I will focus on one thing: the acquisition and improvement of systematic thinking ability.

Because my understanding is that cognition, logic and thinking will eventually become a part of your systematic thinking ability.

All of us can only see a single point in our eyes at first. Only when the experience has accumulated to a certain stage can you see the "overall situation" beyond the single point, and then gradually form your own systematic thinking ability.

The ability of systematic thinking will bring about a sharp rise in the quality of your thinking and decision-making, and you can get more benefits by relying on your decision-making.

I will talk about the improvement of "systematic thinking ability" in two situations-

1. At present, you don't have the ability of "systematic thinking" at all, and many things you see are still single-point and scattered, and you want to know how to establish the ability of "systematic thinking";

2. You already have your own systematic thinking model on some issues, but you want to further improve it on the current basis.

1. If you have no systematic thinking ability at all, how can you establish it?

first of all, let's start with an example and feel the difference between the ability to think systematically and not.

an e-commerce company has launched a new product, and the boss asked the marketing department to post a promotional article on WeChat to do a good job in marketing the new product.

So Xiao A, the promotion specialist, found several selling points of the products, and wrote a promotion copy according to the routine and template. The general idea is that we have launched a new product, which is particularly awesome and has a limited time discount. Don't miss it when you pass by. Come and buy it. End.

after the copy is completed, Xiao A submits it to the superior Leader for publication.

Xiao B is the head of the marketing department, that is, Xiao A's superior Leader. After receiving Xiao A's copy, ta thought for a while and gave some different feedback-

1) This new product is brand-new and innovative in the industry, but because it is new, the acceptance of some users is hard to say, so it is recommended to "offer special discounts and invite some users to try it out".

2) During the first wave of promotion and user trial, we need to focus on three types of data. According to these three types of data, we will decide how to carry out the work in the next 1-2 weeks.

3) In the industry, three companies have released similar but not identical products in the past 1 years. It is suggested that Xiao A know the performance of these three products in recent months as soon as possible, as well as the main marketing channels and methods, so as to guide the marketing work of subsequent products.

you will find that in the above example, facing the same thing, Xiao A and Xiao B have very different thoughts and concerns-

Xiao A only cares about "how to write a good promotion copy", while Xiao B cares about how to formulate the marketing strategy of the whole new product, how to think and how to make good use of the current promotion to get more effective information.

This difference is exactly the difference between "single-point thinking" and "systematic thinking ability" that we mentioned.

In the state of "single point thinking", many things you see are just isolated points. For example, behind writing a copy is only the copy itself, behind an offline activity is only the activity process and materials, and behind a sales order is only the sales revenue of this order.

In the state of "systematic thinking", many things and problems are by no means isolated-

Systematic thinking emphasizes that the world is originally composed of countless complex systems, and many times, large systems are nested with small systems, just like our society is a large system, an industry is a smaller system, and a company is a lower-level system.

in the context of "systematic thinking", every system must have its own rules, just like competitive sports. Only by understanding these rules can you make better use of them, compete and interact with others without breaking the rules, and get more benefits from them.

around how to understand and make good use of all the rules, a "competitive strategy" comes into being. In the face of a complex competition, the difference between a good strategy and a bad strategy may be dozens of times or more.

combined with the above case, you can probably know more about the value of "systematic thinking".

so, how should "systematic thinking" be established? You need to focus on the following parts.

Generally speaking, a system consists of four parts-

1. Purpose (or function);

2. elements;

3. System structure;

4. Basic constraint rules.

ultimately, it is these things that determine how a system will work.

For example, if we regard the marketing of a company as a system, then-

1. The purpose and function of the system is to bring revenue growth to the company;

2. Channel, product pricing, product model and sales model are the system elements;

3. The above-mentioned N elements are bound to be linked in the company's marketing system according to a certain structure, and the structure of a company's marketing system may be presented as several layers: brand-flow-sales transformation-long-term development and maintenance of user relations (I will give you an example casually, in fact, the marketing system of each company may be a little different)

4. If you want to do a good job in marketing, you may need to follow the product life cycle law and play with different flow channels.

Based on the above knowledge, the formation process of "thinking and formulating strategies for a system" can be briefly described as:

Based on the goals and objectives, analyze the system structure, find the key system elements, and then intervene and adjust the key elements based on specific constraint rules, so as to achieve the goals better.

For example, the company's revenue is declining. After systematic analysis, it is found that the repurchase of old users is very unsatisfactory. Further analysis shows that the access channels and maintenance mechanisms for old users may not be well done, and the pricing of the second repurchase products is not attractive enough. Then you may try to adjust the pricing of the second repurchase products for old users, and strengthen the access and maintenance mechanisms for old users to better achieve the revenue growth goal.

Therefore, when you try to establish your own systematic thinking in front of a class of problems, you need to understand the following four questions-

1. What is the purpose and goal (or function) of the system service?

2. What are the basic elements of the system?

3. What kind of structure and relationship are the N elements of the system organized and linked together?

4. What are the basic constraint rules that the system needs to follow during its operation?

1 is generally the best solution, and 2 and 3 will have different understanding costs depending on the complexity of the system. As for 4, you may have to discover and understand many similar "basic laws" and "constraint rules" slowly, and then better "follow the trend" in practice to win more benefits for yourself within the scope of rules.

Just like Xiao B's example-

Because ta knows that the launch of a brand-new product should follow the basic law of "product life cycle management", ta put forward the strategy of "inviting seed users to conduct market verification and cultivation at an early stage";

because ta knows that there is a typical competitive style of "knocking on competing products" in the industry competition, ta has proposed that it is necessary to know how three similar products are made as soon as possible, so as to make its competitive strategy more targeted;

Of course, the world is too huge and complicated, and it is doomed to be unrealistic for a new person to quickly understand the whole "social system" or "business system".

