Haier and User Alliance

"Thank you for your suggestion, goodbye." When Li Caixia finished typing these words on the keyboard, she stretched out for a long time and looked away from the computer. It was already bright, and the clock on the wall pointed to 7:30. She has been "online chatting" all night in front of the office computer.

Don't think of Li Caixia as the kind of boring person who uses "Internet chat" to pass the night shift. She is the head of Haier's electric water heater management body, that is, the person in charge of Haier's entire electric water heater product research and development. The "Internet chat" is aimed at users distributed around the world.

It is rare in most companies for a R&D leader to interact with users at such a distance. However, at Haier, this is not only a common practice for Li Caixia, but is also becoming a work habit for other R&D personnel. "If I don't communicate with users frequently, I will feel uneasy." Li Caixia's mentality prompted her not only to "chat" with users frequently, but also to use various opportunities to communicate with users face-to-face. Through such communication, the water heater products she designed have become more and more popular with users. For example, some users told her that she needs to wash her hair every morning, but it takes at least half an hour for the electric water heater to burn, which is really inconvenient. So, she realized that users have other needs besides bathing with water heaters. As a result, the domestic hot water function has been added to the Haier electric water heater. Users only need to turn on the switch 5 minutes in advance to wash their hair with hot water.

Developing a best-selling product, in general enterprises, it is difficult for R&D personnel to obtain immediate returns except for the affirmation of value. However, in Haier, the market effect is directly linked to the performance of the R&D business entity. According to Li Caixia, "As many market indicators as the business entity undertakes, the resource package can be obtained after completion. If the indicators you complete are at the industry average level, then your treatment and package size are equivalent to the industry level. If you exceed the industry level, the excess part will correspond to an accelerated upgrade of the resource package." Therefore, the market effect is directly transformed into the pressure and motivation of the R&D personnel of the business entity. Li Caixia was previously the director of electric heating product planning. At that time, her department only needed to do research and development according to the requirements of the enterprise. Therefore, when she was hired as the head of the management team, the pressure made her feel uncomfortable, and "the market target suddenly hit her head." Different from the planning department, the management body is a small enterprise that is directly linked to the market, needs to achieve market goals, and is responsible for its own profits and losses. As the head of the management, Li Caixia has the right to make decisions on independent research and development, the right to allocate resources and the right to distribute benefits. However, the exercise of these autonomy must be carried out on the platform of Haier's Rendanheyi win-win mechanism. There are more than 2,000 business entities like this on this platform. They are like nodes on the Internet, connected to each other, and they are each other's markets.

“Transform external market goals into internal market goals; turn internal goals into personal goals; and turn the value created by individuals into personal income.” More than 10 years ago, when Haier CEO Zhang Ruimin was committed to building the Haier market chain, This goal was put forward. Today, this goal is being implemented as a mesh structure in the Internet era in Haier.

In order to turn user needs into a driving force

The reason why Haier wants to break down into parts is to cope with the challenges of industrial changes in which user needs are fragmented and experienced, and user needs dominate. Each independent independent business entity is formed according to the unique needs of users. The given autonomy allows each business entity to respond to user needs responsively and quickly, form alliances with users, create value together, and create a mutual dependent ecosystem.

Users' needs and suggestions are always obtained by the independent operators who are in close contact with them at the first time. So, how do these needs and suggestions drive the entire Haier? In order to achieve this drive, Haier transformed the traditional top-down execution workflow into a “reverse-forced” workflow from the market side to the internal back-office, and created an inverted triangle organizational model to match it.

The so-called inverted triangle is to change the bottommost organization personnel who are exposed to the market in the traditional positive triangle organizational structure to the topmost of the entire organization (as shown in Figure 1), and become a first-level management entity. The original middle-level functional management The department has been transformed into a second-level management body with service as its main task, and the original top management has become a third-level management body. They are responsible for long-term strategic planning and management mechanism innovation. In such an organization, in principle, there is no concept of leadership and superiors. Everyone is a creator of market value, and everyone's abilities are not evaluated by leaders, but by the market and users. Here, market information flows from the market side to various relevant business entities in the form of "reverse force", driving the linkage of the entire organization.

