Great Cohesion: The Winning Way of Elite Teams from the World 500

Author: Xiao Xiao, Mao Jinlan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-10-01
Features: The goal is the banner of the team. Accurately grasping the team's goals is the first step in team management and also the source of team cohesion. Because goals are direction, they concern the future and interests of the entire team and all its members. The Haier Group, a representative of China's national enterprises, is a highly cohesive team. However, things were not the same in the early days of entrepreneurship. In 1984, the predecessor of the Haier Group—the Qingdao—changed four factory directors within a year. In December, Zhang Ruimin, the deputy general manager of the parent company "Qingdao Home Appliances Company," was transferred to take over as the factory director. At that time, the company was in disarray, with workers who were sloppy and undisciplined, even habitually urinating and defecating anywhere in the refrigerator production workshop. After Zhang Ruimin took office, he mainly did two things: first, he borrowed money from nearby villages to pay the workers' wages; second, he disciplined labor discipline and formulated a management system with 13 provisions, one of which was prohibiting urination and defecation anywhere in the workshop. As for the external market conditions at the time: there were nearly a hundred refrigerator manufacturers across the country, including some with "Ministry-level Excellence" and "Provincial-level Excellence," and foreign products were flooding the market, with various brands of refrigerators dominating the scene, making the market competition extremely fierce. However, Zhang Ruimin quickly realized that although there were over 100 domestic refrigerator factories sharing the market, there was still no excellent, guiding, and consumer-leading branded refrigerator. Therefore, under Zhang Ruimin's leadership, Qingdao made a major decision, which was to implement the "Branding Strategy" and position the Haier Group's goal as producing branded products. This goal became a bright red banner in the hearts of the Haier people, guiding them step by step toward success and glory. Of course, to achieve this goal, the Haier people also faced tremendous challenges. From December 1984 to December 1991, when the group was established, Haier only produced one refrigerator product and did not produce any other products. At that time, many companies were pursuing output and profit without paying close attention to quality and building brands. These companies also achieved relatively rapid development at the time. For example, in 1988, Wanbao refrigerators had an annual output of 1 million units, while Haier's annual output was less than 100,000 units, and naturally, the Haier people were also very anxious, "What is the benefit of 1 million units? What is the benefit of 100,000 units?" But Zhang Ruimin believed, "At that time, the quality of our workers could not achieve that much. If we did, we couldn't guarantee the quality. There's no choice but to be honest and do it." "If we do, we must do the best." In the late 1980s, guided by the "Branding Strategy" and the goal of "Striving for ," the Haier people moved from a small factory toward the goal of becoming a well-known large home appliance enterprise in China. In 1985, Qingdao achieved the basic goal of "introducing, developing, producing, turning losses into profits, and developing in the same year," quickly emerging from the production. Next, they gradually changed their concepts, dared to reform, improved product quality as the starting point, strengthened basic management, transformed the business mechanism, and achieved a market-oriented operational strategy transformation, steadily and steadily, finally winning the refrigerator "National Excellence Gold Medal" in 1988, making a leap...