I hope to bring some of my excellent practices in the enterprise for more than ten years to more listed companies and quasi-listed companies, and hope to achieve the combination of intelligence and capital in the process of communication and collision with entrepreneurs.
文｜孙建恒 编辑 | 李泽慧
来源 | 华夏基石e洞察（ID：）
Hello everyone. It is a great honor to be able to communicate and communicate with all entrepreneurs on the platform of Huaxia Cornerstone Think-Share Conference.
After graduating with a master's degree, I joined Harbor Network and worked with Li Yinan for about six years, responsible for R&D and product marketing.
In 2006, with the beginning of Huawei's large-scale mergers and acquisitions, I moved to Huawei to work on strategic planning.
In 2016, I officially left Huawei and founded Tenggu Venture Capital.
In 2017, he joined Huaxia Cornerstone Company and served as the general manager of Huaxia Cornerstone Enterprise Strategic M&A Research and Consulting Center.
During my tenure at Huawei, I was mainly engaged in strategic planning for China Telecom. The main content of this part of the work first includes a clear insight into the entire industry trend and industry trend, specifically covering the value transfer trend of the industry, the transformation direction of telecom operators in the next five years, and what pain points and opportunities it will generate in the process of transformation. Secondly, we need to have a sufficient understanding of the development strategies of our competitors in the next five years, and make corresponding countermeasures based on these strategies, including how to drive the company's research and development, so that it can seize the opportunity, be able to launch the corresponding product at the corresponding time, and propose competitive product solutions that can meet customer needs, etc.
Then, with the help of the platform of Huaxia Cornerstone, I hope to bring some of my excellent practices in enterprises for more than ten years to more listed companies and quasi-listed companies, and hope to realize the combination of intelligence and capital in the process of communication and collision with entrepreneurs.
Strategic goals depend on the achievement of key tasks
Our topic today is strategy, so first of all, it is clear that what is strategy?
First, we believe that strategy is a trade-off with limited resources. Michael Porter's definition of strategy is to take competitive positioning as the core, make trade-offs in business activities, and establish a unique fit that fits the enterprise.
I've met a lot of bosses of listed companies, quasi-listed companies, or private companies, and quite a few of them think that strategy is very pragmatic. But in fact, the strategy includes not only the strategic positioning of the enterprise in the retreat, but also some very practical content. For example, when an enterprise's strategy includes the path of action for the next five years, and the key tasks for the next five years are planned, and even the current tasks can be broken down into the KPIs of each organization and into the BLM of each executive, when the realization of the company's future strategic goals depends entirely on whether these key tasks can be achieved, then it can be considered that this strategy is very practical.
At the same time, in the case of correct strategy, precise tactics + strict execution can make the development of an enterprise achieve twice the result with half the effort; on the contrary, when the strategy is wrong, the more successful the tactics, the more effective the implementation, the worse the final result may be. Not only will the business fail to achieve the desired goals, but it will have a significant negative impact on the customer, and in the worst case, it will be completely wiped out.
Huawei's three strategic transformations
In Huawei's development history, in its previous strategy formulation and adjustment, "survival" has always been the highest goal that Huawei has always adhered to, but it is also the minimum standard of Huawei's strategic goals. Because, only by surviving, enterprises have the opportunity to seek better development. If it is a problem for companies to even survive, then the so-called development is empty talk.
At the same time, Mr. Ren emphasized that without correct assumptions, there will be no correct direction, without correct direction, there will be no correct thinking, without correct thinking, there will be no correct conclusions, and without correct theories, there will be no correct strategies. In terms of strategy, it must be based on bold assumptions about the future in order to formulate a reasonable path of action and strategic goals.
In fact, Huawei is not without its strategic mistakes. However, based on the customer-centric service concept, all of Huawei's actions can be quickly fed back from the customer level through a certain feedback mechanism. In addition, this feedback can reach the group level directly, allowing the top management to make rapid adjustments to the strategy. This is an important reason why Huawei has always been able to drive the company's operations with a customer-centric approach.
In Huawei's view, strategy is about "doing the right thing", while tactics is about "doing things right", so we say that we must first solve the problem and do the right thing, and firmly follow this direction in order to achieve the ultimate goal.
However, we have come into contact with many bosses of listed companies such as the small and medium-sized board, the gem board or the new third board, and found that everyone often has two misunderstandings of thinking:
First, the strategy is formulated by the boss alone, and the results are not obtained through organizational or systematic discussions.
Second, the strategy has been formulated, but it cannot be effectively implemented, and many strategic goals cannot be implemented.
For example, there is a small and medium-sized board listed company in Shenzhen, which reached a market value of 20 billion yuan at the most glorious time. In recent years, due to various reasons, the performance has declined, so a very good CEO has been hired from outside. When the CEO came to the company, he was confused in many ways. For example, in the process of strategy implementation, some old leaders and old employees of the management will implement his instructions at a discount, which is actually a problem of strategic coordination. Effective strategic collaboration should be the crystallization of collective wisdom based on collective discussion and consensus across the company.
Therefore, in the process of formulating a business strategy, first of all, entrepreneurs must have systematic thinking. It is very important to open the "telescope" and use the power of logic to think about future development plans. In addition, at the level of strategy implementation, there should be a systematic approach to promote the implementation of the strategy. While strategic goals represent the future, strategy means the present, and is what needs to be done now. Only by promoting the implementation of the strategy can the future strategic goals be realized.
