Why can an ordinary supermarket change a city?

• Text / Zhu Yanmei, Director and Executive Vice President of Huada Group
• Source: Managerial Evolution
• Huaxia Cornerstone e Insight is reprinted with permission, and the article only represents the author's own views

Economic cycles come and go, just like the seasons of nature. When winter comes, trees have to be put to the test, and when the economy is down, so are businesses.

I believe that all entrepreneurs and managers will be concerned: what kind of organizations can go through the cycle and make people look at it as soon as they are mentioned, and what do they have in common?

What I want to share with you today is the commonalities that I have found in these organizations. From four great books, but also four really wonderful corporate stories.

The first one, you've seen a lot in the media lately. Henan Fat Donglai supermarket is on fire. Xuchang, a third-tier city that used to have no sense of existence, is now clean and civilized. Citizens boast that "Fat Donglai has changed the city", attracting countless enterprises and people to "worship", and tens of millions of netizens are looking forward to Fat Donglai supermarket opening in their own city. It is rumored on the Internet that the people of Xuchang and Xinxiang are "used" by Fat Donglai, and they feel that the supermarket is not good enough when they go to other cities.

How did Fat Donglai do it?

When employees join the company, they will get two manuals, "Job Practice Manual" and "Life Planning Manual". The former is a standardized operation for each position, with more than 80,000 pages, and employees are experts in the industry as long as they follow the manual. For example, instruct the floor cleaner to wipe the floor tiles, what dish soap and cleaning cloth should be used, how to mix it with water, how to wipe it, as long as you follow the manual, even the floor tile joints in the supermarket are white and clean.

But what is the Life Planning Handbook? It's even more amazing. Teaching employees how to rent a house, how to educate children, support the elderly, how to aspire, how to study, and even how to buy flowers to improve the taste of life is simply "too wide"!

Each store has a health and entertainment center for employees, and some libraries are designed by designers from Eslite Bookstore. The library is not full of marketing and workplace skills books, but many historical and humanistic books to improve the taste and literacy of employees.

In addition to treating employees as 50-100% higher than those of local counterparts, Fat Donglai regards employees as "complete people" with independent free will, rather than "human resources".

Fat Donglai admits that it is human nature to love to play, and advocates that employees should be "capable and playful", and employees cannot only work and become "work machines". They stipulate that employees should have leisure and non-working time, spend time with their families, go out to travel, recharge themselves, make life have quality, and improve their taste. Most enviably, employees are also allowed 15 days of "unhappy leave" per year, which must be approved by their superiors.

Fat Donglai is not only good to employees, but also sincere to customers. They put both the purchase price and the sales price on the price tag, and take out their conscience to do business.

What's even more surprising is that Fat Donglai is just as transparent with his peers and competitors. Setting up a special display space in the mall and publicly disclosing all the supplier lists and contact information, this kind of "playing the card" invention is really a surprise to all walks of life.

There are many other out-of-the-ordinary ways for Fat Donglai, so I will list a few at will:

1. Implement no-reason returns, including fresh food. Buy a watermelon, eat half of it and think it's not delicious, full refund.

2. If the customer puts forward opinions, Fat Donglai will give a reward of 500 yuan. Aren't you afraid that customers will find fault every day? The founder, Yu Donglai, believes that there are still many good people, and people are willing to spend time to help the supermarket improve, so they should be grateful.

3. Opening a supermarket in the community, Yu Donglai felt that it would disturb the people, so he took the initiative to pay the water bills of the community residents as compensation.

4. The year before last, Henan was flooded, and Chinese cabbage rose to dozens of yuan a catty, while Fat Donglai simply sold cabbage at the purchase price, nine cents and nine.

5. There is no anti-theft access control at the exit of the supermarket. If a thief is found, Yu Donglai asks employees to follow the thief to the house to see what is missing at home and what is missing. After coming down many times, the thief was so moved that he never stole again.

Who is Yu Donglai? What is Fat Donglai doing?

Yu Donglai is not a fairy saint, he has only read books for 7 years, and unfortunately entered the detention center due to ignorance, but he is kind and responsible, and treats and cultivates them at any cost.

Fat Donglai is redefining business and enterprise, which not only has the characteristics of Chinese "family" culture, but also embodies the Chinese wisdom of righteousness, self-cultivation, teamwork, enterprise management, and benefit the world. It is a vivid sample of China's local "awakening business" and has become a new "spiritual landmark" in Henan.

The significance of Fat Donglai goes far beyond the profits, taxes and jobs it creates, and it may affect China's business history. If there are more "fat Donglai-style" enterprises, I believe that it will definitely change the prejudice that China has been light on business since ancient times, and that "no business is not treacherous". In this sense, Yu Donglai is not only starting a business, but also exploring a kind of social innovation.