It may be better to have a simple "system thinking model" before some common problems, and then constantly optimize it in practice.

So, next, I will share with you a simple enough gadget-"three-level thinking method of competitive strategy".

It enables you to begin to have the simplest "systematic thinking" in the professional and business environment, and to consciously discover and follow some of the so-called "underlying laws" in it, so as to think more comprehensively and long-term, and formulate a better "competitive strategy" for yourself.

Above-

Simply put, if the "professional/business environment" we live in is regarded as a system, we may simply describe the structure of this system according to the three levels of "bottom logic-middle rules/mechanisms-upper play"-this structure is not so rigorous and perfect, but it is easy enough for newcomers to understand and can guide your thinking and better.

In the above three levels, you can find some "system rules" in each level. After thinking about and finding these system rules one by one, you can further consider how to cater to these rules with the help of+and formulate your own corresponding competitive strategy.

Therefore, when you are facing competition in an industry, you can ask yourself the above three questions one by one, and combine your answers to think and make decisions, and make your own competitive strategy.

For example:

If I am an ordinary book editor who has just started to work and is responsible for making "personal growth" books in a well-known publishing company, the task given to me by my superiors is "to earn at least 2 million yuan this year".

However, this year, there are a lot of organizations that do "personal growth" books in the industry, and the competition is extremely fierce. Any slightly famous personal growth V has already been harassed by countless publishing organizations.

what should I do at this time?

at this time, try to think with the "three-level thinking method of competitive strategy"-

1) What are the basic laws of my industry/business?

In the whole publishing industry, less than 11% of books create more than 81% of profits;

There are two kinds of books with the greatest profit, one is short-term best-selling explosive books, and the other is long-selling books that can sell for at least 3-5 years-the former strongly depends on "topic, sharp point of view" or "author's popularity", and the latter strongly depends on whether the book itself can bring value and help to readers under a long-standing common problem;

2) What are the competition rules/typical gameplay in my platform/ecosystem?

In the direction of "personal growth", the author chooses a publishing house, which is generally either a well-known one with rich promotion and distribution resources or a large income commitment, or a one that "understands himself well enough to have a deep dialogue with himself" is preferred;

The more famous an author is, the more resources-rich and powerful publishing houses he favors.

3) what kind of competitors do I face and what are my advantages and disadvantages?

Disadvantage 1: n Many competing publishing houses are doing this direction. Many editors have more experience and deeper connections than me.

Disadvantage 2: I am obviously insensitive to how to quickly get rid of a bunch of influential celebrity authors and how to quickly find out a bunch of topics with explosions in front of the market;

Disadvantage 3: Our publishing house is not particularly well-known in the industry, and we are not too good at spelling brands and resources.

Advantage 1: I am better at communicating with people in depth and polishing a book with an author.

advantage 2: I have more feelings about "how to help a long-standing common problem" and often have a lot of my own thoughts.

to sum up, my current "better strategy" may be to lock in a direction with the potential of "selling books for a long time", spend more energy to find an author who has not published a book before, gain the trust of ta through deeper and longer communication, win the copyright of the signing book, and then spend more time polishing a high-value book with him.

Although I can't guarantee success, it seems that at least it will be my "better competitive strategy".

About "If you have no systematic thinking ability at all, how can you establish it?" Let's stop here for this question.

Next, let's talk about how people who have the ability to think systematically can improve further.

second, if you already have your own systematic thinking model on some issues, but want to further improve it, what should you do?

Give the answer directly first-

1. You'd better see and deeply understand a kind of "system model" that has been proved to be effective, and start to use it to understand &; Think about many problems.

2. You need to see more thoughts from other experts or experts in the same field or under the same kind of problems, and further compare, summarize and summarize them with your original system model, and constantly update your knowledge of system structure, elements and various constraint rules in the process.

3. You need to better optimize your original thinking model through this process, and finally improve your understanding and systematic thinking about a class of problems and make better strategies.

Let's take an example to illustrate:

Suppose I am an e-commerce practitioner and want to learn from other industry experts how to formulate the competitive strategy of e-commerce stores. At this time, I already have a thinking model in my mind (assuming it is the "three-level thinking method of competitive strategy" mentioned above).

then, I found a top expert in the e-commerce industry and asked ta, "how to formulate the operation strategy of an e-commerce store"?

ta gave me this answer-

I often adopt two strategies.

the first one is called "benchmarking strategy". Generally, it is more applicable when there is a stronger competitor than you in your category and track.

The basic logic of this strategy is to lock in the competitors who are stronger than you and fight to the death. For example, if I sell juicers of the same brand with other stores, I will study the product introduction, service, copywriting and price changes of competitors in detail, and always find room to do better or more differently than the other.

At the same time, in terms of promotion and delivery, we will definitely grab the keywords, grab the entrance, and fight the click rate with the other party until we can completely overwhelm the other party. This feeling is "benchmarking attack".

now that the period of e-commerce traffic bonus has passed, the competition among merchants on the platform is more intense, and the traffic and sales are often changing. As long as we can grab more traffic and sales from our competitors, our own competitiveness can be improved, just like the game's monster upgrade.

the second strategy is called "the new strategy". Generally, it is often used under the category of women's wear and snacks.

the core of this strategy is that you should maintain a stable frequency of uploading new products, such as once a month or once a quarter. Under these categories, as long as there is uploading new products, the purchase conversion rate of new products is often higher, and every time you upload new products, you will have the opportunity to get some platform announcement resources and traffic. Therefore, as long as you choose the products, you can update them regularly, and you can cooperate with the operation of platform traffic+store-oriented.