By Hu Saixiong, Former Director of Huawei's Reserve Cadre Department, Former Director of Huawei's Global Technical Service Department, Huawei's "Top 10 Blue Bloods"
- This article is excerpted from Hu Saixiong's "The Power of Management" (Machinery Industry Press), and the article only represents the author's own views
The phrase "I am born to be useful" is not false at all, any living form has individual advantages that are compatible with its survival strategy, and those without individual advantages have been ruthlessly eliminated by the years. But because there are too many "Trojan horses" stationed in our cognitive system, we are burdened with a lot of things that we should not be carrying, and instead we have annihilated our innate endowment.
01
The ubiquitous "Trojan horse"
The Trojan Horse is derived from the ancient Greek myth "The Trojan Horse Massacre". Legend has it that the Greek coalition besieged the city of Troy for a long time, so they pretended to retreat, leaving behind a huge hollow Trojan horse, and the defenders of Troy did not know what to do, so they transported the Trojan horse into the city as a trophy. In the dead of night, Greek soldiers hiding in the belly of the Trojan horse opened the gates, and the city of Troy fell. The Trojan horse is now commonly used to refer to malware downloaded onto a computer disguised as a legitimate program, usually hidden as an attachment in an email or download file, and then transmitted to a user's network device, where the attacker attempts to gain access to the system through its software. Trojan horses have a strong ability to camouflage and perform illegal functions covertly, while the victim ostensibly sees the execution of legitimate functions, so once they infiltrate, there are endless consequences.
If we think about it, how can we not have a large number of Trojan horses in our cognitive system? Although people are genetically different, in general, people are only ignorant, but they are not stupid. According to Lao Tzu, the newborn baby is closest to the Tao (the law of nature), that is, the closest to true knowledge, but the baby has no self-consciousness and cannot realize it. There is no truer situation between people than between mothers and babies, babies are completely unaware of their mother's pain, they only know that they need to feed when they are hungry, and they sleep when they are sleepy. As babies grow up, they continue to acquire self-awareness, values, knowledge, skills, and behavioral patterns that understand and adapt to the world from their parents and their surroundings, and we collectively refer to the cultural knowledge that babies acquire in the process of growing up as cultural knowledge.
For example, Jackie Chan may be a Trojan horse. Some people are not so much for their children as for their own glory. Children have been "rolling" since childhood, and they are arranged by their parents in various interest classes, which is called not to lose at the starting line. But are these children's interests? In fact, most of the interest classes fulfill the parents' own unfulfilled long-cherished wishes in life. Think about it, how can success be replicated in batches through crowded interest classes? Children are burdened with a lot of things that may not be related to their individual strengths when they are young, and deviate from their own endowments, people are bred to become stupid, it is necessary to know that individual advantages are closest to the best practices of individuals, and build differentiated survival barriers for individuals, parents should first explore their children's individual strengths, and then teach them according to their aptitude on this basis. Just like in the movie "Forrest Gump", Forrest Gump's mother discovered Forrest Gump's individual advantages in running and encouraged Forrest Gump to focus on running. Although the average human DNA is only 150 grams, it provides a long-term consultation storage for people, in which the individual advantage has been pre-coded in the DNA of the person at birth, what we need to do the day after tomorrow is to activate the pre-coding of these information in the environment like activating a bank credit card, and life is not to look for gold mines everywhere, it is better to discover the treasures that you have in your body. It must be believed that natural evolution follows the principle of least energy consumption, and the less energy consumption of organisms, the more survival advantages can be obtained, and the precoding of information can be understood as presetting the shortest path of evolution for us.
