Manager's learning ability

More than 2,000 years ago, Confucius said the first sentence in the "Analects of Confucius", "Learn and learn from time to time, not to say it", which is about learning - why? Because the purpose of Confucius as a teacher is to cultivate managers for the society, and the most important ability of managers is learning ability.

A more influential statement about the competence of managers comes from management scholar Robert Katz. He said that managers have three major capabilities, divided into technical skills, interpersonal skills and conceptual skills. However, he did not make it clear how these three abilities came from.

Actually, technical ability and conceptual ability mainly depend on learning, and although interpersonal ability has a large innate component, there are also areas that can be learned and improved the day after tomorrow. Unless it is a genius, the most important ability of a manager is the ability to learn.

Therefore, the most important task of a manager is to learn how to learn. Confucius' "Learn and learn from time to time", although only five words, has summed up the two principles of learning for managers. Principle 1: Learning is practice. The "learning" of "learning and practicing it" refers not only to oral reading, but also to imitating in action. What Confucius wanted his students to learn was not only poetry and calligraphy, but also ritual, music, archery, imperialism, and the way of being a human being and governing the country. This is life-oriented and society-oriented learning, and its purpose is to put it into practice. "Xi" is not a review or review, but an internship and practice. Qian Mu said: "The learning of Confucianism comes from true cultivation and practice." Learning is not only the purpose of learning, but also a means. Managers learn in practice.

Principle 2: Practice in a timely manner. The "shi" in "learning and practicing it" means "at the right time". Learning is not just practice, it's practice at the right time. This has two requirements: First, put it into practice at the appropriate time, which is the purpose of learning. Second, don't practice blindly when it's inappropriate. If you violate these two requirements, you will fall into two traps of learning.

The first trap of learning is learning without learning. Premier Wen Li said that he read "Meditations" every day, so many managers also "learned" Wen Li, studied "Meditations", and bought them home to decorate the bedside or bookshelf. But how many managers have truly achieved "Xi", like Marco Aurelius, the author of "Meditations", taking time to reflect every day?

The second trap of learning is to learn and practice disorderly. To make such a mistake, sometimes it is confused, it is a kind of wrong thing. Chinese business managers learn from the West, and they are prone to make this mistake. No matter the time, place and occasion are right or not, if they have learned a certain management idea and a certain management tool, whether it is mandatory ranking, Six Sigma or strategic business unit, they will quickly start their own business. practice in the enterprise. This is not so much learning as it is tossing.

Learning and practicing disorderly, in addition to being really confused, it may also be pretending to be confused. The executive compensation incentives learned from the West are often used in Chinese companies as a result of pretending to be confused. One of the first things Lenovo did when it acquired IBM's personal computer division was to "align with international standards" and significantly increase the salary of Chairman Yang Yuanqing. ? Ma Mingzhe, chairman of An Insurance, also received a much-discussed sky-high salary last year.

The reason why you learn and practice disorderly may also be "path dependence": you only learn a certain trick, so you use that trick all over the world. Management guru Mintzberg's criticism of MBA education is that business schools teach MBA students to use a hammer, so everything they see is a nail. Management consulting firms are prone to such mistakes. A consulting firm that specializes in a certain management tool will tell you that whatever your company's problem is, its tool—maybe a balanced scorecard, maybe an ERP—is right for you. Because it's good at using a hammer, any problem you have is a nail.

"Learn and learn from time to time", the words are short, the truth is deep, and it is definitely not easy to do. No wonder Confucius and his old man said, if you do it, rejoice!

Liu Lan has been engaged in management education at Global Sources since 2002. In addition to being responsible for the content of The CEConline, he also develops and hosts management training courses within Global Sources. See http://www.liulan.info for more information. He has work experience in management, media and academia. He previously served as deputy general manager of an advertising company, editor, reporter and columnist of a newspaper, and a research assistant at the East-West Center and Harvard University. He received management education at Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School, and holds a master's degree from Harvard University and a master's degree and a bachelor's degree from Peking University. Author of 10 Facts about Management, Studying Management at Harvard and The Leader's Cocktail. Since 2008, he has hosted open management workshops for managers on topics such as self-management, team management, and leadership, which are very popular. .