Metallurgical Stories: Bringing Your Business to Life

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I’m sure everyone has experienced situations like this: a depressing and lifeless work environment, employees working cautiously, widespread dissatisfaction among them outside of working hours, elaborate rules and regulations with numerous provisions, yet still low work efficiency and unguaranteed product quality, and so on. This is a phenomenon of lack of vitality in enterprises. Companies that lack vitality are in a very dangerous situation; the slightest mistake can lead to their elimination from the market. So how can a company be made to thrive? The answer is to build an excellent corporate culture. Some say that competition among enterprises involves competition in terms of human resources, products, the market, and core technologies. Is this statement correct? It’s only half correct; one should add “at the tactical level” before it. The more fundamental competitive advantage is the cultural competitive advantage. Current status of corporate culture in small and medium-sized enterprises: (1) Executives are unwilling, unable, or unskilled at promoting cultural development. In the operation of small and medium-sized enterprises, executives serve as the leaders of the company; they themselves represent a certain culture – an entrepreneurial culture. This entrepreneurial culture has a direct influence on and can serve as a model for the development of the company’s overall culture. However, over 70% of corporate executives fail to recognize the importance of corporate culture; they focus either on sales, or on products, or on handling everything personally, which results in having the desire but not the resources to do so. From the day it is established, every company has its own corporate culture, but at that time such culture is an extension of the entrepreneur’s culture. For example, the general manager of a company who used to work in sales and built his career through that field will focus his attention on the market, believing that as long as the products are sold, that’s enough; he relies on sales techniques and neglects internal corporate management. His words and actions, as well as his management style, have a direct impact on the company’s employees. This is the expansion of entrepreneurial culture; the foundation for building a culture in small and medium-sized enterprises lies in the development of entrepreneurial culture. His management style, communication approach, way of working, and management philosophy are refined and elevated by removing the unnecessary elements and retaining what is genuine, so as to be integrated into the company’s overall culture. (2) Corporate culture is condensed into a \"slogan\" such as \"Quality is life; customers are God,\" \"Work hard to achieve greater success,\" \"Be honest in behavior and diligent in work,\" and so on; some companies even have no such slogans at all. These slogans are quite similar to one another; many companies use them, and they fail to reflect the unique characteristics of those companies, being rather generic in content. Ask the employees whether they agree with the concept that “quality is life, and customers are gods.” Then how do you put these corporate values into practice? (3) Corporate culture building has not been given a strategic importance. Ordinary business owners believe that corporate culture is something that only large companies pursue; such complex concepts have nothing to do with them. They don’t bother to develop a corporate culture, yet their businesses still thrive, and they continue to make substantial profits every year! I think there are quite a few business owners who hold such a mindset, but it’s a very wrong one. Whether or not one is aware of corporate culture, from the day the company is established, corporate culture permeates the company and its employees just like air; the difference lies only in whether it is of high quality or not. “\"One takes on the color of one’s company,\" which means that culture is highly \"contagious.\" A poor corporate culture is like tuberculosis; it can spread to everyone who comes into contact with it, including your suppliers and distributors. I once wrote a formula: G = (S+E)C, where G represents Growth rate, S stands for Strategy, E denotes Execution, and C refers to Culture. Corporate culture is the soil on which business operations take place; corporate strategy is the sunlight that illuminates those operations; while corporate execution capability is the water that sustains them. Culture, strategy, and execution constitute a company’s macro-competitive advantages; they form a cohesive whole and are indispensable. Strategy and execution operate under the influence of corporate culture. (4) Resistance to the advancement of corporate culture building is a fairly common occurrence. The repositioning and construction of culture is a form of change. Change means altering what already exists, in order to establish regular, *habitual ways of working, methods, communication styles, and value concepts. Change can bring psychological insecurity and many uncertainties to people. Most people are afraid of change and resist it. Therefore, for a change to be successful and brought forward, the first step is to demonstrate the determination to push it forward ； Step 2: Conduct in-depth communication with all employees ； Step 3: Conduct comprehensive and ongoing publicity to clarify the purpose of the change, the tasks involved in it, and the benefits that will result from it ； Step 4: Pilot implementation and creation of model projects ； Step 5: Large-scale advancement ； Step 6: Reassure those who are resistant and identify the reasons ； Step 7: Determine the *inertia and adhere to it. Resistance is encountered in the process of building corporate culture, and addressing this resistance also involves the application of these same steps. (5) Lack of clarity in the positioning of corporate culture construction. The framework of corporate culture consists of three levels: a) the spiritual level, which is the \"brain\" of the enterprise and represents its core values; the question this level seeks to answer is: What is the enterprise’s mission? What is the company’s vision? What is the purpose of a company? b. At the behavioral level, this is what constitutes the “limbs” of a company; its systems, its atmosphere, its communication methods, its way of interacting with others, as well as its business practices and management approaches, all fall under this category. c. At the visual level, this includes the status of 5S in the company’s on-site management, as well as the factory environment, uniforms, corporate logo, and brand image. The fundamental task in building corporate culture is background analysis, which involves taking into account factors such as history, culture, region, the entrepreneur’s philosophy of management and value concepts, as well as the principles that employees follow, in order to refine a corporate culture that suits the company’s unique characteristics. Culture is also a form of positioning; the positioning of culture refers to the associations that a company holds in the minds of its relevant stakeholders. What does it mean to be relevant to stakeholders? The relevant stakeholders are shareholders, employees, distributors, consumers, banks, and suppliers. Their associations with your company – when it comes to Toyota, what comes to mind? Excellent quality and meticulous craftsmanship. A company is a brand, and a brand is a culture. At present, the cultural orientation of small and medium-sized enterprises is largely one of blind imitation or a complete lack thereof; they are unable to determine the direction for developing their own culture. Either they set overly ambitious goals, or their approaches are out of date. (6) Inadequate implementation of corporate culture building: Although a good strategic plan exists for corporate culture building, it ultimately requires people to carry out the tasks and oversee their execution. The human factor is the most difficult element to control in business operations; this applies not only to culture building but also to things such as the introduction and implementation of various management techniques. Inadequate implementation is the main reason for its reduced effectiveness. And poor execution is related to corporate culture. The construction of a culture in small and medium-sized enterprises is based on the principle of improving oneself while bringing benefit to others, combined with seven parts of human governance and three parts of legal governance. According to Teacher Zeng Shiqiang, the functions of management are all aimed at ensuring the well-being of people. Only when people are at peace and secure can their initiative and execution in work be improved. Just imagine, in a company with tense labor relations, high work pressure, and constant fear of getting fired, how can there be high levels of productivity? Will the automation of work increase? I don’t think so; if there is indeed high execution, it is achieved through pressure under MBO (Management by Objectives), and it represents blind obedience without any creativity. The primary requirement for achieving peace is self-improvement; through effort on the part of managers and leaders, it is possible to overcome one’s own negative energies, bad habits, poor communication styles, and ineffective management practices, thereby bringing peace both to oneself and to others. What is the purpose of a company? It is to generate profits, which are then used to give back to society and its stakeholders. What determines the profit? It’s a person. The biggest problem for small and medium-sized enterprises is not related to the market or the products, but rather to people – specifically, how to retain top talent. It is an undeniable fact that small and medium-sized enterprises suffer from high staff turnover rates, and the attitude of business owners is that it’s something inevitable, like rain falling from the sky or a woman getting married – there’s nothing that can be done about it. They get used to it, and then go through the cycle of hiring employees, who leave again, and then hiring more employees once more. The Human Resources Department is going to be renamed the Recruitment Department. On a smaller scale, the harms of high turnover and unemployment rates include a significant increase in recruitment costs, labor costs, training costs, quality control costs, and production costs. On a larger scale, it represents a waste of morale and a waste of corporate culture resources. The waste of explicit costs is visible, but the most significant issue is the waste of implicit costs, which are invisible and thus least likely to draw attention. To retain people, my overall view is that it comes down to culture; some might say that salary is also important. Yes, salary is important too, but culture is even more crucial. Many people say that they too want to create a first-class corporate culture, but by the time such a culture has developed, those people are already gone; I will start building it from now on. Change the previously low morale in the work environment, eliminate the inefficient management practices of the past, and put an end to the situation of low production capacity and poor quality. Bring your company to life – so start building a great corporate culture right now!