Dry goods (an internet buzzword that refers to concise, practical, and credible content that has been stripped of water) may also be a Trojan horse. The simplest criterion is why very powerful strategists in history have rarely become the number one? It shows that seeking people and things is far less important than judging people and things, and that scheming people and things is only logical self-consistency in the cognitive world, and judging people and things means that it takes great courage and courage to really compete for strength and take risks in a real world full of uncertainties. Logic is only used to explain things, never to invent anything, and logical reason without spiritual guidance is just a pure cognitive game. With the rise of the Internet, now the dissemination of knowledge has become easier and faster, more and more fast, various platforms under the banner of dry goods, the explosion of knowledge has made many enterprises not only unable to increase knowledge, but increased anxiety, lost themselves in the maze of knowledge, and did not agree on what to do. Some companies try to come up with some areas for dry goods to take over, trying to save trouble and copy homework, but the result is to suffer. Dry goods look like a famous brand and have a strong camouflage ability, but they may not really be useful. First, although dry goods originate from the best practices of some brand enterprises, they can often only be established in specific environments and conditions, and only some of the knowledge points taken out of context, not all the success factors, so it is difficult to say that it is universal; Each enterprise can be said to be a unique system, the system can be flawed, but there can be no missing, enterprises must find the goal, path and rhythm of business success in their own market segments, and form their own business logic and complete knowledge system. What enterprises need is to summarize and iterate their own knowledge system in practice, no matter how tempting it sounds, as long as it is not internalized and free from the company's own knowledge system, it is a de facto Trojan horse. The more we believe, the less we know, and even if it is the truth, we must be vigilant. Truth was originally a religious term used for mind control over believers, and it was later used in other areas. In the world of experience, there is no absolute truth, only the perspective of looking at things, and blindly worshipping the truth is tantamount to giving up one's own cognitive system. Enterprises beware of being taken over by dry goods, but it does not mean that enterprises do not need to learn the best practices of others, the key is to learn the spirit and methodology of dry goods, that is, the principles we say, there are right principles to have the right rules. The spirit and methodology together constitute the base of the enterprise knowledge system, many enterprises precisely because they do not have their own spirit and methodology, can not fundamentally form their own complete knowledge system, the spirit and methodology is what many enterprises really need to make up, or even copy the homework. The more experience, the less truth, and the lower the thing, the more universal it is. The specific business practice operations all have specific scene characteristics, even if it is someone's diamond, it must be transformed into their own diamond to attack the jade.
To say that emotions are also Trojan horses is certainly a surprise to some, but it is true. From the perspective of the origin of emotion, emotion generally arises from living organisms and is related to the desires of living organisms, with the purpose of coordinating the relationship between living organisms and the environment. Organisms sense the environment and constantly interact with the environment with material, energy and information according to environmental changes, so that their own living conditions can adapt to the environment. It can be seen that emotion is produced in order to better meet the survival needs of organisms, and is essentially a physiological or psychological function evolved by human adaptation to the environment, which originates from loving oneself, not loving others, and the survival competition of real organisms in nature is not with any emotional color. Therefore, emotions, like all other existences, are only the result of the evolution of natural laws, they do not form part of natural laws, and natural laws do not have any emotional color, as Ouyang Xiu of the Northern Song Dynasty said, "Life is a love affair, and this hatred has nothing to do with the wind and the moon." The laws of nature are nothing but the movement of matter and the transfer of energy. Therefore, the most reliable and authentic interpersonal relationship is value exchange, not emotional interaction, emotional value can only be an appetizer, not a meal, in most cases emotions will give way to reality, any excessive emotion, will become the heaviest burden in life. Emotion, as a physiological or psychological function, once transformed into a Trojan horse, takes over and controls the part of our brain that helps us to stay sane, hindering or even inhibiting our ability to make rational decisions, causing us to deviate from the law and be punished by the law. For example, we often encounter the following situation: we always think that we are right, and others do not understand and support ourselves, so we begin to have emotional breakdowns, malicious speculation and complaints and accusations, which is a typical situation in which reason is taken over and controlled by emotions, in fact, it may be that our own ability is insufficient, and it is manifested as the expression of negative emotions. The external environment is an objective reality, and we can only adapt to the objective reality, but we cannot adapt the objective reality to us, so the rational way to deal with it should be: allow everything to happen, treat everyone and everything we encounter as if it is to help us improve our cognition, and on this basis, think about what caused the situation to happen? If we find the real reason, we are close to the truth, and if we are close to the truth, we are close to the solution to the problem. In this process, only by using emotion as a barometer and lubricant for rational analysis, not replacing human reason, can reason help us go further. It should be clarified that this is not to oppose the necessary emotional interaction between people, but to say that emotion is the act itself, and the purpose is to play the role of coordinating the relationship, and it is not appropriate to directly regard emotional behavior as the origin of behavior.