For example, when Li Caixia's management company understands that the water heater's warranty period is limited to 8 years to be competitive, they will decompose this indicator, including the determination of the life of accessories, the requirements of the quality control system, Production control indicators, logistics control indicators, after-sales maintenance indicators, etc., and then assign these indicators to the corresponding business entities such as quality and production. If in the original positive triangle organizational structure, since these departments may be at the same level as Li Caixia's department or a higher-level functional management department, then it is not easy to use these indicators to mobilize them, but in this inverted triangle organization , these indicators are directly related to the relevant departments, so when they see the indicators, they act as if they saw the actual needs of users.

In order to ensure the smooth operation of the "reverse force" mechanism, a "gap difference" mechanism is also designed in this inverted triangle organization. If there is a problem with the coordination between the first-level management entity and the second-level management entity, then there must be a problem with some mechanism and specification. At this time, the third-level management entity must work with the second-level management entity to find the crux of the problem and remove it. Obstacles, get through the process, and carry out the so-called "clearance difference". Taking advantage of the "gap difference", the three-level operators continue to innovate on the inverted triangle platform and mechanism to ensure the gradual implementation of user-driven.

Using contracts to activate user-oriented combination capabilities

After learning about Haier's inverted triangle organizational structure, former IBM CEO Gerstner once expressed his concern that if the inverted triangle is used, front-line employees will not be able to obtain a secondary platform What about the follow-up timely support? If Gerstner's concerns are pushed further, if the 2,000 independent business entities take care of their own interests and cannot stick to each other and cannot form a scale effect, isn't Haier a mess?

Such concerns were placed in front of Haier five or six years ago. After years of hard exploration, they have come up with a solution, which is to introduce a contract mechanism between independent business entities, and use transactions and competition to unite each other.

Each business entity shall adopt the method of market transaction when it has relations with the outside world or with other business entities. Whenever a terminal market demand information is determined to be satisfied, this information is decomposed into a series of indicators, and these indicators are the transactions between related business entities. Once the transaction occurs, the related business entities are glued together and finally formed. A combination of business entities dominated by a certain market demand, such as Li Caixia's demand to extend the warranty period, will glue together quality, logistics, production, after-sales service and even human resources business entities to form a market-oriented combination.

However, this combination is not isolated. For example, when the logistics operator conducts transactions with Li Caixia's needs, it will also conduct transactions with other operators in need, such as community stores, county networks and other operators. Through multiple transactions, logistics can obtain a large-scale order resource.

Therefore, for a single business entity, this combination can achieve economies of scale, and for a certain market demand, this combination can produce solutions that are pleasing to users.

To provide the solution that best satisfies the user, all the modules participating in the combination need to provide their best value. Haier's competitive trading mechanism also objectively guarantees capacity rationing. Businesses that fail to provide competitive value risk being eliminated. Haier has some R&D departments that have been sold to external partners because of their lack of capacity. Therefore, under such an adhesion mechanism, all operators must continuously improve their capabilities. For example, the human resources department should investigate the talent needs with its users (other business departments) in advance, reserve talents in advance, and wait for users to trade.

Actually, business entities are powerful from birth because they are products of competition. Each manager is recruited through competition. Each business entity is set up according to a market target, and willing employees will "snatch orders". They will come up with the implementation plan and relevant capability certificates for the target, and judges composed of horizontal departments, stakeholders and users will identify, choose. Once successful, he is the CEO of this business entity and has the right to allocate various resources within the organization. However, once his competition promise is not fulfilled, then there will be a mechanism of "mutual election of officers and soldiers" to impeach him. Therefore, the manager will face enormous pressure as soon as he takes office. Therefore, he will also manage the team through the competition mechanism. For example, Zhao Feng, the head of the Qingdao community store, asked his members, "If anyone does not become a user for two weeks, they will be warned by a yellow card, and if they continue, they will be expelled through mutual election between officers and soldiers."

