Nothing can make you feel real like communicating with real people at zero distance, and nothing can bring strangers closer than sitting together for dinner and drinking. Two weeks ago, the entrepreneur group I served (in the past two years, apart from being a one-on-one personal coach for the top leaders of various enterprises, I also provided "collective coach" service for an entrepreneur group composed of 21 private enterprise bosses) was fortunate enough to invite Zhang Yong, the boss of Haidilao. After an afternoon's discussion and an evening's drinking (the place is arranged in Haidilao, of course), the bosses' understanding of Haidilao is no longer like that in legends or books, and the legendary Zhang Yong has become the "big brother" in everyone's mind and verbally (after meeting for half an hour, all of us, like his employees, naturally called Zhang Yong "Zhang Dage", although most of us are older than him). The next morning, "carrying" our eldest brother Zhang Yong, we focused on a topic: what to learn from Haidilao, whether to learn or not.

Everyone's initial sighs were almost all focused on Zhang Yong himself: "He really knows how to talk"; "He is too charismatic"; "He is actually a casual and typical temperament middleman"; "He is a born artist" ... "Isn't he a businessman and an entrepreneur like us?" I asked. "Of course, he is also a very smart guy who knows how to settle accounts." A classmate (in this group composed of top leaders of enterprises, everyone calls each other by their first names and refuses to call them "chief") replied categorically. Our topic changed from intuition and art to rationality and economy, and we began to discuss whether Zhang Yong had an abacus in his mind and whether his career was smart.

It's really generous

Haidilao is really generous, and there are countless examples in this regard. But Zhang Yong told us that this generous habit or culture began by accident. At the beginning of his business, he found a guest's shoes were dirty, so he randomly arranged a buddy to shine his shoes, which moved the guest deeply. When another guest was eating hot pot, she praised Haidilao's hot sauce, so Zhang Yong personally delivered a bottle of hot sauce to her home and told her that she could arrange a "special offer" in the future. These are the beginning of a series of "abnormal" services of Haidilao, and also created the first batch of loyal customers of Haidilao.

more importantly, Haidilao's generosity to employees matches its generosity to customers. For example, the houses rented for employees are all in good residential areas, and it is stipulated that the time from the community to Haidilao should not exceed 21 minutes; There is a person who is responsible for cleaning, and the room is equipped with an Internet computer; Send money to the parents of cadres and outstanding employees every month; Invest in the construction of boarding schools for employees' children in their hometowns, and so on. The students in our group realized that if the enterprise is generous to customers but stingy to employees, employees can't have sustainable initiative to serve customers, and the value-added service for customers will become passive water and trees without roots.

Actually, they are very smart.

All the bosses of our group started their own businesses and worked hard at the grassroots level. Everyone can see at a glance that the above measures of Haidilao will greatly reduce the profit margin of the company. "A smart boss wouldn't do that." A classmate teased himself. "Everyone thinks they know how to do business? Therefore, there is only one sea fishing in China. " Zhang Yong's analysis convinces us that he lost sesame seeds and got watermelon. The cost of catering industry is mainly tax, rent and labor, and the cost of ingredients is relatively low. Spending a little money on fruits and drinks and earning a high degree of customer satisfaction is actually very cost-effective. For this, Zhang Yong is not taboo. He "confessed" to us at the wine table: profits come from customers' pockets, not saved. The reputation of customers is the most valuable. How many snacks and drinks can you buy for customers, and how many customers praise and spread it for free? Not afraid of not knowing the goods, but afraid of comparing the goods. After comparison, the bosses of our group found that Zhang Yong had calculated the "big account", but we often just beat around the bush in the "petty profit".

Zhang Yong's generosity has indeed made the labor cost of Haidilao much higher than that of other similar enterprises. However, it is precisely because he satisfies employees that employees satisfy customers, which leads to the reputation of Haidilao. We have roughly estimated the costs of keeping old employees and recruiting new employees in Haidilao, and we can easily find that Zhang Yong's "career-saving" is actually very sophisticated. In contrast, it seems that we have only calculated the "clear accounts" under our noses, while Zhang Yong is more concerned about the "dark accounts" behind it.

