In the theory of enterprise management, the school of organizational culture once put forward the "7S" management model, indicating that there are seven key factors for the success or failure of an enterprise: strategy, structure, system, employees, management style, skills and shared value, among which the first two are.
7S model
In the 1970s and 1980s, Americans suffered from economic depression and unemployment. At the same time, they are fed up with all kinds of statements about the art of successful management of Japanese enterprises, and are also trying to find a magic weapon suitable for the development and revitalization of their own enterprises. These two masters of management from Stanford University and scholars who have served for a long time in the famous McKinsey management consulting company in the United States visited 62 outstanding large companies in the United States, and selected 43 outstanding model companies according to their profitability and growth rate, including IBM, German Instruments, Hewlett-Packard, McDonald's, Kodak, DuPont and other industries. They made an in-depth investigation of these companies and discussed with professors in business schools. Taking the seven elements of enterprise organization (referred to as 7-S model) designed by McKinsey & Company Research Center as the research framework, this paper summarizes some common characteristics of these successful enterprises and writes the book "Pursuing Excellence-the Secret of American Enterprise Success", which makes many American enterprises regain their lost confidence.
7s model points out that enterprises should comprehensively consider all aspects in the development process, such as killer structure, system, style, employees, skills, strategy and * * * the same values. In other words, it is not enough for enterprises to have a clear strategy and a well-thought-out action plan, because enterprises may make mistakes in the process of strategy implementation. Therefore, strategy is only one of the elements. As shown in the figure.
In the model, strategy, structure and system are considered as the "hardware" of enterprise success, while style, people, skills and values have the same meaning and are considered as the "software" of enterprise success. McKinsey's 7-S model reminds managers all over the world that software and hardware are equally important. Two scholars pointed out that human nature that companies have long neglected, such as irrationality, stubbornness, intuition and liking informal organizations, can actually be managed, which is closely related to the success or failure of the company and cannot be ignored.
I. Analysis of Hardware Elements
Strategy: Strategy is the overall planning of enterprise development goals and ways and means to achieve them according to the internal and external environment and available resources. It is the concentrated expression of enterprise management thought, the result of a series of strategic decisions, and the basis for making enterprise plans and schemes. The theory of enterprise strategic management was put forward by enterprise managers in developed countries in the 1950s and 1960s under the background of social, economic, technological, product and market competition. In 1947, only 20% of American enterprises have formulated development strategies, while in 1970, it has reached 100%. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun conducted a special survey in 1967, and 99% of the 63 large Japanese enterprises that gave questions and answers had strategic plans. A survey in the United States shows that more than 90% of entrepreneurs believe that the success of enterprises is an important factor, and the operation of enterprises has entered the era of "strategic victory".
Structure: The strategy needs a sound organizational structure to ensure its implementation. Organizational structure is the basis of enterprise organizational significance and mechanism, and it is the form of enterprise organization. That is, the effective arrangement and combination of organizational elements such as enterprise goals, coordination, personnel, posts, mutual relations and information. It is to decompose the objectives and tasks of the enterprise into posts, and then integrate the posts into departments. Many departments form an organic whole, that is, a vertical system of rights and a horizontal system of division of labor and cooperation. The organizational structure serves the implementation of the strategy. Different strategies need different organizational structures, and organizational structures must be coordinated with strategies. For example, in the late 1950s, General Electronics Company implemented a simple business division system, but at that time, enterprises had begun to engage in the strategy of large-scale operation. In 1960s, the company's sales increased sharply, but the administrative management could not keep up, which led to many problems out of control and affected the profit growth. In the early 1970s, the enterprise redesigned its organizational structure and adopted the strategic business unit structure, which solved the problem of lagging administration. Profits have also increased accordingly. Thus, the organizational structure of the enterprise must meet the needs of implementing the enterprise strategy, which is the organizational guarantee for the implementation of the enterprise strategy. In addition, the two scholars found that the organizational characteristics of the most successful American enterprises are simple and clear. There are very few middle and senior managers in these enterprises, and companies with less than 100 managers can often see tens of billions of dollars of business.
System: The development and strategic implementation of an enterprise need a perfect system as a guarantee, but in fact, each system is a concrete embodiment of enterprise spirit and strategic thinking. Therefore, in the process of strategic implementation, it is necessary to formulate a system that is consistent with the strategic thinking, prevent the system from being uncoordinated and uncoordinated, and even avoid the system that deviates from the strategy, such as the innovation system of 3M Company. In 3M, as long as a person participates in the innovative development of new products, his position and salary in the company will naturally change with the achievements of the products. Even if he is just an engineer in a production line at first, he can be promoted to product engineer if the product enters the market. If the annual sales of products reach 500 dollars, he can become a product line manager. This system has greatly stimulated the innovation enthusiasm of employees and promoted the development of enterprises.
Second, the analysis style of software elements.
The two scholars found that excellent enterprises all showed the management style of combining leniency with severity, centralization with decentralization. On the one hand, they make the production department and product development department extremely independent, on the other hand, they stubbornly abide by several long-standing values.
* * * Same value. Because strategy is the guiding ideology of enterprise development, only when all employees of the enterprise understand this idea and use it to guide practical actions can the strategy be successfully implemented. Therefore, strategic research can not only stay at the level of confusion of top managers and strategic researchers, but should be that all those who implement the strategy can understand the whole strategic intention of the enterprise. The concept of fax shared by enterprise members has the functions of guidance, restraint, cohesion, encouragement and radiation, which can stimulate the enthusiasm of all employees and work hard to unify the strategic objectives of the enterprise. This requires the enterprise to publicize the prepared strategy in various ways, so that all members of the enterprise can understand, master and use it to guide their actions. An important experience of Japan in economic management is to pay attention to communication with the leadership, implement the overall thinking, and let the leadership make it.
Personnel: The implementation of the strategy still needs sufficient manpower preparation. Sometimes the success or failure of strategy implementation really depends on whether there are suitable personnel to implement it. Practice has proved that manpower preparation is the key to strategy implementation. An important principle of IBM is to respect individuals and spend a lot of time implementing this principle. Because they firmly believe that employees are the source of efficiency. Therefore, while doing a good job in organizational design, enterprises should pay attention to equipping employees who meet the needs of strategic thinking, give them good training, assign them suitable jobs, and strengthen publicity and education, so that personnel at all levels of enterprises can establish ideas and work styles that are compatible with the enterprise strategy. For example, McDonald's employees politely provide smiling service; IBM's sales engineers are highly skilled and can help customers solve technical problems. Disney employees have a very optimistic attitude towards life in the morning. They bring joy to customers. Manpower allocation and training is a huge, complex and arduous organizational task.
Skills: When implementing the company's strategy, employees need to master certain skills, which depends on strict and systematic training. Kōnosuke Matsushita believes that everyone must undergo rigorous training to become an excellent talent. For example, athletes galloping on the sports field can show their talents. However, their amazing physique and skills did not come out of thin air, but were the result of long-term strict physical and mental training. If you don't receive training, even if you have a very good talent, you may not be able to play it.
Therefore, in the process of enterprise development, we should fully consider the overall situation of the enterprise, and only if the seven elements of soft and hard can communicate and coordinate well can the enterprise succeed.