Such competition makes it impossible for each business entity to have little self-driving force. And through the transaction connection, these single strong will form an efficient combination ability.

User-oriented tools

In order to achieve user orientation, after the establishment of organizational and mechanism guarantees, it is necessary to let each member master scientific methods. The strategic profit and loss statement (Figure 2) is a practical tool provided by Haier to its employees. This is a table that is planned in advance based on user needs and calculated in advance, unlike a traditional profit and loss statement that considers costs and expenses after the fact. Simply put, the strategic income statement consists of four quadrants of content.

Zhao Feng has a very thorough understanding of the strategic profit and loss statement. According to his explanation, in the first quadrant, it is necessary to determine who you are serving and what value you can provide users, that is, user and market positioning. ; After that, in the second quadrant, you have to organize resources, including determining what kind of team to form, what kind of people to find, what way to do it, and what kind of implementation plan; and for the implementation and control of the plan, the Put it in the third quadrant to consider, including how to establish time nodes, how to divide the progress, how to match resources, etc.; the fourth quadrant compares the results with the expectations of the first quadrant to check whether the positioning of the first quadrant is correct.

“Our daily work revolves around the strategic profit and loss statement. Every month, I take out my strategic profit and loss statement from the previous month and study it carefully, calibrating myself not to stray from the strategy.” In his view, “ Anyone who can't get past the first quadrant, don't say anything (not to mention user orientation)."

Because of this table, Zhao Feng is very clear about his users, "From the perspective of user needs, every user in the general sense is my user. Maybe there is a process to update home appliances, 10 years, 8 years It varies, but for our channel, users are always in demand. We are positioned to provide users with a full-process home experience and solutions, realize the transition from selling products to buying user information, and ultimately create user resources. "According to the positioning obtained in the first quadrant, the services provided by Zhao Feng's community store have far exceeded the functions of home appliance channels, such as repairing sewers for users, paying water and electricity bills, etc. They even piloted cloud community services in Qingdao. , that is, through cloud computing technology, services similar to properties are replicated in multiple communities.

Using the strategic profit and loss statement, Zhao Feng can also ensure the realization of the goal by "calculating the win in advance". The Dongcheng International Community Store in his jurisdiction contracted the home furnishing project in the affordable housing community, and through bidding, locked in the first competitiveness of more than 4 million yuan. According to Zhao Feng, if there is no guidance from the strategic profit and loss statement, they will sell products after the successful bidding, and it is difficult to guarantee the realization of the goal of more than 4 million yuan. However, based on the strategic profit and loss statement, they can calculate the win in advance. Therefore, this team interacts and communicates with users through the integration of virtual and reality, finds out product and service solutions that users actually need, and takes these solutions to connect with product operators to realize underwriting customization. After preparing these, Zhao Feng believes, "Our goal will definitely be 100% achieved."

Zhao Feng's plan implementation is not only guided by the strategic profit and loss statement, but also supervised by the daily balance sheet. The daily balance sheet is a daily work budget and action plan formed by Haier with the help of the IT system. This system can automatically notify employees of the implementation status through the system every day.

One of the motivations for employees to achieve their goals is the realization of self-worth. Therefore, to match the strategic profit and loss statement and the Nissin statement, Haier also has a single compensation statement. This table clearly shows each employee the profit due, the fee to be paid, and the share of the excess. Through the integration of pay per person, employees get not only income, but also the realization of self-worth.

Haier has been working hard for decades on user-oriented management changes. What Zhang Ruimin wants to pursue is not the so-called success, but the rhythm of the times. Therefore, their pace of change has not slowed down. At present, their inverted triangle organization is evolving into a closed-loop network of nodes.

"As long as you find the right way, you won't be afraid of the long road." Zhang Ruimin often used this sentence to encourage himself and Haier.