I summarized the basic rhythm of Huawei's three strategic transformations:
1. The first transformation: in the initial stage, the countryside surrounded the city.
In the early days, Huawei followed a development strategy of encircling cities from rural areas. As we all know, Huawei has always been a strong sales-driven, or market-driven company. It always emphasizes that we must make products and solutions that meet customer needs, always take market demand and customer demand as the guide, and constantly drive the company's research and development direction.
Therefore, although Huawei also sold many products in the early days of its establishment, including proxy switch business, etc., and earned the company's first pot of gold because of this. However, since then, Huawei has been actively engaged in research and development, starting with some small switches, and slowly entering the field of medium-sized and large-sized switches.
The reason why we had to start from the countryside was also determined by environmental factors at that time. Because, when Huawei first set foot in the field of communications, international giants such as Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Siemens, and Fujitsu almost monopolized the entire communications market. At the same time, any product from research and development to occupy the market, will go through a very long process, including the stability of the product, must go through a lot of experiments, including line network experiments, product verification and so on, will be well proven. Therefore, from the customer's point of view, at that time, some companies that pursued product stability and brand credibility did not dare to easily use the switch developed by a small company. In this context, the weak Huawei can only enter the rural market.
However, Huawei has a characteristic that it attaches great importance to service and customer feelings. Therefore, after any product is developed, it must first get customer feedback, and continuously improve and adjust accordingly. In the process of continuously meeting customer needs, one of Huawei's most important core control points is services. Because of this, Huawei has gradually expanded from the rural market to the urban market, and within a few years, it has occupied a very high market share of urban communications.
2. The Second Transformation: Internationalization and Globalization
Around 1998, Huawei launched its second strategic transformation, that is, a differentiated global competitive strategy. The formation of the internationalization strategy is based on the following important factors:
1. Ceiling effect. At that time, Huawei's products, especially switch products, had occupied a dominant position in China, and the domestic market of the entire industry had become saturated. Therefore, the ceiling for rapid growth relying on this product has appeared, and a new breakthrough must be formed. At this time, the overseas market has become the best choice;
2. Mature product system. Because Huawei's switch products have been tested and tempered in the domestic market, they are very mature and can be directly sold overseas.
3. Excellent talent reserve. In China, whether it is at the customer level, the service level or the product level, in the process of facing the market together, a large number of outstanding cadres have been trained and trained. At that time, we created the "Iron Triangle" model, including account managers, solution managers, delivery specialists, HR managers and other talents, who can go directly overseas for market expansion, sales, product service and maintenance.
4. Improvement of management system. Whether it is in the market strategy of surrounding cities in rural areas, or in the process of internationalization, Huawei has introduced many consulting companies, including IPD/ISC from IBM. Around 1995, Huawei invited six professors from the National People's Congress, including Peng Jianfeng of Huaxia Cornerstone, to refine the content of the company's corporate culture such as the "Huawei Basic Law", which can be said to have played a very important role in the unification of the company's thinking at that time.
The introduction of management consulting companies, including Huawei's own digestion and absorption capabilities, has greatly improved Huawei's management system.
It should be said that every strategic transformation of Huawei is a collection of many elements, including human resources, products and solutions, and management processes. If you blindly work fast in the process of internationalization, but the management process does not keep up, it is likely to lead to management chaos. Therefore, these factors have contributed to the steady progress of Huawei's secondary transformation.
At the same time, the process of internationalization is also a very effective means of competing with global competitors. For example, if some international giants compete with Huawei in the Chinese market, if Huawei can integrate resources in the international market and use these resources to compete with international giants in China, it can not only disperse the competitive pressure in the Chinese market, but also increase the competitiveness of the company's products and solutions. This is actually part of Huawei's major decision-making, and it is also the only way for Huawei to internationalize. In addition, it was also the best time for the globalization of the communications industry, and if it was missed, Huawei's internationalization path would encounter greater resistance.
3. The third transformation: the transformation from carrier customers to carrier BG + enterprise BG + consumer BG, that is, the separation of the three BG services
Huawei's third strategic transformation is to shift from being solely carrier-oriented to three different BG business areas. Previously, Huawei's customers were only at the operator level, including China Telecom, China Mobile, and so on. After the transformation, Huawei will not only be an operator enterprise (carrier BG), but also a large number of industry and enterprise customers (enterprise BG), and will also face terminal consumers. Among them, the terminal-oriented BG mainly includes some business units (consumer BGs) for mobile phone products and ultimately for consumers.
The transformation to these three BGs at the same time is rare in the world, because the customer attributes of these three BGs are very different, and the concerns of each other, as well as the processes of the entire supply chain, including the R&D process, demand management process, marketing and other processes are very different. Therefore, at present, there is no company in the world that can do a good job in these three business segments and three different types of customer groups at the same time.
At the beginning, Huawei was not very smooth when it was an enterprise BG, and it also paid a certain amount of "tuition", which can be said to have accumulated a certain amount of experience by spending money to buy lessons. In the past two years, Huawei has gradually overcome the obstacles, and has been able to follow the development rules of the enterprise BG itself, and allow the entire channel provider and agents to obtain relatively good profit margins. At present, the growth rate of the company's BG business has reached about 40%-50%, and its driving role can be said to be very obvious. However, compared with the other two BGs, the size of the enterprise BG is still relatively small.
Similarly, the consumer BG has undergone a very significant metamorphosis. Because our initial plan was to make customized mobile phone terminal products for operators, and the market price of such customized products at that time was very low, and the profit margin was very small. And, very different from Apple's boutique stand-alone strategy, it also faces the problem of a large variety of product models. However, under the leadership of Yu Chengdong, the consumer BG has also made very big changes, so that the entire product system focuses on three series, namely the MATE series, the P series, and the Honor series born in response to the Internet mobile phone.
