The Barrel Principle in management refers to the fact that a bucket made up of multiple planks is valued for the amount of water it holds, but the key factor in determining how much water the bucket holds is not its longest plank, but its shortest. This is to say that any organization, may face a **** the same problem, that is, the various parts of the composition of the organization is often the strengths and weaknesses, and the inferior part often determines the level of the whole organization .

The "law of the barrel" is extremely clever and chic. But as it has been used more and more frequently, and in a wider range of applications, it has basically risen from a mere metaphor to a theoretical level. This is composed of many planks of the "barrel" can not only symbolize an enterprise, a department, a team, but also can symbolize a certain employee, and the "barrel" of the maximum capacity is a symbol of the overall strength and competitiveness.

The dynamic evolution of the barrel theory

First of all, before storing the water, we should be clear about this question, is the first water or the first barrel, the first big barrel or the first small barrel, according to the theory of wooden barrels, it is inevitable that there is a wooden barrel, and then there is the water, and then adjusted constantly, from small barrels to large barrels, from short barrels to long wooden barrels, there is no which barrel is very big and deep at the beginning! The beginning of the very large and very deep.

However, in practice, maybe there is water first and then there is a barrel, or there is a shapeless barrel first, or even only a few planks, not a barrel, and then through these few pieces of scarce monopoly of the planks of the resources to earn the first bucket of gold, and then only make the first barrel.

Secondly, the amount of water storage is dynamic, the goal set to store how much water, decided to make how many long planks, not the more the better. More is a waste of investment, less is not enterprising.

The amount of water storage, sometimes not all of the competition, market competition is not all planks over the rivals, sometimes in order to compete with the need to deliberately sell a broken anchor to the opponents, and their own centralized advantage of attacking the relative vulnerability of others to achieve victory.

The above content reference? Baidu Encyclopedia - the barrel principle