Good at psychology

Further, behind these "hidden accounts" is actually the fundamental problem of how to treat employees and how to treat human nature. And "treating people as people" is the true meaning of the success of Haidilao. Many students realized: We have been studying and listening to classes for years, and we think we know more and more about management, but compared with Zhang Yong, we find that we are fundamentally wrong. The core problem is that we have suppressed human nature while emphasizing management. With the company's various systems and processes becoming more and more scientific, the psychological distance between the boss and employees has also become larger and larger. "We just hired their hands, not their brains, especially their hearts." A classmate said. If employees only contribute and don't devote themselves, what we do is actually a "loss-making business".

After several hours of discussion and collision, people gradually realized that, in a sense, Zhang Yong was best at "social psychology" and "psychology of emotion". In the final analysis, the innovation of Haidilao is the little things that employees do every day. Looking at it alone, it is trivial and insignificant, but when more than 11 thousand heads continue to pay attention to these small things, the accumulated strength will be enormous! What deserves our attention is that Zhang Yong and his senior management team didn't ask employees to innovate at all. They just worked hard to create a satisfactory working environment, and all kinds of innovative ideas among employees naturally emerged. Zhang Yong also told us that after the company became bigger, he tried to use the system to assess innovation, but at this time the real innovation became less. "Innovation can not be created if you want to create it. Evaluating innovation itself assumes that employees have no ability and desire to innovate, which is a sign of distrust. " Zhang Yong's understanding and grasp of human nature makes us sigh.

We also compared Foxconn and Haidilao. On the surface, the welfare measures provided by Foxconn to employees are really comparable to those provided by Haidilao, but why are the mental outlook of employees of the two companies so different? The key point is that the two companies have different basic assumptions about human nature. Perhaps, when you treat everyone as a good person, most people (not everyone) become good people; When you treat everyone as a thief, not only will the organizational atmosphere become worse, but also everyone's work enthusiasm will be affected, and the proportion of thieves in the crowd will increase greatly. At the end of our group's discussion, I would like to draw your attention to one thing: Zhang Yong, a recognized "shopkeeper of cutting hands", did not "cut hands" on one thing: he was also the minister of human resources department of Haidilao. At the same time, the leaders of several departments of the company are deputy ministers, and the boss of the branch is also the minister of human resources in various places. The alternative practice of Haidilao once again made everyone sigh and fall into meditation.

I can't be Zhang Yong, but my company can be Haidilao. On the night after two drinks, Zhang Yong asked us: Have you noticed that I have a characteristic? I can tell the dead as alive and the bad as good, and then I can make people believe me and be willing to come with me? Between speeches, there is a slight sense (after drinking). Everyone nodded and said yes. Yes, Zhang Yong's art of speaking, his influence and his IQ and EQ behind him made us admire him deeply. Although we didn't say it, deep down, we admitted that we didn't expect to be the "second Zhang Yong" in this life. However, his "abacus" thinking and the beliefs or principles behind it are still felt that they can be refined, summarized and "migrated" to their respective companies. In this sense, as long as we have the heart, the heart, the sea fishing can still be learned, although it is not easy.

In fact, Haidilao is not "lonely". According to Mr. Wang Yukun, a management expert, Hollyland, a chain cake shop, has many similarities with Haidilao. He believes that Luo Hong, the head of Hollyland, believes in the same concept as Zhang Yong, and both want to make employees live the greatest freedom. Haidilao can also find bosom friends overseas. According to an article in Harvard Business Review at the end of 2117, a chain steakhouse named Outback in the United States has a strikingly similar business philosophy to Haidilao, which can be called "Haidilao in the West".

it seems that only by making efforts to make employees feel happy first, and then making customers feel happy through them, can the company's sustainable profitability be fundamentally guaranteed. If we really understand this simple truth and put it into practice, we will not be too far from the success of fishing in the sea. Or, at least we can confidently say that we have "embarked on the right path".