In this process, the consumer BG has also experienced great pain, but our consideration at the core control point of business design is that in the entire mobile phone terminal field, even if we can't make a profit on the hardware in the end, at least we can find profit margins from the chip. This is a very important dimension for us to think about.
It should be said that every time Huawei transforms its strategy, it also faces an external environment, including changes in customers, opportunities, and the ever-changing competitive landscape. In response to these changes, Huawei has been able to bring together the world's top experts to discuss, review, and identify them, and ultimately, this collective wisdom can form a unified offensive. As you can imagine, the investment is also quite amazing.
In terms of execution, I think there are two core factors that make Huawei so well known to the business community and even the management community. The first is the important role played by various management systems, including various processes, leadership execution, personnel deployment, and cadre training, and the second is Huawei's own corporate culture, which is customer-centric and striver-oriented. The effective implementation of the corporate culture has laid a strong foundation for Huawei's high execution.
The core of Huawei's strategic planning: the BLM model
The reason why Huawei has introduced IBM's BLM model in the field of strategic planning, and has been able to use this model consistently in the process of formulating the company's strategic planning, is that this model is very valuable.
First of all, in the BLM model, the market is the starting point for all planning, and the gap is the result of those planning.
Specifically, the gap includes not only the gap in opportunities, the strategic positioning of enterprise development, but also the gap in performance. In view of the performance gap, for example, the company set a sales target of 1 billion at the beginning of the year, but in the end only completed 900 million, then this 100 million is the gap. So, where does the gap come from? Why does such a gap occur? Is it the reason for execution? We need to go back to the root and find the cause of the gap.
As for the gap of opportunities, for example, based on a certain market opportunity, one of our customers has such an investment budget, but we do not have the corresponding products and solutions. In this case, if we have the ability to make it out of scratch and match it to the cadence of the customer, then we can seize the opportunity. And this space from scratch is our opportunity gap. To make up for it, a new business design is needed to adapt it.
Secondly, the leadership component. In fact, leadership is not the power given by the organization, but more to examine whether the leader can lead everyone to identify the strategic issues of the company's future development, whether they can lead everyone to continuously solve problems, and form continuous in-depth insight and analysis of things. Ultimately, it requires leaders to have the ability to drive strategic transformation across the company.
Third, the value dimension. Over the years, Huawei has been able to focus on the main channel and focus on the FBB fixed network and MBB mobile network fields, without getting involved in the investment and development of more profitable real estate or financial fields. Behind this sufficient determination, it is actually Huawei's core values that come into play. In Huawei's view, if it is dispersed to other industries, the traditional main channel will be greatly impacted. In this regard, there are many lessons from the past in China, not only the main business has not been strengthened in time, but has led to many crises.
First, the strategic dimension
1. At the level of strategic planning, you can see Huawei's insight into the entire market. Include:
1) Insight into macro trends: From a macro perspective, we will look at the changes and development trends in politics, economy, culture, society and so on at the national level, what impact and changes will these trends bring to the industry, what is the future technological development trend of the entire industry, what changes will occur, and so on, all of which need to be reflected in this part.
2) Customer insights. What is the strategic direction of our customers' development strategy in the next five years, and what are the pain points in its development strategy, etc., which are the contents that we always pay attention to;
3) Insight into competitors. The so-called knowing oneself and knowing one's opponent is invincible. What will be the development strategy of our competitors in the future, and what is its positioning?
4) Insight into oneself. Based on the insight of our customers and competitors, we want to better explore our strengths and make up for our internal shortcomings. Therefore, through the SMART analysis model, we can identify where our challenges and opportunities are;
5) Insight into opportunities. What kind of investment opportunities do we have in the future, and how big is the market space for us, etc.
2. Strategic intent. In the field of strategic intent, what we need to be clear about is what kind of height we want to reach in the future. For example, in the next five years, our sales target will change from the current 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Therefore, the company's vision, strategic goals, strategic milestones, and long-term financial indicators are all questions that need to be answered in the strategic intent.
3. Innovation focus. In the future, how should the products of the whole company be combined? What are our core businesses now? In order to pursue scale and profitability, what businesses need to be cultivated for the future, and make them become the main business in a certain period of time, so as to improve market share and product competitiveness?
At the same time, in some pilot assessment indicators, some assessment of information business can also be included, that is, the assessment is carried out around the information business that needs to be actively cultivated in the future, regardless of income or other factors. In this way, through the combined business management, the company not only meets the operational requirements of existing products, but also cultivates emerging strategic opportunities for the future.
We will also think about what are the innovation factors of the company in the future at the organizational level, the product and solution level, and the human resource level, and what are the innovation points? We may first conduct experiments in a certain region, a certain department or a certain link, and once successful, we will promote it in other modules or in the whole company, which is a very important factor in the focus of innovation.
Of course, in the innovation focus, we allow failure. Where there is innovation, there will inevitably be failure, so we can accept some failures, which encourages more innovation and breeds more possibilities.
4. Business design. Business design is also a very important consideration, including customer selection, value proposition, value acquisition, profit model, strategic control and risk management, etc., which should be fully reflected in the business design. Later, we will introduce why we should do business design and what kind of logic should be used to design business. At the entire business design level, our methodology is value design and value driven.
1) First of all, the customer's choice. In the customer's selection module, including what kind of customer we choose, what is the level of the customer, whether we choose the customer TO B or the customer who chooses TO C, or the customer who chooses from TO B to C, these are some very critical choices.
