Text/MBA Think Tank Jiang Yumu Editor/MBA Think Tank Liu Liu
In the past two days, there is a problem that has been dominating the zhihu hot list.
The content of the problem is very simple, a friend of a netizen opened a noodle shop more than 10 years ago and invited a chef to make beef ramen.
In order to arouse the enthusiasm of the master, the boss first rewards with a commission per bowl:
For each bowl of ramen sold, the chef has a 5-cent draw.
Doesn't that make sense at first glance? Wages are linked to sales, and the master will naturally work hard to make more bowls of noodles.
But after a week of implementation of this reward program, the boss noticed that something was wrong:
It turned out that in order to get more commissions, the chef put a lot of beef on each bowl of noodles when making noodles, so that the guests were attracted and the sales went up.
But a bowl of beef noodles only sells for 4 yuan in total, give a few more slices of beef, and the boss's profit is almost nothing.
To this end, the boss adjusted the way of salary distribution, paying a fixed salary every month, on the one hand, it was appropriate to increase the monthly salary to retain people, on the other hand, it also prevented the master from putting more beef for the commission.
But soon there was a problem:
The master really didn't put more beef, and this time he put a lot less beef for each bowl of noodles.
In this way, the guests will be dissatisfied, the repeat customers will become fewer, and when the business becomes a list, the master can reduce the intensity of the work a lot without changing the money.
Obviously, based on the existing thinking model, these two distribution models have obvious flaws, and because of this, the netizen's friend's noodle shop did not last long.
Today, netizens have revived this matter, but it has caused a fierce discussion on the Internet.
Here's what a Ph.D., a graduate student, and an MBA had to argue about the subject:
1. First of all, we consider the compromise between the two schemes used by the small boss, that is, the method of basic salary plus commission, and the commission is distributed according to the profit per bowl. This will both prevent him from putting less beef and prevent him from frantically putting more beef.
2. Later it was thought that this article was conditional. The question is how to distribute the profit per bowl after definition?
How much a bowl of noodles can earn is not hidden from the master, if the interests of both sides can not be balanced at a certain point, everything will return to the same. Achieving the kind of equilibrium described involves a complex problem of related functions, and perhaps game theory is also used.
3. Contract the noodle shop to the master, the boss takes the commission and goes home to raise flowers and birds.
The philosopher Schopenhauer once said: "The simpler the external form, the more it contains wisdom, do not rely on form, rely on wisdom." ”
No matter what stage we are at, everything we can get is essentially a product of thinking.
Even if you only run a small shop and manage only one employee, the effect of different thinking modes is often high and low.
01
Only control of the whole situation,
in order to control the ending
In response to this topic, Gao Zan's answer can be described as a hit to the point:
"Let the master only be responsible for making the noodles, and the process of adding beef is done by the boss himself."
Beef noodles as a product, beef as the main selling point and source of cost, as long as the process of adding meat is controlled, then the master adds more beef to obtain higher commission concerns, which will naturally be solved.
Other answers emerged from the discussion:
"Don't just use sales, but overall profits, as a reward."
"Using beef consumption as an indicator of performance appraisal prompts chefs to find a balance between sales and cost."
Looking at these perspectives, we can find that many seemingly simple things are often considered at a level that is far more complex than the matter itself if you want to get a satisfactory solution.
Only by jumping out of the immediate problem and grasping the key inducement behind the drive will we not be reduced to self-consumption in the trap of linear thinking.
Remembering the previous experience of working in a chain restaurant, many of the processes in it can find a shadow in the above answers.
Take, for example, the same bowl of noodles.
Hot bowl bottom, bottom, scoop white soup, fishing noodles, pile toppings, come out and ring the bell... The whole process takes less than two minutes, but it is split into many process details that are taken into account by the process designer.