This is the first book I recommend - "Awakening Fat Donglai".

Reading this book, you will find that Fat Donglai's vision is not how much money to make, or how big a supermarket chain to become, but to "cultivate a sound personality and achieve a sunny personality life". Where is this like the vision of a supermarket? It seems that it should be a school, and a lot of schools have forgotten to do it now.

Fat Donglai's positioning is "to be a school", and the corporate values are "freedom and love". These few simple words tell us why it can go through the cycle, which is fascinating.

If Drucker were still alive and heard the news, he would definitely smile, because Fat Donglai confirmed his prediction - "all organizations will be learning and educational institutions".

The second story I'm going to tell is called Desheng Western-style Building.

This is a wooden villa construction company based in Suzhou, with about 1,000 employees, most of whom were migrant workers at first, and annual sales of about 600 million. The company has only one salesman, and the main task is to say no and reject unsuitable orders. The company doesn't have an executive like a vice president. People like me don't need it.

Desheng has a number of very unique management methods:

Employee reimbursement does not need to be signed by the leader, fill in the documents by yourself, and go directly to the financial center for reimbursement. The company has specially cooperated with the establishment of a set of "personal credit system" to make all behaviors transparent, and the phenomenon of "rubbing oil" rarely occurs. The key is this initiative that makes employees feel equal as a person, free and empowered.

Desheng also has a "1855 rule", that is, 10% of outstanding employees are rewarded and reused, 80% of employees are affirmed, 5% of employees are criticized, and finally 5% of employees are dismissed or go out to find something to do "a year of hardship". They call this the "sobriety project," which weeds out employees with low loyalty and tempers them. Some employees return to the company after a year of hardship outside, and cherish and love Desheng.

This is an enterprise with an independent personality, with its own rules and principles, and love and rules converge into a unique management system. Love for employees is reflected everywhere in the daily little things:

Employees are not allowed to work with illness; Employees are not allowed to use private money for office work; Staff canteens must use pollution-free food, fish as far as possible is deep-sea fish, a symbolic charge of a few yuan for each meal, and the employees automatically put coins; employees can use the company's car almost free of charge, only need to report truthfully, pay 20 yuan; employees can make long-distance calls home for free; every employee has the opportunity to go abroad, including the construction personnel on the construction site; encourage employees to study, provide interest-free tuition loans, or provide half of the tuition fees and incentives; set up an auxiliary old-age security system, so that retired employees can take care of their old age; every ThanksgivingThe company gave 2,000 yuan for employees to buy gifts for people to be grateful......

Desheng's values are simple and unpretentious: honest, hardworking, caring, and no shortcuts. Under the guidance of this value, employees do things in a real way, be happy and happy, not only do a good job of Desheng, do a good job of Desheng, but also become an excellent citizen full of positive energy.

The founder, Nie Shengzhe, is a university professor, and he said frankly: My interest in running a business is to make employees become caring and socially responsible people. To run an enterprise is to run an education, to run an enterprise is to run a person, and to change things, we need to change people first, and only when people change can things be improved.

Nie Shengzhe believes: "To do management is to do education".

Desheng puts all its strength on changing people, and "love" runs through the whole management of Desheng. The company not only builds western-style buildings, but also cultivates qualified citizens who understand the rules, know etiquette, have love, and are hardworking and sincere. Cultivating employees to "be the master of their own lives and become gentlemen", Desheng has also become an organization with "independent personality and free spirit" and vigorous vitality.

If it is clumsy, if it is lacking. Be "clumsy" and don't be too shrewd. Do things sincerely, and you will eventually get the "good person dividend".

Desheng Mansion teaches employees to be open-minded, not to deceive the upper and lower, the enterprise and employees trust each other, to speak thoroughly, and to give enough love. When corporate values are precipitated into a collective personality, they naturally condense into the soul and belief of the enterprise.

It is not so much that Desheng Western-style Building is building a house, but that it is cultivating a "gentleman". Building a house is a means, a carrier, and a pipeline, and cultivating a gentleman is the ultimate goal.

Immanuel Kant said 200 years ago, "Man is an end, not a tool." Through this enterprise, Nie Shengzhe has a spiritual dialogue with philosophers across time and space.

This is the second book I recommend - "The Rules of Desheng".

Now that I've told the story of two Chinese companies, I'm going to tell you the story of two American companies. The first one is the book "Empathy" that I want to recommend.

This book tells the story of the American paper equipment company Beweiler.