2) Value proposition. What are the reasons why the customer chooses us, what are his expectations, and based on the insight of the customer and his needs, we define our value proposition. Then, we need to continuously promote this value proposition to our customers, such as through various brand events, forums, etc., to continuously communicate to customers.
3) Value capture. That is, what kind of products do we use to meet the needs of customers. In this process, the product is not only limited to the type of technology, it can also include financial products, such as loans, etc., which are important contents of the value acquisition module.
4) Profit model. The profit model refers to the way in which the enterprise makes money, including direct methods, that is, through the sale of products on a large scale to obtain profits, as well as some other indirect ways.
5) Scope of business. What to do and what not to do is critical for businesses. Clear choices need to be made about what can be done on your own and what you have to do through collaboration.
6) Strategic control points. In the future, what are the core points of the enterprise to continue to generate profits? For example, good customer relations, excellent product cost performance, etc., all of which constitute the strategic control points of the enterprise.
We can compare the methodology of the entire business design to the process of climbing a mountain. Then, the strategic intent of the enterprise is at the top of the mountain, the current gap is at the foot of the mountain, and the embodiment of corporate leadership is in the middle part. Including my market insights, business design and innovation focus, etc., it is really all about how to achieve strategic intent. That is to say, based on the current gap, how to reach the top of the mountain of the company's future strategic intent from the foot of the mountain.
It's a very systematic approach that is of great value to the development of corporate strategy. There is nothing special about this process in itself, but it allows everyone to quickly understand each other's opinions and suggestions through the use of "one language", which facilitates the rapid consensus on the strategy and finally the overall decision. At the same time, using the power of logic, it is possible to make the front and back correspond. Specifically, it refers to the process of identifying key tasks for gaps and implementing them.
At the same time, top-down implementation is a crucial guarantee in the implementation of the strategy. We say that the implementation of the strategy must be top-down, which means that the company's top leaders must pay enough attention to the strategy in order to formulate and implement it well. It is not only related to the success or failure of the entire strategy, but also through the decomposition of the strategy, the implementation of the strategy can be reviewed and tracked on a regular basis, and timely refreshed at the appropriate opportunity points.
Second, the implementation of the strategy
1. Mission-critical. In the execution of the strategy, we will sort out the future strategic milestones and incorporate them into the key tasks for the next five years. Each year's key tasks will be focused. And all these key tasks must be assigned to a certain department or a certain person, who is directly responsible for the solution of this key task. At the same time, other departments need to do a good job of supporting, which is a very important part of the key tasks.
2. Formal organization. The factors that organizations need to consider are how to fit in, i.e., what kind of organizations do companies need to build to achieve these critical tasks, how do these organizations match customer relationships, and so on. In order to achieve better adaptation to customers, the company will carry out organizational changes every two to three years to better adapt to customers and better mobilize the enthusiasm of the organization.
3. Talents. Organizations need to think more about what key talent is needed and how they need to get it.
4. Atmosphere and culture. What kind of atmosphere and culture the company needs to create, etc.
The above is the framework of the entire BLM model.
Huawei's strategic management principles
1. Two constraints on Huawei's strategic management
Within Huawei, strategic management consists of two important constraints: operational efficiency and competition. It is also the two core tasks of the CEO.
Second, around these two constraint indicators, it can solve three major problems:
First, where we are (gap analysis);
Second, where are we going (strategic intent), i.e., what are our goals for the future, what are the strategic milestones, and so on;
Third, how to get there? It includes three levels: market insight, business design, and strategy execution.
3. Four basic principles for strategy formulation
In formulating the strategy, Huawei has always adhered to four basic principles:
First of all, the strategy cannot be delegated, and the top leader must personally lead and implement the entire process of strategy formulation and implementation;
Second, the strategy must be gap-oriented and focus on addressing key issues (including performance gaps, opportunity gaps, etc.).
Third, strategy must be closely integrated with implementation, focusing on results. If the strategy is shelved after it is formulated, without implementation, monitoring, and closed loop, its value will inevitably be greatly reduced.
Fourth, strategy is also a continuous, cyclical organizational behavior.
If we look at this basic principle, we will find that many company owners, including some public companies, have the wrong hope of being able to develop a strategy once and for all. But in fact, the industry is changing, customers are changing, and competitors are also changing, so enterprises must adapt and adjust accordingly, which is a very important part of strategy formulation.
Based on this, the executives of the enterprise must have a deep understanding of the above situation, and have enough ability to continuously deduce and extend, so as to better drive the development of the company.
Fourth, the implementation of the strategy BEM
BEM, or Business Strategy Execution Model. After clarifying the operational definition of the strategic direction of the enterprise, the enterprise should determine the key success factors (strategic initiatives) and strategic KPIs accordingly, and then form organizational KPIs, and finally enter the annual key work and key management. Thus forming a manager's PDCA, so it is a complete, closed-loop monitoring and management of the entire organization.
After the strategy is formulated, the implementation and closed loop of the strategy are also very critical elements. When the entire senior management team has made a personal PDCA commitment, including performance and bonuses on behalf of the strategy part, etc., it can be implemented in the entire strategy execution process.
Then, based on the level of the implementation of the entire strategy, the design logic of the organization must be committed to improving the efficiency of information sharing and circulation within the entire organization, and how to better match customers, and can be embedded in the customer's process, and can be fully matched with the customer's various operations. This is an important principle of organizational design, and only in this way will the design efficiency of the entire organization be the highest.
And for talent, the core of it includes the question of where key talent comes from. For example, in the past few years, when we wanted to make efforts for the future-oriented cloud business, we naturally needed more talents in this field, but in fact, technical talents and professionals in the cloud were very scarce.
