Ordinary people should also understand a little strategy?

I am Zhuo Yan, and we are learning for life together, day 153.

Today we share with Mr. Wang Zhigang, a well-known Chinese strategic consulting expert and founder of Zhigang Think Tank, on strategy.

What is a strategy?

Strategy is a major choice at a critical moment, and it is how to do the right thing and do things correctly when facing a critical moment and making a major decision.

According to the way of unity of knowledge and action, the essence of strategy is to "find the soul" and remember the phrase "find the soul". That is, you have to find out the crux of this problem, the key point of it, and the inevitable law within it. Just like the silk reeling worker, how does such a roll of silk find the thread, through which it is continuously pulled outward, and finally turn a cocoon into a roll of silk. This is the question of the outline. Philosophically speaking, this is the truth, so the key is to "find the soul".

The biggest difference between today's China and the West is that there are many phenomena in Western society that are equivalent to laboratories, and the elements are certain. At this time, as long as the law is found out with big data, enter these data, the conclusions come out are almost the same, we call it a fixed target. That is, after aiming at a target, the nine rings, eight rings, and ten rings are hit like this. Today's China, on the other hand, is driving on a river without navigation markers, and at this time we are shooting a moving target. Hitting moving targets is completely different from hitting fixed targets, and hitting moving targets requires a lot of strategy. Why, because there is another explanation for strategy, that is, "looking for certainty in uncertainty", which is the core essence and essence of strategy.

How did the strategy come about?

Chairman Mao wrote an article in Yan'an called "Where Does Man's Correct Thinking Come From?" It is very remarkable, in fact, it is about this problem of strategic cognition. Some people get the right knowledge, some people get misleading, and strategy is even more so. So how do you build your strategic understanding? How to combine subjectivity and objectivity? After decades of exploration, I think the composition of knowledge, which is like a ladder, is five levels. Today, break it up and discuss and communicate with you, which may be of great benefit to your future knowledge.

I think knowledge is five levels:

The first level is information. A modern person lives in the world, and his enlightenment and non-enlightenment depend on the amount of information he has. A farmer may live to be 100 years old, but when you talk to him, he is always in this village, only to know that there is a big tree in front of the village and a mill in the back of the village. Nothing else is known. But there is a person in the village who has walked through the county, gone out to work, and when he comes back, he will bring back a lot of external information and become a celebrity in the village. This is the first level, the amount of information obtained determines the degree of enlightenment of a person. But this is only a premise, and it is not far to go if you are satisfied with this.

The second level is experience. We are faced with a huge amount of information every day, if we are not good at rough extraction, de-falsification, and summarizing, we will always be just an information basket, there is no interest. A person who loves to learn must be good at de-falsifying the truth and sublimating these things, and this sublimation is experience. Many people hit the south wall and don't know how to turn back, and some people hit the south wall and will summarize, and then they will never hit the south wall again. This means that for the same life term, the latter goes further than the former, because he does not repeat. Some people fall from where they get up, it's good guys; some people get up from where they get up and fall from where they fall, it's stupid. Why? Just not good at summarizing. So today we say that many people are screwed, stubborn, and donkeys, and they have something to do with this. Of course, at a high level, this involves a philosophical question, that is, whether you have dialectical thinking, whether you have dynamic, divergent, integrated thinking, from the knowledge, the understanding is like this.

The third level is wisdom. Why this society is rolling forward like the Yangtze River is that it can be passed down from generation to generation to continue to move forward. Our generation lives in the present, and we must be good at learning from the past and knowing the present, and digest the things of our predecessors. And digestion is not digestion for the sake of digestion, but for the unity of knowledge and action, in order to create a new future, this is the fate of mankind, and it is also the difference between excellent people and stupid people. This is called wisdom.

In life, although some people have a doctorate, they have no connection with wisdom, and they have books in their stomachs, except for books, they have no ability to cope with real life. Sometimes they look down on people who don't have culture, but there are a lot of uncultured people who are very remarkable. Wisdom is not simply brought from books, but more is obtained in life, so this is a very important issue.

The fourth level is thought. What does thought mean? When we talk about people following the clouds, that is called no thought. Including many people studying for masters and doctorates, after reading for half a day, they can only talk about many things in the West, but how these things combine with themselves and become their own thoughts, I don't know. And this idea is characterized by independent opinion. This independent opinion is not self-righteous, but after eating through the things of the predecessors, it is combined with itself, and everything has its own unique vision, and such a person can become a talent anywhere.

The fifth level is theory. Independent opinion is just a point of observation, called thought, which is standing on the shoulders of predecessors. But in the end, whether you can really become everyone, you must have a systematic theory. And this theory can help you see the problem through the phenomenon to see the essence, through the dynamic to see the trend, through the complex contradiction to grasp the main contradiction, this is called the theory.