02
It is instinct to do addition, and it is the ability to do subtraction
The Trojan horse of the cognitive system unconsciously leads us to one life mistake after another, wastes our already scarce resources and time, and slows down our growth. How to avoid falling into the trap of life set by the Trojan horse? Occam's razor principle is a proven method. Occam's Razor Principle is a classic tool for cross-disciplinary thinking, proposed by the 14th-century English logician and philosopher William Occam, whose core idea is only eight words: "If you don't have to, don't add substance", but it can quickly cut through the mess, help us sort out this "constantly pulling, sorting out the chaos" world, and help us get out of chaos.
The Occam's Razor Principle intuitively pursues simplicity and essentially pursues as little hypothetical load as possible. Just as in classical mechanics, each additional component changes the magnitude or direction of the resultant force, so each additional hypothetical load increases the probability of us making mistakes. For example, some people often have difficulty in choosing, considering too many factors, entering a bunch of assumptions, and as a result, they are constantly interrupted and miss the best opportunity window. Why is it difficult to choose? In fact, there is only one fundamental reason: there is not enough resources and energy! You see, in the face of absolute power, all wisdom can only be crushed, and only in this case can it be foolproof and do not need to consider risks, and any other situation needs to have a strategy, which is to put as little hypothetical load as possible as mentioned above. Any strategy carries risk, and without risk, there is no strategy. The simpler and more advanced the cognition, the extra things will become our cages. Therefore, for decision-makers, it is important to come up with a strategy rather than eliminate risks, after the strategy is determined, all that remains is to take the calculated risks, and not wanting to take risks is actually to find a high-sounding reason for their own inaction.
After the success of some entrepreneurs, all kinds of entertainment are overwhelmed, tired of coping, and the more time is filled with some disturbing things, the more wisdom can not grow, it is conceivable that the result is negligent in their own career management, which is caused by constantly increasing the hypothetical load on themselves. In their eyes, these are important network resources that must be maintained, but they don't know that the real network resources in life are actually those who exchange value through healthy business dealings. Entrepreneurs who can't see this can easily get bogged down by all sorts of inconsequential connections. In the same way, the real noble person is not others, but themselves, if they do not have the ability and conditions to get out of the circle, try to ask which noble person is willing to gamble their reputation or reputation to endorse us? The noble person can only be icing on the cake, it is impossible to send charcoal in the snow, the more people who have no strength, the more unsatisfactory things, at this time, I hope that the noble person will be the ladder to change the fate of his life, it is like seeking fish from the wood. When we adjust our lives to the simplest mode, we will find that success or growth is enough to adhere to one basic assumption: to bring out the best aspects of ourselves and use them to the greatest extent for altruism! Isn't insisting on altruism a higher level of self-help? The limited nature of resources and energy determines that we cannot do everything, so those things that are tired of coping with and unable to stir up "flow" should in principle know how to abandon them, so as to make ourselves more focused and more likely to create scarcity. When we see some people and things clearly, we can look down on many people and things. In this regard, the approach of Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, is worth learning from. Although Ren is old, as long as an important customer comes, he will personally drive to pick up the customer, showing that he attaches great importance to the customer. However, once, when Morgan Stanley's chief economist Steve Roach led a luxurious investment team to visit Huawei, Ren Zhengfei did not greet him personally, but sent the executive vice president in charge of R&D at the time to receive him, which inevitably disappointed Steve Roach. Ren Zhengfei later said: "He is not our customer, why should I meet him? He came with an investment team, but what does it have to do with me? I am a seller of equipment, of course I am only looking for people who buy equipment!" The above example shows that the founder of Huawei has a very clear mind about who the real network resources are.