So, how should these key talents be obtained? First of all, the first channel is internal training. We have selected a lot of outstanding talents that can be cultivated to the cloud business department and the IT business department for targeted training and training. At the same time, there will definitely be a certain amount of external recruitment, including hiring some relevant technical talents from world-class cloud service companies such as IBM and HP to join our talent system.
It can be said that talent is an indispensable and important factor in the implementation of strategy. But at the same time, culture and atmosphere can also play a decisive role. For example, Huawei has always emphasized that customer-centricity is the ultimate value of the enterprise, so customer recognition is extremely important. Therefore, the members of the enterprise must put their eyes on the customer and their butt on the leader. In addition, being striver-oriented, not letting Lei Feng suffer, insisting on self-criticism, etc., are all elements of Huawei's core value system. Among them, in terms of self-criticism, Huawei has made outstanding achievements. We will benchmark ourselves against various hot phenomena related to customer service in society, and find out the behaviors we need to avoid. It is through this continuous discussion of phenomenal things, through the continuous traction of the company's senior management at the value level, that the mentality and behavior of employees will continue to change, so that our value system and corporate culture are constantly deepening in the minds of employees.
Sun Jianheng is a senior partner of Huaxia Cornerstone and the general manager of the Corporate Strategy and M&A Research and Consulting Center. Master's degree, 16 years in the ICT industry, 6 years in service harbor, 10 years at Huawei, during his tenure at Huawei, he was responsible for strategic planning for the China telecom market, during which Huawei's sales in the China telecom market increased from 7 billion yuan to 24 billion yuan. He has a deep understanding and practical experience of industrial development trends and enterprise transformation and upgrading. Guided the strategic planning and planning of a number of enterprises with hundreds of millions of yuan and planned to go public. Based on the in-depth insight into the industry, advocating investment with industrial thinking, and in-depth assistance to invested enterprises, it has invested in nearly ten companies, including college entrance examination circle, Kangcan, Persian Shangpin, Huasu Electric, Youyouzhu, etc.
Business strategy model, operation anxiety?7000 words From strategy to decoding, 5 steps to save the chaos before operation!From large platform-based brand enterprises to small single stores, in the process of operating and starting consulting, you will find these three typical types of "anxiety":
First, new product release anxiety
The traffic anxiety of the new business, the ambition to develop new products, but I don't know how to get users when the new product is launched, the main thing is to pat the head to make the product first, put the marketing operation later, or let others want to go.
The second is the anxiety of customer acquisition transformation
There are stores and excellent services, but the original store model traffic can't run through. Typical store services (such as beauty industry, special beauty class), heavy stores, large competition, small differences.
I only saw that the way out was to engage in short videos, but after learning the technology, I still didn't know how to exert force and land, the main thing was that one person had me, and blind flies were scurrying around.
Third, operating model anxiety
There is accumulation in the past, but the goal of new business development is not clear, and the order changes day and night, and today I want to do traffic realization, and in the next two days, I will give priority to building a platform to stabilize my mind, and the team will follow the two ends, and finally we don't know where the rhythm of the operation focus is.
The main thing is a vacillation without a plan, and the operating model is easy to go to the extreme, one will pursue profits to survive, and the other will think about the future.
Introduction: Don't compensate for strategic laziness with tactical diligence
In the downward state of the overall business environment, everyone's anxiety is "how to break through and seek development", the starting point is no problem, there is confusion, vacillation, and it is normal to adjust the business direction.
However, after in-depth chat and analysis with various leaders and bosses, before the breakthrough and development, in the face of new business and new transformation, there is a lack of initial thinking from the initial operation strategy to path planning, which is the core problem of many bosses, project leaders, and even operation operators.
Because, we are now too much in pursuit of "technical" solutions, but there is very little thinking about "Tao", whether you are a big boss, or a mom-and-pop shop small business, it is necessary to cultivate and establish such a set of thinking methods, and using tactical diligence to make up for strategic laziness is fatal for long-term operationalism.
This time, this article thinks and shares from a top-level perspective, how should the "Tao" of operation, that is, the "operation strategy to strategy" before the start of our new business, be formulated in a step-by-step and orderly manner?
I will use a very useful thinking model (BLM strategic planning model) combined with actual operation cases to interpret and share with you.
This article is suitable for three types of characters:
The first category: the first leader of the enterprise (core management): the first responsible party for business strategy and thinking, reducing the opportunity of patting the head and whim
The second category, the person in charge of project operation, and the operation operator: operation drives products and services, and pre-strategy and strategic thinking, rather than waiting for the wind to come
The third category, entrepreneurs who are about to start or are about to start: whether they are individual entrepreneurs or business entrepreneurs, think one more step and let the project take fewer detours in the future
The following is divided into three parts:
Part 1. What is the BLM model and how can it be applied to the formulation of operational strategy?
Part 2. Combined with the BLM model, from the formulation of operational strategy to decoding
Part 3. Framework thinking to reinvent operational strategy
Part 1. 浅析BLM战略规划模型
1. What is the BLM strategic model?
Business Leadership Model (BLM) is a complete strategic planning methodology, from gap analysis to top-level design, to implementation, is a set of circular strategic planning tools.
This methodology was developed by IBM in 2003 together with a business school in the United States.
