Key takeaways:
Ren Zhengfei reissued the old article that employees complained about the shortcomings of the pyramid organization 5 years ago, releasing a strong signal of organizational upgrading.
In traditional pyramid organizations, departmental walls and insulation cause employees to act in "small squares", acting independently and not being accountable for corporate performance.
Process reengineering and KPI management have tried to break the pyramid organization, but they have bred a stronger bureaucracy, which instead strengthens the pyramid.
On the evening of August 8, Huawei's President's Office published a 2016 article inside Huawei in the Voice of Hearts community, titled "It's Time for Huawei to Blow Up the R&D Pyramid", signed by Ren Zhengfei.
This article was written by a returnee programmer who signed "Mason", who has worked in Silicon Valley and Huawei, claims to feel Huawei's lack of competitiveness in the software industry, and laments the "Hierarchy" problem of Huawei's R&D system, such as multi-head management, middle-level bloating, process rigidity, lack of time to precipitate technical methods, and poor development of technical career seniority.
A series of views have been warmly responded to by many Huawei employees, and comments and comments have also been published at the same time. Ren Zhengfei even commented: "Politeness in technical work is a drug, and criticism and argument in the face are good medicine."
To be fair, Huawei has become a benchmark for domestic enterprise organization management, and even in organizational innovation, it has made great achievements, but there are still various typical large enterprise diseases. What is valuable is that Ren Zhengfei did not cover his ears and steal the bell, but chose to face the truth.
I think that the reissue of the old article from 5 years ago at this time is of great significance, and should be regarded as a clarion call for its next action - blowing up the pyramid organization!
Today, we may wish to trace the roots to see what is the hateful pyramid organization, and why as strong as Huawei will fall into this trap.
In the era of industrial economy, pyramids are almost synonymous with organizations, and they are the best carriers for enterprises to obtain efficiency. But from the moment the pyramid organization was born, it was an imperfect logic with several deadly genes in it. The advent of the Internet age has infinitely magnified these deadly genes and made us reflect on the nature of pyramid organization.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="14" >01 department wall</h1>
From a horizontal perspective, the biggest problem with pyramid organization is the "departmental wall", and smith and Weber's so-called division of labor is actually "difficult to distinguish clearly". In most pyramid organizations, employees feel that it is difficult to obtain support once they move out of the department and involve "horizontal collaboration."
In the pyramid organization, the original two departments performed their respective duties before, but it was impossible to achieve the same clear distinction between the Chu River and the Han Dynasty, and there must be a region that was the "cross-responsibility" of the two sides. Many people do not understand what cross-responsibilities are, and think that the division of functions such as R&D, supply, production, and sales is very clear, but in fact this is not the case.
The difficulty of the division of labor is not in defining what each role does, but in defining what each role does in various situations. As long as a reason for not getting the job done can be found, then the responsibilities must not be clearly demarcated.
Since responsibilities are not clearly demarcated, "cross-responsibility" is likely to fall on everyone's head. Moreover, the rule within the enterprise is generally "the first time you do this, you are equivalent to claiming the work." In order to avoid this kind of "flying disaster", both sides of the cross-duty began to retreat, saying that "the matter is not about themselves", "skimming" the responsibility, and "sitting firmly" the responsibility of others.
At this time, both sides have become the most superb "debaters", and if there is no document to rely on, and there is no objective and fair third party, a thick "department wall" has emerged between the two sides.
The most frightening thing is that there is almost no limit to this "retreat", and the departmental wall will become thicker and thicker as a result.
The department wall is only a primary form, and going up is the executive wall, each executive is in charge of a different business group, and there is also a wall between them. Going down is the team wall, the post wall... In fact, wherever there is a professional division of labor, there will be a "wall", which is roughly the same as the departmental wall. When there are too many "walls" within the enterprise, synergy becomes delusional, and the enterprise will go its own way and become a mess of sand.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="22" >02 insulation</h1>
From the perspective of vertical relationship, the biggest problem of pyramid organization is the "thermal insulation layer", and it is difficult to "clearly divide" the boundaries of power by authorization, resulting in poor communication between superiors and subordinates, poor transmission of information, and inability to implement tasks.
The original idea of the pyramid organization was to give power to the various levels after the professional division of labor in order to form a "chain" of control and supervision. Therefore, there are clear boundaries of authorization between the superior and the subordinate, the superior decides and completes important matters (such as the top-level strategic design in a certain field), the subordinate decides and completes the secondary important matters on the basis of the direction of the superior decision and the results of the work, and so on, until the task is implemented on the most micro action.