Not only did the company run well on its own, but it also acquired 80 companies that were not doing well. After the acquisition, they didn't lay off employees, but cared for and empowered their employees, instilling a culture of people-centricity and empathy, and the results were unbelievably good. In the past 16 years, Beweiler's compound annual return is 16%, which is comparable to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

Moreover, they have never sold the acquired companies, preferring to say that they "adopted" them rather than "acquired", as they did in the case of adoptive parents who were raised after an abandoned child.

While some business managers shout that "the company is not a home", Beweiler advocates that "every workplace should be like a family". They are committed to creating a "corporate family", not a "family business", and they make each of their companies a member of a "corporate family" with unconditional love, inclusion and nurturing.

They don't see employees as functional people like receptionists, salespeople, or engineers, but rather as a whole person. They are someone's precious child, someone's husband, someone with unlimited potential. Other people in the company will also profoundly affect the life of this person, especially the leader of the company, who has a very important responsibility, which is to be a "good steward" of those lives.

For organizations to succeed in the long run, they must treat their employees as "people." Man is the origin of all values, and everything begins and ends with man.

Budweiler's leadership principle is to "measure success in the way it impacts people's lives."

People should not only work, but also feel the true meaning of work. Let employees "996", be "tool people", and "live in the algorithm", which is not a desirable company. The biggest charity of the enterprise is not to donate to the disaster area and build temples, but to cultivate and empower its employees.

The last story comes from a book with a funny name - "Company on a Surfboard".

Patagonia is an outdoor goods company for rock climbing, mountaineering, surfing, etc., founded in 1973 by Yvonne. Although they are a company, their vision is: We're in business to save our home planet.

People-oriented does not mean that people can be arrogant and arrogant, and wantonly demand from nature.

Bata's product philosophy is: to make the best products and eliminate unnecessary harm.

The "best" is practical, durable, versatile, non-obsolete and minimally uses natural resources (including materials, energy and transport). The fleeting "fast fashion", in particular, is not considered. They always advise customers to "buy less, demand more" and provide customers with lifelong repair services for their clothes, and humbly claim to be "correcting their own behavior".

Instead of extracting resources from nature and turning them into wealth, Bata uses Bata to create wealth to protect the nature on which human beings depend. ”

Ecological economists have long called it out in the journal Science: "We have been making false accounts for a long time by ignoring the value of nature." Yvonne believes that companies, although they are "limited liability companies", should bear "unlimited responsibility" for their actions and external impacts, and he has taken the lead in putting environmental costs into real "company accounts" (1% of net profits are used for environmental protection every year), and announced in an open letter "The Earth is Now Our Only Shareholder" on September 15, 2022, that he "donated the company to the Earth". With the earth's population reaching 8 billion this year and the temperature rise exceeding the "irreversible point" of 1.5 degrees, humanity is facing a great challenge.

"Take from the earth, give back to the earth" is by no means a slogan in Bata, but the most important criterion for action. They also want customers to establish the same consumption outlook and survival philosophy.

Here are my 4 books, 4 stories to share. You will find that if an enterprise wants to go through the cycle, it must treat employees as "people", not lay off people as soon as the cycle occurs.

They must not be cold "machines", but "living beings" with temperature. They regard employees as people, rather than simply "economic people" and "tool people", so that employees are willing to pay sincerely, share weal and woe, have a sense of belonging and mission, and become a "complete person" with a sense of meaning and happiness.

In this sense, a business is a school that makes employees "real people" by providing products to customers. Employees are also the product of the enterprise, and they are more important products.

Finally, there's an easter egg. I'm going to talk about my organization, BGI.

BGI's culture is three "good" - good health, good study, and good work. This was proposed by the founder Wang Jian. Note this order, "good health" comes first. BGI cares about the health of its employees. Every year, we provide employees with advanced physical examination methods such as early detection of cancer and magnetic resonance, and have detected and saved the lives of more than 30 cancer patients in advance among employees and their families.

In August this year, my new book, The Tree of Talents, will be published, which talks about BGI's philosophy of nurturing talents.

The story is all over.

Peter Drucker wrote in The New Reality of Management: "Business management should be such an existence: adapt to changes in needs and opportunities, and promote the growth of workers. All organizations are institutions of learning and education. “

There is also a saying that "all great businesses are winter children". It is difficult for a person to survive the winter, but a group of people, a group of people who trust each other, support each other, and grow together, it will not be so difficult to survive the winter together, and after the winter, the roots of the big tree of the enterprise will be deeper and grow more new branches and leaves.

Speaking of which, I think you've sketched in your mind what a desirable company can look like through cycles. Regard yourself as an "educational institution", love employees, train employees, empower employees, and employees will definitely love the company and customers. Such an organization will definitely be able to go through the cycle, and the foundation will be evergreen, and it will definitely be fascinating.