For the detailed interpretation of the model, there are many specific textbook-style theoretical explanations on the Internet, but I want to break it down into three layers for everyone to do a better and simpler understanding:
The first layer - the core layer of the organization: leadership + values, in which leadership is the core of the first-in-command team, no matter how good the plan and business model are, it is useless without strong leadership centripetal force;
The second layer - analysis of the closed-loop layer: gap analysis + market result analysis, where is the gap, the implementation effect, the market response is good or bad, there is a clear analysis and self-reflection of the closed loop is the closed loop of operation before and after the strategy.
The third layer - strategy construction layer: strategy formulation + strategy execution, in a word: what are our own advantages to adapt to market opportunities, and which project tasks should be focused on in stages, break the current situation, and lay out for the future.
The BLM strategy model is suitable for all kinds of business entities to help management think systematically in the process of corporate strategy formulation and execution from various aspects such as market analysis, strategic intent, innovation focus, business design, key tasks, formal organization, talent, atmosphere and culture, and leadership and values.
So, based on the BLM strategic model, how can it be applied to our operational opening planning?
2. Upgrade BLM strategy model: develop-decode-execute
The BLM model is also mentioned above, that is, the guidance from "strategy formulation" to "strategy execution", but when the actual business operation system is built, it is necessary to have methods and steps to tell us how to go from formulation to execution, and there needs to be a process of "strategy decoding".
The following figure shows the upgraded BLM operation strategy model:
Based on the reference of the BLM model, the "strategic decoding" part of the strategic planning of the operation system is supplemented to form a strategic iron triangle of "operation strategy formulation, operation strategy decoding, and operation strategy execution", so as to strengthen the integrity and feasibility of the operation strategy planning for new businesses.
The decoding of operational strategy is to guide us on how to gradually disassemble and form methods and steps that are instructive for strategy implementation based on strategy formulation.
Among them, I have summarized the five core key steps of strategic decoding! I have named it the three-fixed, two-divided, five-step method, and this part of the key content will be explained in detail below.
Next, we will combine a consulting project case of public-private joint venture start-up optimization to explain how the BLM model can be applied to actual operation planning.
Part 2. Practical application of BLM operating model
1. Practical project background
-Background: This is a regional college entrance examination counseling agency for college entrance examination candidates, focusing on academic improvement and guidance on college admission strategies.
-Advantages: In the past, offline teaching and auxiliary institutions have accumulated the parents of candidates, have the ability of production, research and teaching, and also have a certain user reputation.
- Challenge: From offline to online new business development, use its own production, research and teaching capabilities, incubate new channels and new traffic online, and form new business development such as online classrooms, sales of teaching and auxiliary materials, and online teaching and auxiliary evaluation, so as to find the second growth curve and even become a platform business in the future.
-The main problems after the start of the market:
1) The business goal is not clear, and it is in the stage of strategic swing and lofty position
At the beginning, it was guided by GMV results, and the goal of private domain was to make millions of revenues! Then, it didn't take long to build its own APP, weaken sales, give priority to high-quality content influence, and create a user co-creation platform!
The change of order has led to the lack of clarity in the department's goals, and the short-term goals and long-term goals are not known to be balanced.
2) The product category is chaotic, the number of medium and low customer order products is too large, the lack of profit products, the overall profitability is weak, and the lack of product group building planning.
3) There is a lack of effective sorting of traffic paths, and the channels are fighting for each other, resulting in performance competition and user competition for internal friction.
4) The positioning of the operation contact point and the operation team is not clear, whether the private domain focuses on sales or service, or both, and the relationship and priority between teaching, sales and content in the APP are not clear, resulting in the APP presenting four dissimilarities.
5) Team collaboration and division of labor are not clear, and the traffic department, teaching and research team, operation team, and product team have their own conflicts.
This example is a typical reference for many business entities, especially enterprises in the 0-1 stage or the transition stage, which are not a few similar situations.
The core problems of the company's operation are the lack of short-term and long-term goal thinking, and the lack of step-by-step and method-based operation path development planning.
I try to help them re-strategize and sort out their business based on the BLM operating model based on the current problems that arise in the market.
2. Strategic planning under the BLM operating model
Here we first skip the analysis and combing of "the first layer: the core layer of the organization" and the "second layer: the analysis of the closed-loop layer", the default organizational leadership is no problem, and the business opportunity point and gap analysis also determine that the online teaching and tutoring platform is the condition for the second growth curve.
We directly reorganize the "third layer: strategy building layer", strategy formulation, strategy decoding and strategy execution:
The first step is strategy formulation, and "people, goods and yards" are the three primary colors in the operation strategy
First of all, why is it based on the concept of people, goods and goods?
"People, goods and yards" was originally used in the retail industry to sort out the operation of goods, users and stores, but throughout all kinds of business models are inseparable from this basic "three primary colors", which can help us clarify complex business problems and help think about strategic initiation points.
In the people, goods and yards, everything is inseparable from the management of "people", and achieving continuous user growth and value release is the core of building a strategy to achieve deterministic growth.
In-depth analysis of user characteristics insights, so people are the first priority to drive the operation strategy to improve the ability to attract new customers and penetrate, and then the relationship between goods and places.
The project first reconstructs the three primary colors of the "people, goods and yards" to make some extended explanations:
Who is the human-user?
In this teaching and auxiliary brand project, the goods are chaotic from pricing to categories, and the fights between field traffic channels are all due to the lack of user segmentation insight and classification on the human side.
Therefore, defining the attributes of "people" is not a simple identity of students and parents, but a step forward and a group of people with labels to think about it in order to achieve a more accurate grasp of users!