Doing addition stems from people's need to obtain external resources and is driven by the need to be satisfied, while doing subtraction is focusing on growth under self-examination and is driven by the value of need, so doing addition is instinct and subtraction is ability. In Chapter 19 of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu provides us with three methodologies: seeing simplicity, being less selfish and having few desires, and being carefree from learning, which means that people should return to their true nature, and not be led astray by all kinds of impetuous phenomena, selfish desires, and flashy theories artificially induced or created in society. The more we are possessed, the less we have, and transcending distractions and doing subtraction is the right choice and way out of our lives.
"Absolute wisdom and abandonment, the people benefit a hundredfold; Absolute ingenuity abandons profit, there are no thieves; These three words are also thought to be insufficient, so the order belongs: see plain and simple, less selfish and less desired, and never forget about learning. ”
In order to follow the Tao (the law of nature), it is necessary to put an end to and abandon those wise men and debaters who are attached to the monarch and "talk about merit" more than "do merit", restore the clean government, and let the people get more benefits; put an end to and abandon those good things that pursue the interests of ingenuity, so as to reduce the breeding of thieves in society; and put an end to and abandon those who are deliberately undesirable and hypocritical, and restore the natural nature of man. The above three aspects are not enough as the governing philosophy of the king, and here we need to further emphasize their essential attributes: return to nature and embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness and desires, and abandon flashy doctrines so as not to cause social trouble. The essence of the above three points is not to follow the external appearance, not to follow the inner selfish desires, and not to follow the dogma that sits and talks about the Tao without empirical evidence.
03
The battle for the "soul" of car companies can be rested
The battle for the soul of the car will cramp from time to time in the automotive industry, and the direct reason is that for traditional players in the automotive industry, Huawei's entry is like the invasion of alien species, and everyone always has a sense of pressure on their backs. As a new entrant, Huawei aims at its own advantageous niche, "picking up" areas that are not easy for others to do, and complementing the advantages of car companies. Therefore, Huawei has positioned itself as a "supplier of incremental components for smart vehicles", and has overcome difficulties in making incremental components along the ICT direction that it is best at, such as chips, perception hardware, intelligent cockpits, intelligent driving, ecosystem services, and cloud ...... Wait a minute. As Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei, said, "Intelligent vehicle solutions cannot be rolled out on a complete front, and it is necessary to reduce the R&D budget, strengthen the closed loop of business, and take the path of modularization, focusing on a few key components to make competitiveness, and the rest can be connected with others."
But no matter how good a strategic assumption is, it also needs to be carefully verified. Can Huawei's strategy succeed? Huawei has designed three business cooperation models for this purpose: the first is the component model, in which Huawei does not build its own cars, but provides incremental component services such as intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, intelligent electric, intelligent networking, and intelligent vehicle cloud to car companies; Except for a small number of components such as shells and batteries, the rest of the basic modules are provided by Huawei, and the upper-level applications are developed by the car companies themselves. Regardless of the business cooperation model, the goal is to help car companies to shorten the product launch cycle, reduce costs, and improve user experience, the difference is only in the depth of cooperation, the first model is suitable for strong brand enterprises, the second model is suitable for brand enterprises with insufficient innovation ability, and the third model is suitable for relatively weak brand enterprises. In the end, which business cooperation model can win, it needs to be tested by practice. Judging from the current market performance of the "Wenjie" model, Huawei's smart selection model seems to have achieved initial results. The success of the third model will undoubtedly have a significant impact on the first and second models. Huawei can only say that its strategy is successful if it has gone through any of these models, and it is still too early to evaluate Huawei's smart car strategy. But to be honest, it is difficult for the three models to go hand in hand, should they have a sequence, such as the first to go through the smart mode, if it can help some brands achieve commercial success, it means that Huawei has really withstood the market test, to achieve a closed business loop (Huawei is often called a model), the other two models have brand power and credibility, after all, the real competitiveness of China's smart cars in the world is reflected in the performance of the front end of the market and the reputation of consumers, the front end has no power, no matter how strong the back end is, it is in vain. As a new entrant, this is the real difficulty and challenge that Huawei is encountering. After the market success of the smart selection model, Huawei retreats to the other two models, which may be more conducive to Huawei's economies of scale and scope. But the premise is whether traditional players can form their own market advantages as soon as possible in the era of smart cars? Will there be a conflict between traditional players and Huawei in terms of core capabilities? At present, it is obvious that Huawei is far from being strong enough in the automotive field that traditional players have to accept Huawei, and Huawei is still a difficult road away from being truly "far ahead".