It stands to reason that each level of this "chain relationship" should have clear responsibilities and rights and be responsible to the superiors. But in reality, the responsibilities and rights of each level are unclear, or the subordinates usually do not receive explicit powers.
On the one hand, it is the superiors who are obsessed with power and "unwilling to give up power", which can be traced back to the "power motive" mentioned in McClellan's "acquired theory", and controlling the fate of others is originally a motivation. This pursuit is exacerbated in China's traditional cultural environment, because Chinese society with Confucian culture as the bottom layer is more advocating "power culture". Someone jokingly said: "Chinese common and greatest belief is to add officials to the knighthood." ”
On the other hand, it is the superior who upholds the patriarchal and paternalistic plot, does not trust the subordinates, and "does not dare to delegate power." This plot is also related to Confucian culture, which is originally advocating paternalism. The typical phenomenon is that the superior is always unaccustomed to the subordinate, feels that the subordinate is stupid, is not accustomed to every detail, and modifies the file to the subordinate and even changes it to the details of punctuation.
In this case, most of the subordinates of Zhiqu do not "manage upwards" and clarify their power boundaries to facilitate their work and even gain the space to achieve self-achievement. Because such behavior is often seen as a challenge to authority, or even an ulterior motive, for personal gain.
Therefore, the sleek subordinates usually use the "anti-authorization" way to passively cope, that is, to divide a simple task into ten times to communicate with the superior, commonly known as "early instructions, late reporting". The purpose of this is very simple: one is to slow down the pace of work and make it easier for yourself; the other is to push the responsibility to the end, and the subtext is "you (the superior) do it, all the decisions are made by you, I don't take responsibility, I still have to exhaust you." ”
Of course, in addition to pushing (responsibility), you can also take credit (interests), once things are done well, it is because you have faithfully landed on the ideas of your superiors. In fact, in this model, the subordinate acts as a "second hand" and does not add any value to the work of this link.
Some things really can't be thought of carefully, when the superior is not willing to clarify the scope of authorization, but hopes to maintain the "gray level", the enterprise will fall into a risk - the subordinates overstep the line, take the power they should not have, and seek private interests. Why is it possible to collect power? This is very subtle: the superior did not say to give you this power, nor did he say no to give it!
Moreover, in this field, who knows the authorization level of the superior the most is of course his or her vertical subordinate! It is not difficult to explain why secretaries in the system have become a "special group", they are the people around the leader, what they want to do, who dares to say that it is not the meaning of the leader? Subordinates (such as secretaries) claim to be the "embodiment" of leadership, but in fact, they have completely emptied their superiors, and if something really goes wrong, the superiors really can't get rid of their responsibilities.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="33" >03 Small square monster</h1>
The horizontal departmental wall and the vertical insulation layer divide the enterprise into a number of "small squares". Employees in the fangge, head "title", do not touch the upper and lower (superior and subordinate), do not touch the left and right (collaborators), reduce their work content to the extreme, "prevarication" has become the norm. This problem was found as early as the Ford system (the era of the representative of the pyramid organization). As Ford Sr. put it, "title" is almost synonymous with not working and not being able to create value for others. Even if employees want to step out of the small square to do things, most of them are pushing the credit, grasping the power and discharging responsibilities, which will only create one trouble after another.
Since everyone's responsibilities and rights are not clear, employees in such enterprises have some common characteristics:
First, employees complained. Everyone blames themselves for having too little power (including "profit") and too much responsibility.
"Power is too small" is because "the superior grasps the power" and "the level grabs the power". Once, I led a consulting team to consult for the organizational transformation of a company, and in the organizational diagnosis process, we concluded that the company was "unclear in authorization, and the executives were reduced to department heads." Afterwards, a familiar executive said to me seriously: "Teacher Mu, we all disagree with your views, where are we the head of the department, we don't even have the power of the head of the department!" The implication is that the general manager has tightened his power too tightly.
Of course, the ensuing complaint is that they are "too responsible", on the one hand, the superiors infinitely "press" the task down, on the other hand, the horizontal cooperation department also "pushes" the task over. Feel free to enter any enterprise to visit the middle and high-level "busy work", 99% of the answer is "busy to die!" "I don't know if I'm really busy, I said it a thousand times, and I also believe that I am "really busy", so I am complaining about the company.
Second, employees do not meet with talent. Because the responsibilities and rights are not clearly stated, the employees simply lack a clear "track", they are more like bumpy "spectators" on the side of the track, and everyone talks about "how to run". The implication is, "If I had to play, it would be a big killing."