For example, I will divide them by tag attributes, and have refined user disassembly thinking to find the corresponding grip of "goods" and "fields":
1) Students: Fresh users (high school) / potential users (non-graduates)
2) Parents: Fresh users (high school) / potential users (non-graduates)
3) According to the academic situation: rush to the high section/basic section/pay attention to the subject situation
4) According to the policy of further education: regional (local district/inter-district/inter-city), method (self-recruitment/unified recruitment)
What do you provide with goods-products?
As a business strategy model for user growth engines, it provides users with more choices, improves user stickiness, and is the key to knowledge service products from low-cost experience to heavy participation, thereby promoting the precipitation of parents and students.
Therefore, by focusing on optimizing new product incubation, goods and services, pricing strategies and other links to do overall category planning.
1) Traditional categories: traditional teaching and auxiliary materials, offline courses
2) Incubation of new products: assessment services, college planning and guidance services
3) Profit explosion: combination of lesson packages, accompanying learning plans
4) Expand categories: subscription-based membership, cross-product e-commerce expansion, and high-end study tour services
Fields - What are our fields and what can we do?
As a booster of user growth, the field optimizes the consumption journey through digital and intelligent tools, and efficiently and accurately links people and goods, and the field is the focus of operational work.
For parents as the main consumption decision-makers and candidates as service experiencers, they can use the AIPL mental growth model to design key operation fields at different stages.
For example, for parents, focus on the content of the account of policy promotion and family education, and for the account content of candidates to improve their academic skills and subject notes.
A: Reach new users - Douyin/Channels (live broadcast), Xiaohongshu (notes and grass)
I: Influence mental interests - private domain (teacher IP + community), APP
P: Purchase conversion - live streaming, private domain, APP
L: Delivery services - private domain, APP
The second step is strategy formulation, which is to build an operational strategy information house from top to bottom
With "people-goods-field" as the operating base, it is necessary to strategically formulate long-term vision goals & short-term goals, and build an information house for top-level operation strategy.
From top to bottom, there are three levels of construction methods (worth copying in a small book):
1) Top-level roof: the landmark action of achieving the long-term vision goal & top-level vision;
2) Load-bearing pillars: product power, operation force, service force, organization force, and the short-term goals of the four forces;
3) Operation base: thinking about the operation system of people, goods and fields. For the specific strategic reconstruction of the project, the following strategic information house can be built:
Back to the actual project of this teaching and auxiliary platform, the top-level strategic goal should be clear, and let everyone know what kind of brand or platform they want to become: what way + who the user object is + what kind of platform positioning it becomes, here is the online companion education platform that scientifically empowers students and parents. What capacity should be there to support this long-term vision?
A business entity can do things on four key capabilities: product value, operational capabilities, service or delivery levels, and internal organizational capabilities.
These four capabilities, and then sort out the key breakthroughs of each capability from stage 1 (L1) to stage 3 (L3), so that the team can know how to do each link from the short term to the long term, and what goals to develop. It is equivalent to marching to fight, the three armies want to use their lives, but you don't tell everyone where to run, then everyone runs in their own direction, and there is a high probability that they will not be able to fight the result you want.
Think about a Three Kingdoms in which Zhuge Liang captured Meng Shu seven times, he only thought about how to defeat Zhuge Liang, but did not think about how to fight strategically, and the defeat was taken for granted.
Finally, it is the business design of the people, goods and yards mentioned in the first step, which is mentioned in the first step, and will not be elaborated here.
The third step is strategy decoding, and the five-step method of operational strategy dismantling
It's like building a house for decoration, with an operation strategy information house, what does he want to build in the future, does he have to have construction drawings?
Here we need the same home decoration designer, give you the prototype idea, to do specific construction drawings and renderings, here is the original BLM strategic model in the lack of the process of decoding the operation strategy, in this teaching project, the biggest problem is that in addition to the lack of clear goals, there is also the idea of the sky, draw a pie, but how to make the pie, the management is not well thought out and not clear, then it is necessary to use strategic decoding to clarify the strategic intent.
So how do you do it? Here I have sorted out five key steps: three fixed two points and five steps!
Step 1.Delineate the business blueprint and user operation path
In the design of operational strategy, the first step is to consider what scenarios and touchpoints are in our entire business flow, which is reorganized in the business blueprint as shown below.
Generally, the four key problems to be solved are: flow-retention-sales-delivery, for this 0 to 1 project, the corresponding contact points and flow ideas of these four fields must be completely designed:
1) Drainage field: first sort out a main path, and pull out the new path from the public domain to the private domain, so as to design specific operation means in the future;
2) Retention field: For example, based on the characteristics of different groups of people or product types, user value retention is done through learning communities, and then cooperated with APP communities and free dry goods;
3) Conversion field: It is not only an important part of retention but also conversion purchase, private domain + APP purchase, complete pre-sales conversion;
4) Delivery field: It is the field where the products and services are delivered to the purchased users, and the community delivery or 1-to-1 delivery is carried out through the private domain of the teaching and research teacher, and the online companion learning and guidance services are completed with the APP. If the above path runs through, you can increase the amount of resource investment and expansion in the main path, mark the matrix number, and expand multiple fields (WeChat ecology/offline scenarios) at the same time, and delineate the business blueprint and user path. In this way, we can clearly see which fields and actions we will focus on in the short term, which ones need to be coordinated with production and research and product technology, and which operational actions and contents will be expanded in the long term.
Step 2.Anchor business indicators and determine key business actions
Once you have a specific operational map policy, it's time to set goals for your combat team! The way to find a set of core metrics is to break down the formula around what kind of results you want to get. For example, in order to get the results of short-term GMV, find out the formula and influencing variables, and think about how to complete the corresponding key action optimization.