The spoon used to make noodles is a metering spoon, the specifications are 3 ml, 5 ml, 10 ml and even 50 ml, no matter what material is taken, it is necessary to use the prescribed metering spoon and fill it to ensure that the error of each bowl of soup will not exceed 1 ml.
For higher-cost toppings, such as beef, pork cartilage, and seafood, they are generally cut and packaged in advance, and are directly taken by piece when stacking toppings.
In this case, the master's income is still related to the number of noodles, but it cannot affect the cost of each bowl of noodles.
You may ask, if you don't sell a sufficient number of surfaces if you pack the material in advance, won't it cause waste of material?
In this regard, the restaurant has a very "anti-human" operation.
In order to ensure the quality of the product, the extra ingredients at closing should not be left until the next day, for private restaurants, the boss and the staff will generally eat these ingredients to avoid waste.
The restaurant where I worked was not the case, no matter how many ingredients were left unused that day, they were all thrown away.
I didn't understand it until the store manager explained to me, "If you are allowed to eat the extra materials, then the staff will cut more materials when preparing." ”
The ratio of a store's turnover to property loss is listed as a performance appraisal indicator for the store manager, so that the store manager will carefully refer to the sales data of the same period of time in order to reduce the ingredients that have been dumped in vain, to ensure that the material cost is in a controllable range.
You see, a small shop, a master, can be in a dilemma;
And hundreds of chains, thousands of employees, but can operate smoothly, behind this is not the capital, not the scale, but the overall thinking.
No matter what you do, you can only control the outcome if you control the whole situation.
02
How much can you achieve,
Depends on how much you can learn
Some people say that in the era of emphasizing the division of labor in society, any field is constantly subdivided, and since it is impossible to do everything, it is better to be irreplaceable at one point.
There is nothing wrong with such a judgment, but if our thinking and information input therefore tend to be single, it is easy to fall into the shackles of our own thinking.
Writer Luo Zhenyu mentioned a "bucket-pool" analogy:
This means that the previous knowledge is like water in a bucket, what we have to do is to try to absorb the knowledge in the bucket, and when you have drunk the whole bucket of water, you will be able to become a teacher in the corresponding field.
After experiencing the big explosion of knowledge, knowledge is still water, but it is like a vast ocean, all knowledge is mixed with each other, you can not absorb and digest, but travel in it, through the knowledge of different fields, to explore more far-reaching sea areas.
"The Jump" says: "The master is not more capable than us, the IQ is higher than us, and the concentration is better than us." It's just that they think deeper than we do, see more than we do, and see bigger systems. ”
I wonder if you've ever had such an experience.
But whenever there is something to ask for help, there are always gains and losses, worried that the other party will mess things up.
This is because you lack a systematic understanding of the thing itself, and you cannot grasp the key, control the development of the situation, and then fall into a state of security vacuum.
I was very impressed by a plot in "Ordinary World".
Sun Shaoan spent money to buy equipment, build factories, hire masters, hire workers, and form a complete production chain.
However, when the actual operation was carried out, there was a problem in the brick burning link, because the master he invited was a liar, and the bricks burned out were broken, resulting in the brick factory once facing closure.
When Shao An dongshan came back, he not only spent a lot of money to invite a professional brick-burning master, but also personally learned the art of brick-burning.
This is not to say that he will have to do it himself from now on, but after understanding the key to running a brick factory, as long as he can grasp the point of burning bricks, he can entrust the various processes without scruples.
In other words, cognitive disruption allows us to better cooperate with others.
Like Walson's Law in economics – how much you can get often depends on how much you can learn.
Only if you have a systematic understanding of one thing, whether you do it yourself or ask others to do it, can you always take the initiative into your own hands.
Otherwise, the so-called cooperation will often be reduced to unilateral follow-the-flow, and the painful failure will be used as the cost of trial and error.
03
Top-notch workplace outlook:
Don't lose focus, don't waste bogus
Flender of the RAND Corporation of the United States told such a story.
Two conspirators were caught and interrogated in separate rooms.