But in fact, their so-called abilities have not been verified by the track at all, and it is entirely possible that they imagined themselves. When encountering this kind of "talent is not met", if you are still willing to listen to their views, you will find that most of the views can not stand up to scrutiny, the reason is very simple, on paper! What's more, there is no routine on paper, basically "stepping on the watermelon peel, sliding to where it counts."
There is also an interesting phenomenon, if you really want to push such employees to the track, let their posts have responsibilities and rights in place, most people are really reluctant. It is okay to give rights, it is not okay to press responsibility, to motivate (money) when you do well, and not to punish (money) if you do not do well. Sometimes you even suspect that this kind of nostalgia is just a "always right" gesture in the enterprise. Relatively complaining, such a posture is obviously more positive, and showing that you are "talented" is obviously easier to fight for your own development space.
Third, the attitude of employees is very high. Everyone likes to move their mouths, "speak their minds, and express their determination", and once things are to be done, no one is willing to do it. Once, I presided over a business meeting for a certain enterprise, at which everyone spoke freely and expressed a lot of views, and the president really couldn't listen to it, saying: "You have spent so much time talking about views, but why is no one willing to give me a set of plans, let alone anyone willing to help us implement the landing?" ”
The constraints of the departmental walls and insulation may be the reason why people are reluctant to do it. However, some leaders have said that "we want power to give power, we want money to give money, and we want resources to give resources." "Why are no employees still willing to jump on top? Sometimes, we have every reason to suspect that because of the long-term "just talk and don't do", they are not unwilling to do things, but they are no longer able to do things.
In fact, the above characteristics constitute a deadlock in the enterprise: to some extent, complaining about the superior's "not giving up power" may be because of their "high posture" and "no responsibility", if this is the case, or the superior has a reasonable similar speculation, how can they put the power down? In the end, of course, everyone is not satisfied, and the company has fallen from a "deadlock" to a "dead end".
The "small square strange phenomenon" makes enterprises present a "big enterprise disease", with low efficiency and serious internal friction. Note that the big business disease is not necessarily the only one in large enterprises, and the phenomenon I have observed is that more and more small businesses of small size have also begun to appear "big business disease" in advance, because pyramid organization is also their underlying logic. A byproduct of the "big business disease" is the lack of innovation.
This is very natural, once innovative, you need to jump out of the "comfort zone" in your "small square" and enter the "vacuum field" where the "department wall" and "insulation layer" are located, you obviously have one more job, and you have more risks. Whether it can be coordinated is one thing, and if it is done well, it has its own benefits? Maybe the related departments (related to cross-responsibilities) next to it will come to grab credit! "The more dishes you wash, the more likely you are to break them" is the truth.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="47" >04 process barrels and vacuum hoods</h1>
Faced with the dilemma of the pyramid organization, there were two attempts in both directions, but in the end a larger bureaucracy was formed.
One direction is process reengineering. This is a management trend that MIT computer science professor and electrical engineer Michael Hammer and consultant J. Champy once set off in the late 1990s. They take the user value of the terminal as the starting point, take the process nodes of the process into the value creation of the process, and give these nodes the power above the horizontal division of labor and vertical authorization, thinking that this can break the small square. Hammer even declared: "My mission is to reverse the logic of the industrial economy." ”
But this instead forms a "process barrel". The process is infinitely complex, one node stagnates, and the entire chain stagnates. The more efficient the process, the more bureaucratic each node in the process becomes. The reason why Ali's female employee suspected of being violated has fermented such a big negative effect is precisely because of the irresponsibility of the process node, which has led to the problem being delayed again and again, so that it finally broke out.
Another direction is KPI management. The principle is very simple, that is, the company's strategic goals or business objectives are decomposed into various professional fields, and then gradually sink down, until the individual employees, and then based on the assessment results to issue incentives, the typical performance is a variety of scorecards.
When numbers are bound to each department, team, and individual, KPIs are like the sword of Damocles hanging over the head of each unit being assessed, injecting motivation into them, requiring them to deliver results, driving them to break the departmental walls and insulation layers, and actively coordinate horizontally, take the initiative to manage up and down.
But this in turn forms a "(indicator) vacuum cover". This is a concept I mentioned, that is, although the KPIs are broken down, these KPIs have little to do with the company's strategy, but have become a vacuum shield for everyone to protect themselves, and the sentence "I have done my job" is all right. The KPI doctrine criticized by the industry in the past few years, and the "problem caused by the PBC traction being too strong" commented by Huawei employees this time are the evil consequences of the vacuum cover.
All of the above efforts have ended in failure, and it has to be said that today's big business disease is a problem that has not been solved by the management community so far. Perhaps, the times really need a new organizational model.