So the structure of knowledge is these five levels. Today I just want to remind you of an observation point from another perspective. Our knowledge seems to have come from books, but in fact, it is not, knowledge is a three-dimensional structure, including myself, over the years can do something, I summarize the reason as "reading thousands of books, traveling thousands of miles, going through thousands of things." If there is no such constant rumination, as Chairman Mao said in "Transforming Our Study", to extract the essence from the rough, to preserve the false and the true, from this to the other, from the surface to the inside, theory and practice, theory again, and then practice, and then theory, and forever. Human practice is such a process, it is not an iteration of knowledge, but a superposition. From quantitative change to qualitative change, this is the composition of knowledge.

Knowledge, in addition to what this aspect brings, there is also practice. Because I practice every day, there are many commissioned projects in a year, all of which are very challenging, and even many of them are "near death". In this process, I feel very deeply, in addition to the knowledge in the books, there is also a kind of knowledge, reading, reading people, reading society, the latter two kinds of knowledge, especially when we go out of college, it is more important.

So I put forward a slogan, I said that life should be three-dimensional, called three lives have the privilege of sharing the future. Life, life, business, no one can be less. Life should be rich and colorful, life should be very full, valuable, meaningful, and finally business is only the result of incidentality. If it's just to make money, for business, then it will be so poor that there is only money left, which is really pitiful. In the past, there were many such local tycoons, but today many entrepreneurs are beginning to reflect on this problem. Some people are late to reflect, but many people start to contact this problem earlier.

Why does everyone need to understand a little strategy?

National strategy, military strategy is a very grand question, what does it have to do with each of us? Don't think it's a luxury, don't think it's not enough, in fact, it is closely related to each of us, here is a very simple story and example.

Twelve years ago, when Peking University asked me to give a lecture to students, I gave three days of lectures, and then those three days became a book, which sold well in the market, and the publisher called it "Making a Living" for the sake of selling well. In fact, the title of my book was originally called "My Fate Is My Master", and later they were useless, and I didn't expect to be used by the movie "Nezha", called "My fate is up to me". In fact, in retrospect, it is best to use "I am in charge of my destiny". But I found a phenomenon, this book has been out for more than ten years, recently a group of young people in their twenties came to me with books to sign, I was very emotional, time flies, but the reason is not old.

I was particularly impressed, when I was communicating with the college students and the proud sons of Peking University, although they talked for three days, it boiled down to nothing more than two theories. Many of these theories have succeeded if they had followed suit, and it is another thing that some people did not take seriously. I said that you are all talents, in fact, this kind of talent is a general talent, whether it is really a talent, there is a very important premise, that is, Chinese talk about self-knowledge. Those who know others are wise, and those who know themselves are wise, which is called self-knowledge when they are unified, but many people have worked all their lives and do not know who they are, let alone understand who the other party is. So I said, although it can be summarized as talents, talents are divided into two categories, one is called self-use talents, and the other is called talents who are used.

If you are a self-use talent, you are suitable to be a wild animal, to find your own grassland, to realize yourself, artists, writers, even entrepreneurs; if you are a talent to be used, you are in the circle, in the system, to achieve yourself, and finally there is a good Bole to find you. Your biggest advantage is that you are more secure, but the biggest risk is that if you can't meet Bole, you will be in the dark. If you encounter Bó Lè, there is no problem with being a CEO. Therefore, there are no more than two kinds of talents, being used and self-use. That's why I say that the children at Peking University measure it themselves. Don't follow the crowd, don't follow the trend of others, be sure to figure out who I am, for my own use or for use.

In addition to self-use and use, there is also an acceptance, like, and inseparable. Many of us always feel that we do not meet after going out to society, and always feel that God is unfair to themselves, but in fact, life is very simple, it is not you who measures you, you have a few pounds and a few pairs, and finally call you through the "general equivalent" of society. So I divide life into three stages, let people accept you, let people like you, let people can't do without you, just these three processes. It's useless to be hasty.

Including new employees to apply for jobs, no matter what you are arranged to do, the first problem, the peers do not accept you, the leader does not accept you, this is the premise. If you accept you, you will stand firm, if you do not accept you, there must be a lot of problems in you, you can not blame the objective environment, that is your own problem, ask inward, can not ask outward. The second sentence, let people like you. Accepting you, you stand firm, and liking you means you have plenty of opportunities to unleash your ambitions. The last third sentence is very critical, so that people can't do without you. If you really have the ability, real ability, real talent, at this time you do not want to be a shareholder is impossible, you do not want to be the boss is impossible, will keep you.

Therefore, strategy is not related to us, but has a relationship with everyone, and those who know others are wise, and those who know themselves are clear. How do I know who I am, where I come from, where am I going? How do I recognize my core competencies and design my life plan? This is very critical, this is the chip, this is the soul, if this thing is not, in real life, I have met a lot of people with high IQs, thirty years and then look back, or stand still, not youth without regrets, regret is useless. So strategy is not about us, it's about being very much about us.

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Reference Resource: Inspired Club Wang Zhigang: What is Strategy? 》