If neither of them reveals the other, the police will have to convict them on very minor charges because of insufficient evidence, and the two will each be sentenced to one year.
If the other party is exposed, the party being exposed will be sentenced to ten years, and the party who exposed the party will be exempted from the punishment based on meritorious performance.
If there is a mutual disclosure, the crimes of both sides are conclusively proven, and both people will face eight years in prison.
Obviously, no matter how you look at it, the most reasonable thing to do is not to expose each other, but in fact, both of them want to acquit themselves, and they are eventually locked up in the iron window.
This story is a typical presentation of "Nash equilibrium" in game theory: the rational interest choice of the individual and the rational interest choice of the whole are often inconsistent.
The beef noodle problem mentioned at the beginning is essentially the same reason, the boss and the noodle chef are trying to maximize their own interests, but the result is that the boss loses the store and the master loses his job.
The fundamental reason is that we cannot break our own situation and consider the problem from point to point.
Writer Zhang Xi said: "Cognition is an invisible ruler that measures the results of your judgment of things. ”
Only when you pry open the gap in front of you can you see the wider possibilities.
To this end, there are 2 pieces of advice for you:
1. Things can be heavy, not abandoned
Single-point extremes and global thinking are not contradictory.
Finely done fine, high and far to see, lose the study of wide-angle lenses, it is easy to fall into self-containedness.
Let's take a look at the following two pictures.
On the left is the chip glue, as we all know, the chip is a high-end product, in fact, the glue can also be.
In order to ensure the strict pasting of precision components, chip glue has been given a very high technical barrier and is monopolized by a small number of manufacturers.
This requires not only a single point of extreme, but also a keen sense of smell for the industry, as well as the exploration of cross-cutting fields such as fluids and nano, and accumulate its own unique "Know-How" over the years.
Many times, what we have to do is not the irreplaceability of the industry, but the irreplaceability of the trend of the times.
If you are paranoid and build a car behind closed doors, even if a glue factory has been ingenious for a hundred years, the glue produced can only be used to paste the Spring League.
2. Pick up its essence and stick to the "two eight" rule
20% knowledge, which can solve 80% of the problems, is the general rule in most fields.
So spending a lot of time learning about a new field often translates into looking for the 20 percent in that field.
Smart people learn from their own failures, while smarter people learn from the failures of others.
The key to anything is often in the places where people have failed miserably.
By analyzing typical cases in the field, getting a general logical framework, first using it for yourself, and then perfecting the framework while using it, is the most efficient way to improve.
Without reducing concentration and not abandoning the concept of knowledge, we can cultivate the 20% within reach to the most extreme life.
▽
Write at the end
Heard of a "bike shed effect":
A group of nuclear power plant approval committee members, at the meeting, worked together to quickly determine the construction plan and site selection of the nuclear power plant.
Seemingly insignificant issues such as how to build a bicycle shed and how to select materials occupy a lot of time in the meeting.
Many times this is the case, complex problems can get the optimal solution, but simple problems seem to have the effect of pulling the whole body, after repeated weighing, often can only get a satisfactory solution.
The world is full of complexity, and its complexity is never diluted by the simplification of your vision. If you can't see through the entanglements under the surface, you can only take it for granted that your life is doomed to end up with a natural ending.
Life sea sea, mountains and rivers, stand out, always the sea does not quit, the river does not let the dust.
Finally: If you're the boss, face "how do you add a bowl of beef noodles?" ", what will you do?
The comments section looks forward to your answers.
-THE END-
●This article is the original debut of MBA Think Tank, please contact us for reprinting. Author: Jiang Yumu, columnist of MBA think tank. A slow-paced workplace writer with an elm head looking for the romance of life. Image source: Figureworm creative. MBA Think Tank - a professional learning and growth platform for managers, with both hot spots and dry goods, top management knowledge, and advanced workplace guides. APP, headline number, Weibo @MBA think tank.