In the automotive industry for more than 100 years, traditional players can basically be said to be intra-species competition, and the complex industrial structure of automobiles determines that the automobile industry needs large capital to operate. From the point of view of physics, the larger the structure, the slower the frequency, the smaller the structure, the faster the frequency, the larger the enterprise, the farther away from the customer. However, with the advent of the era of smart cars, the automotive industry is in a huge trend turning period, and intraspecific competition has gradually shifted to interspecific and ecological competition, and all this is by no means the result of human design, but green energy, battery technology, 5G communication, mobile Internet, AI, ...... and other social factors and forces interact with each other and are the result of the joint birth, which is the trend of the times. This means that traditional cars are moving towards intelligent mobile space and application terminals, and the era of software-defined vehicles is coming, so we can boldly imagine that in the future, smart car hardware can be obtained cheaply or even for free, the threshold for car-making hardware is low, and the form and style are no longer the main pursuit; the era of traffic and content payment is coming, and digital value-added services such as rich data, traffic, content, and operation will flourish. If the above vision is really a true picture of the future of the automotive industry, then it can be deduced that the market demand of the automotive industry is in fact entering the coverage of Huawei's ICT core competencies in a natural evolution and at a speed that is visible to the naked eye.
On the contrary, traditional players may not be as lucky as Huawei. It is an indisputable fact that the core competencies accumulated by traditional players over a long period of time are gradually drifting away from the actual market demand, and even becoming more and more a burden to traditional players. In other words, Huawei is facing a situation where industry trends are approaching us, while traditional players are facing a situation where they still need to reconstruct their core capabilities to conform to industry trends. One is strategically proactive and the other is strategically passive, which shows that the difficulties and challenges faced by traditional players are fundamentally different from those faced by Huawei. The battle between traditional car players and Huawei is just a surface, and it reflects that traditional players have shown a sense of powerlessness and weightlessness in the face of the trend of the industry.
But as we all know, building core competencies doesn't happen overnight. What is the core competence? The core competence of an enterprise is a comprehensive system composed of knowledge accumulation, special skills and related resources in the long-term operation process of the enterprise, which is a unique and unique ability of the enterprise, and is the source and foundation of the continuous competition of the enterprise. Some enterprises think that they have been engaged in a certain business for a long time, and the business is their core competency, which is absolutely wrong, and to constitute the core competence of the enterprise, at least the following four elements need to be met:
(1) It is a key winning factor for the success of the enterprise.
(2) It can create scarcity, which can further amplify the success of the enterprise in the future.
(3) It is unique and not easy to be imitated.
(4) It has relative stability and sustainable development, and can be used as the basis to continuously abandon and form an enhancement loop.
The core competence of the enterprise is the vitality and growth of the enterprise. It's safe to say that traditional players are far more challenged than Huawei to build core capabilities in the smart car era. However, the window of opportunity for the development of the industry is not waiting for me, and if you miss it, you will miss it, and traditional players must change quickly, and in the initial stage, they can only occupy the market and keep up with the trend by integrating excellent external division of labor, which is also the choice they have to choose.
Does the choice of Huawei's "full-stack" intelligent solution mean that Huawei's soul is mastered by Huawei? Anything that can be called a soul must be those invisible inner spiritual power, which is attached to the presentation form and expression of the product, all of which reflect the care and care for human nature, and emerge to transform the product into a work, the integration of technology and the beauty of human nature of the breakthrough and ambition; it creatively buries a personalized contact point through the medium of the product, "bursting" Customer cognition, let customers scream and stimulate a strong sense of resonance and loyalty of customers, it through creative monopoly, to achieve the transformation of enterprises from cost-driven to value-driven, to create value for customers, for the development of value protection capabilities...... Specifically, what exactly is the soul of traditional players (and all new players)? I think it is nothing else, but the mainstream values and mainstream social values of a specific social group (consumers)! This is the "one in a hundred interesting souls", because consumers do not buy tangible products, but the value contained in the products. The whole meaning of the existence of an enterprise is to become an organizational organ that synchronizes with social value, constantly relays for social development, and constantly creates social incremental value. The good-looking skins are the same".