In the follow-up specific dismantling, take the big indicator of "traffic" as an example, including public domain Douyin traffic, Douyin field view drainage to private domain drainage and undertaking, and then use the calculation method to calculate the acceptance rate of multiple live broadcast traffic to private domain traffic as the calculation method of public domain and private domain traffic. In the same way, after calculation, the annual GMV plan is preliminarily formulated. Then, for each impact metric, the key impact actions are broken down and gradually optimized in the operation process. Of course, in addition to GMV, we should also do cost and ROI measurement indicators, etc., but because it involves sensitive data of the project, we will not break it down here, and share the ideas with you here.
Step 3.Determine the organizational structure and select the team for talent selection
As a general staff officer, after having a march map and operational indicators, then the third step is to point the general link, focusing on your team structure, especially if it is a private domain business, such as this project, the operation department needs the collaborative support of multiple business departments.
I found that 80% of the strategies that cannot be advanced are caused by problems in internal combat coordination, so organizational capacity building is an indispensable step.
There are three major problems in the coordination of the project:
1) Private domain operation not only takes into account the front-end sales but also follows up the back-end teaching service operation, such a core problem is that the private domain operation function is too broad, the teaching operation focuses on professional teaching, and the traffic operation emphasizes the sense of marketing, so it is necessary to split the traffic operation and teaching and research operation.
2) The technical products of the teaching and research department and the operation department are too scattered, and there is a lack of business needs to sort out, which makes it difficult to unify the multi-head demand for product technology, so I suggest that the follow-up should be included in the business operation middle platform to collect the needs of all back-end support departments, and the platform operation middle platform will carry out business planning for data labeling, operation functions, and teaching and research functions, and then the product department will analyze and implement the needs.
3) A third-party external consultant team is needed to support the early development, and industry experts or operation experts can make suggestions on new businesses and provide reference for business follow-up decisions.
Step 4.Rhythm distribution, develop a stage work framework
Phased work objectives are formulated in an integrated manner from the management to each business team, and the management pulls out the phased goals and plans, which are then dismantled and refined by each end, and dismantled or formulated according to the time rhythm or according to the goals.
1) Clarify goals and directions
Developing a phase plan can help the operations team clarify goals and directions, ensuring that each phase is focused on achieving the overall strategic goals. This avoids getting lost at work.
2) Improve work efficiency
By developing a phase plan, you can break down the overall goal into more specific milestones, allowing team members to be more clear about their work tasks and schedules.
3) Optimize resource allocation
Formulating a phase plan can also help the operation team better optimize resource allocation and rationally allocate human, material and financial resources. By analysing the priorities and needs of each phase, resources can be allocated more precisely to ensure maximum utilization.
Many 0-to-1 companies find that there is a lack of systematic rhythm planning, which has a lot of uncertainty about the follow-up of the team and the company. Good strategic goals can be achieved in stages, and a clear rhythm of phases is the key to ensuring that business operations are not deformed.
Step 5.The business strategy model of the enterprise with the division of resources, the responsibility is assigned to the department to the person in charge
In the process of operation, the operation department needs to cooperate closely with other departments, such as the marketing department, the product department, the technology department, etc. How to do a good job in resource division and work coordination is the key to ensure the smooth progress of the entire operation system.
1) Clarify responsibilities and division of labor
First of all, it is necessary to clarify the responsibilities and division of labor of each department. The operation department is mainly responsible for the undertaking, acquisition, maintenance and conversion of private domain traffic, the marketing department is responsible for providing support for market research, competitive product analysis and brand promotion, the product department is responsible for providing support for product updates and function optimization, and the teaching and research department is responsible for production, research and teaching services. A clear division of responsibilities ensures that each department is clear about its tasks and roles and works better together.
2) Establish a communication mechanism
Establishing a good communication mechanism is the basis for ensuring cross-departmental collaboration. Communication and collaboration between departments can be strengthened by holding regular cross-departmental meetings through fixed projects, sharing work progress and problems encountered, and jointly formulating solutions.
3) Share resources and information
To better promote private domain operations, the operations department needs to share resources and information with other departments. For example, the product department can provide information on product updates and function optimizations to provide more operational materials and ideas for the operation department, while the technical department can provide technical support and optimization information to help the operation department better improve the user experience.
4) Develop a cooperation process
To work better together, a collaborative process can be developed. For example, when the operation department needs to cooperate with the marketing department to conduct market research and competitive product analysis, it can communicate the needs and division of labor in advance, and formulate a detailed work plan and schedule; when the product department launches new functions or updates products, it can communicate with the operation department and provide corresponding teaching and research opinions, research and consultation, and material support; and better coordinate the cooperation between various departments to improve work efficiency and quality by formulating a cooperation process.
Part 3.Summary: Reinventing the framework thinking of operational strategy
Whether it is a large platform, or a small business, or a small business to a personal IP, systematic thinking helps us to have a deep understanding of the whole picture of the new business, there are many hot ideas, but how many opportunities for trial and error are?
First, have systematic learning and cognition of the front and back end of the business
Second, dismantle and dig deep into the market cases in the same industry
Third, internalize thinking and form a precipitation of thinking, learning is input, dismantling is output, and thinking is absorption.
Fourth, it is necessary to make a comprehensive operation strategy to the point of planning, communicate with different people, and finally think deeply before pressing for results. In essence, he is not wrong to practice trial and error before making adjustments, but it is still necessary to think more about some key plans and actions before doing it each time.
From the operation to drive the strategy, the strategy is decoded and executed, and the probability of getting results is within our control.