I heard an article on logical thinking today, which was very enlightening. Let's talk about "standardization".

since the industrial society, "standardization" has been a good thing. It can reduce costs, improve efficiency and facilitate cooperation.

For example, McDonald's restaurant can be so big all over the world, not because it is delicious, but because it is standardized. Customers know very well that they push open the door of any McDonald's in the world, and the hamburgers, fried chicken pieces and French fries inside taste the same. Consumers choose it because it is reliable and because of insurance.

how can it be standardized? Over the past 1 years, the industrial society has gained basic experience. From Taylor system, which first proposed standardized production, to McDonald's employee handbook. They all want to formulate a set of policies from top to bottom, strengthen management and strict control, that is, standardize people's behavior to every action, and the final standardization results of products and services will naturally come.

I'll read you some operating manuals for McDonald's employees. The temperature of Coca-Cola must be kept at 4 degrees Celsius. The beef patties used must be 83% beef shoulder and 17% pork belly, and the fat content should not exceed 19%. The final beef patties must be 95.8 mm in diameter, 5.65 mm in thickness and accurate to 47.32 g. It's that strict

another aspect of standardization is rigidity, no choice and no freedom. It's not just that employees of these enterprises have no freedom under strict control, nor do consumers, only these. Therefore, monotony and limitation have become some reasons for us to criticize standardization.

There is another way to achieve standardization in the book The Chronicle of Lucky Cake-signing.

This book is about Chinese restaurants in America. You know, Chinese restaurants in the United States don't sell Chinese food that we China people eat every day. It has been improved according to American tastes, such as Zuo Zongtang chicken, broccoli beef and so on. Mainly sweet and sour taste, if China people eat it, there is a high probability that it will not be used to it.

Although these Chinese restaurants are not authentic, they add up to more than 4, in the United States. What concept? The three familiar fast food giants, McDonald's, Burger King and KFC, don't add up to that much. From this perspective, Americans are actually more familiar with Chinese food than hamburgers.

Are there any chain enterprises like McDonald's among the more than 4, Chinese restaurants? Yes, a brand called "panda express" is very famous. It has more than 2, chain stores in the United States, which is also a big enterprise. But compared with the total number of 4 thousand, it is not the mainstream. What about the rest of the mainstream Chinese restaurants? It's basically a mom-and-pop shop. There is no chain relationship between them, and they are scattered.

Chinese restaurants all over the United States, whether in Seattle in the northwest or Florida in the southeast corner, have almost the same interior decoration design, dishes provided and even service processes. When American truck drivers run long distances, their favorite food is Chinese food. The main reason, in fact, is similar to everyone's love of McDonald's, that is, the food provided by Chinese restaurants is safer, more reliable and more consistent. No matter which city, the food tastes similar.

McDonald's is like this. However, if a chain enterprise like McDonald's wants to achieve such a state, it will spend countless money every year on iterative standards and strict management of production processes, and finally achieve standardization. Chinese restaurants in the United States, not only do not have a headquarters to set standards, but even have nothing to do with each other. That's strange. How can they be standardized?

If McDonald's is called "vertical standardization", that is, standardization achieved by top-down high-intensity management, then the standardization of Chinese restaurants may be called "horizontal standardization". Why? Because it is achieved by the horizontal promotion of social networks.

what do you mean? Although Chinese restaurants in the United States look very loose, there is one thing that is not loose, that is, there is the same supplier network behind them: the bags of soy sauce they provide to customers are very inconspicuous, but all of them come from a factory in New Jersey; Two-thirds of Chinese fast food boxes are produced by a merchant named Fubaike.

Chinese restaurants in the United States consume hundreds of millions of disposable menus every year. The eastern part is contracted by several printing plants in new york, and the western part is owned by several printing plants in Los Angeles. Behind all the details is a unified supplier. You see, the suppliers are consistent, the social network is consistent, and the Chinese restaurants in the United States finally appear. Isn't it almost the same?

Tell you another story, and you will know how powerful this standardization is through social networks. In 25, an American lottery company won the lottery, and the number of people who won the second prize was as high as 11, which was very unexpected, because it exceeded the expected number by 4 times. These winners took away 2 million dollars, and the lottery company almost went bankrupt that day. Of course, there will be someone to investigate and see if someone is secretly manipulating it. And the result?

It is found that the winners are scattered all over the country, and they don't know each other and can't find any contact; The lottery tickets they buy also come from different ticket outlets, so it is impossible to collude with each other; And all the numbers are optional, that is, there is no machine failure. Do you think it's mysterious? There must be some mysterious force behind this.

in the end, the truth came out, and the reason was actually a biscuit. It's the title of the book we talked about earlier, and it's called "fortune cookie signing". What do you mean? There is a custom in Chinese restaurants in the United States that after customers consume, they will give away a kind of biscuit called fortune cookie. This kind of biscuit will contain a small piece of paper with an auspicious sentence and a string of lucky numbers on it. On that day, all the people who bought the lottery company won the lottery were the small pieces of paper with the string of numbers in the biscuits as the lottery numbers. And this string of numbers just won the second prize. And these cookies are all produced by a company in Brooklyn. So you see, the horizontal standardization of food in catering industry brought by social network can actually cause such social impact.

Just give a few examples that China people are familiar with. In China these years, I wonder if you feel it? Often, all of a sudden, a kind of delicious food becomes popular all over the country and becomes online celebrity. Such as crayfish, dirty bags, milk tea and so on. And this is not a store occupying the national market, but a bunch of small shops with different names and various flags. What they make doesn't taste much different. Is it the collusion of the shopkeepers of these stores? Or is it that the tastes of consumers in China suddenly have such a trend, or are they unified?

of course not. The rise of these online celebrity foods is actually due to the supplier network. It is said that 6% of crayfish in China come from Jianli County, Hubei Province. Most of the seasonings of the popular braised chicken rice in previous years came from Jinan; Basha fish, which is used to make fillets in pickled fish, is imported from Vietnam.

why can braised chicken rice be everywhere? There are two reasons. First of all, chicken, as a kind of food, has no special taste, and the cooked food has no sense of existence. It tastes whatever the seasoning tastes, which is convenient for restaurants to make innovations. So chicken is very popular.

more importantly, the second point is that the supply chain of chicken is super stable, which can be expanded to a large scale with little price fluctuation. You have heard that the price of pork is unstable and the state subsidizes pig farmers. When did you hear that the state subsidizes chicken farms? Even if there is any natural disaster, all the chickens will die. If you raise chickens, you can go out again in a few weeks.

So, you see the braised chicken rice all over the street, which is not the choice of users or merchants, but the horizontal standardization effect brought by the mature supply chain.

By comparison, you will find that today we talked about two kinds of standardization: vertical standardization and horizontal standardization. Compared with the vertical standardization of McDonald's, the symbol of the industrial era that we were familiar with before, the horizontal standardization we are talking about today is much more benign.

it has no compulsion, does not need high training and management costs, and allows all social nodes to innovate freely, but it also achieves the standardization effect of high efficiency and low cost.

if we broaden our horizons, you will find that the reason why there was vertical standardization in the past was actually because the social conditions for horizontal standardization were immature. In other words, when the supplier network is not developed, enterprises have no choice but to establish a set of internal standards from top to bottom to achieve consistency.

Today, we live in an era when social networks are more mature. Vertical coercion has turned into horizontal cooperation. This way can also make the enterprise develop well!