It can be seen that the battle for the soul of the car is an out-and-out "Trojan horse", which is clothed in the cloak of legitimacy and has entered the cognitive system of some people. Traditional players and Huawei actually have their own difficulties and challenges, the key is to go beyond the distractions, each focus on doing their own things well, and reject, blame and rely on others, all of which will not help and make themselves stronger. Traditional players do not need to have a strong sense of boundary and identity, in the special period of great changes in the world and the world's moral decline, adhere to the bottom line of survival, mutual needs, reasonable trade-offs, open integration, group warmth, competition with each other, and cross others and themselves, why not the best choice? Entering the car is certainly not Huawei's first choice, which is not in line with the principle of maximizing Huawei's value, Huawei actually wants to see itself "integrated" It is Huawei's consistent guiding ideology for industrial development to share costs and allow more platforms to become their own money printing machines. However, if the traditional player's "front-wheel drive" is not effective, Huawei's massive investment cannot be quickly transformed into capabilities and benefits based on customer choices, and Huawei has no choice but to rush forward to fill the position through "rear-wheel drive". Huawei is likely to adhere to its self-positioning as a "supplier of incremental parts for smart cars", rather than positioning itself as a competitor, and investing incremental value in society is Huawei's consistent value, which should also become a universal value for all enterprises.
Traditional players should focus on the mainstream values of specific social groups (consumers) and mainstream social values to build the core competence of the enterprise, first of all, culture first, change the product-centric corporate culture, and then build a customer and customer experience-centered corporate culture, its core is the value of the enterprise, it is the "shadow of the soul" of the enterprise, it has erected a beacon for the thoughts and behaviors of all employees, without advanced culture, how can it be interesting soul? Secondly, it is not advisable to have a one-step idea, any core competence is the result of continuous dynamic interaction with the external market environment and long-term running-in, so in the stage of career development, especially to open integration, timely integration of external excellent social division of labor, elements and capabilities do not seek all, but to use; Then, according to the actual situation, some capabilities of external integration will be replaced in a timely manner step by step, and a stable structure focusing on core capabilities and opening up peripheral capabilities will be gradually formed.
By the way, we will mention the cooperation between Huawei and Motorola back then, and let's experience the importance of cognitive perspective. Around 1999, Motorola's market competition pressure mainly came from Ericsson and Nokia. In order to make up for the lack of competitiveness of its products, especially the lack of core networks, Motorola actively seeks cooperation with Huawei, and the form of cooperation is that Motorola OEM Huawei's products as an OEM, that is, Motorola transmits customer needs, puts forward requirements for operators, and is responsible for network installation and daily maintenance, while Huawei completes the implementation of products, code generation, and technical problem solving. In this partnership, Huawei is the de facto provider of products and technologies, and Motorola provides trademark branding and distribution as an integration. The two sides began a decade-long close cooperation, from the earliest core network, to base stations and base station controllers, and gradually expanded from individual regions to more than 40 countries. When Huawei decided to cooperate with Huawei, there were many internal opposition voices at that time, believing that Motorola's OEM of Huawei would weaken Huawei's brand power in the international market. In response to these voices, Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, has a different thinking, he said, "Only by breaking the narrow national pride can it be internationalized, only by breaking the narrow Huawei pride can it be professionalized, and only by breaking the narrow brand awareness can it be mature." At the same time, it puts forward the business philosophy of "developing together with friends, being both competitors and partners, creating a good living space and sharing the benefits of the value chain". To be honest, Motorola's global market share was much larger than Huawei's at that time, and Huawei took advantage of the trend and was able to use Motorola's "ship" to go to sea, which was definitely a major benefit for Huawei to open up the international market.
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