results and existing problems into a report, and explained the work of employees.

Third, staff meetings.

Motorola's staff meetings are also very distinctive. It is an equal way of communication, and it is the communication between parallel classes. For example, between department managers and department managers, between staff and between different departments, most of them are employees with equal status.

★ Use mountain wood ★

The HWWC principle and QMW principle have made great contributions to the smooth solution of problems and the avoidance of poor communication in Sam. Nowadays, in the training in Sam, from the managers of the group, to the principals of each branch school, to every employee in charge of specific affairs, they have consciously developed a good habit of using HWWC principles and QMW principles when assigning tasks and reporting problems.

Sam Training (Qingdao, China) Campus Overcomes Bad Habits

In 2004, when Sambacchus Training (Qingdao, China) was just established, there was a very serious phenomenon, that is, employees had poor etiquette awareness, and Sambacchus etiquette could not be well implemented. When consultants and students come to the school, the staff in the school can't do Sambucus etiquette at all, but only nod or say hello, which brings serious reputation damage to Sambucus.

This situation was discovered by the local headmaster in time and reported to the Sam Training Command. However, as the headquarters is far away in Shenzhen, we don't know much about the specific situation, and remote supervision is not good, so the solution given can't solve this problem very effectively. The group headquarters then asked the person in charge of Qingdao branch to report this problem according to QMW principle. The headmaster took the initiative to investigate this phenomenon and reported the situation to the headquarters:

Q: One of the most obvious problems in this respect is the poor etiquette awareness of employees. When someone comes to the front desk of the branch school or students leave the school, the staff of the branch school does not get up and salute. Familiar students just say hello and nod. The real salute can only be achieved when auditors come to the school or school leaders come to inspect and guide the school. This has a bad influence on the training of mountain trees.

M: I am determined to rectify as follows:

(1) Make use of all available means such as "staff meeting", vice-principal meeting, campus meeting and Sam website to read out the importance of Sam etiquette and improve employees' attention to Sam etiquette;

(2) Strictly enforce the law, arrest one, punish one, publicize on the blackboard newspaper, and criticize at the conference;

(three) the implementation of the vice president "implicated" system, which branch staff is impolite, vice president was held accountable for dereliction of duty, should be held accountable for their poor education and supervision;

(4) Employees who remain stubborn after persuasion, education and punishment shall be dismissed.

W: My reasons are as follows:

(1) From school leaders to front-line employees, the awareness of etiquette is generally poor, and there is the idea that "it doesn't matter whether you do etiquette or not";

(2) The law enforcement is lax, and employees and branch schools that fail to observe Sam etiquette are not punished according to the Basic Law of Sam;

(3) Different schools harbor each other.

The above scheme was implemented after discussion by the headquarters, and finally, the problem was properly solved.

These two principles are very important.

The good effect of the application of these two principles is reflected in the development of Sam attendance software.

Before 2005, the attendance rate of students was always a headache for schools. The original method is to make attendance records on the back of the student ID card. Before class, the teacher stood at the door of the classroom and recorded the attendance for each student. But in this way, it not only wastes human resources, but also often leads to students waiting in line for attendance due to inefficiency, and sometimes even delays class time. In addition, the manual assessment of students' attendance can not be timely and accurately analyzed statistically and systematically, and it needs to be re-recorded in students' files, which is time-consuming and laborious.

A young teacher of the group saw this situation and reported the problem to the superior according to QMW:

Question: Problems in students' attendance: The existing attendance method is slow and takes up a lot of manpower. Before class, in order to record the attendance of students, teachers must stand at the door of each classroom. The slow speed of manual roll call often leads to the phenomenon of students waiting in line for roll call, which seriously even affects class, and students are dissatisfied because of the long waiting time; Before each class, a large number of teachers have to be deployed to take charge of attendance, which delays the normal progress of some work, and schools with fewer people can not reach the goal of standing guard at the door of each classroom. So it is also very serious to miss the attendance of students.

M: Establish an electronic attendance system (refer to supermarket bar code pricing system) and establish a database on the existing intranet.

W: once the electronic attendance system is successfully developed, it can greatly improve the attendance efficiency and reduce the occupation of manpower; Second, it can save the subsequent work of student information entry; Thirdly, the accuracy of students' information input is improved. In addition, it can track and analyze students' learning process and effect at any time.

After this suggestion was adopted, I immediately issued the task:

H(how): You can develop an electronic attendance system with reference to the supermarket barcode pricing system;

W(who): The development of electronic attendance system is mainly undertaken by Jin Hao, director of software course of Sam Training (Jinan, China);

W (time): the electronic attendance system will be developed and tried out within one month, and matured and promoted within three months;

C (check): Li Muzi, Executive Vice President of Sam Wood Education Group.

A month later, the bar code attendance system was developed. Two months later, all the bar code attendance equipment was in place; Three months later, the bar code attendance system was popularized in the whole group, completely replacing the original manual attendance method. Of course, the implementation of QMW principle and HWWC principle is a gradually mature process, and every enterprise should establish a set of suitable operation methods according to the spirit of the above two principles.