After the reform and opening up, China's market economy has been continuously improving, achieving relatively good results. Based on fully learning from excellent management ideas at home and abroad, our enterprises have summarized and refined many governance methods suitable for China's national conditions. However, while our enterprises are absorbing these excellent nutrients, we also see a plethora of management manuals, truths, and discourses that have confused many people. Our enterprises don't know which master to listen to or which management ideology to adopt. Therefore, management also needs to combat falsehoods, discard the dross, retain the essence, and promote the most excellent and appropriate management thoughts for our country's conditions into our enterprises. This way, our enterprises can distinguish these management fallacies, avoid detours, and catch up with the pace of internationally advanced enterprises.
"How to make an enterprise successful" is a topic that many management scholars and entrepreneurs focus on. Different people have proposed different views. Some scholars have put forward four inequalities for enterprise success, believing that if enterprises achieve these four inequalities, they will succeed. We also hear in various different settings that "whether the boss is present or not makes no difference," and many people consider this a management truth, using it as a standard to require from enterprise managers and employees. Management needs to combat falsehoods, and "whether the boss is present or not makes no difference" is a fallacy, extremely unreasonable. A domestic professor regards "whether the boss is present or not makes no difference" as a classic example and cites such an instance to illustrate its effect: a large group company in Shandong Province integrates feed industry, food processing, poultry and livestock breeding, and plant health care. The president of this group stayed abroad for more than half a year, but the group operated normally.
The professor interprets the reason for the normal operation of this enterprise as "whether the boss is present or not makes no difference," without realizing that this is incorrect. In the professor's view, the boss should indulge in leisure activities every day, chat with people, drink tea, and build relationships. If a boss spends a lot of time on work every day, he doesn't know how to be a boss. Such discourse is very wrong and can mislead the operation of enterprises. Why is "whether the boss is present or not makes no difference" a management fallacy? We need to understand it from the following three aspects.
Firstly, we need to clarify what a boss is. Enterprises have distinctions between owners and operators, which is the issue of corporate governance. Here, "whether the boss is present or not makes no difference" refers to the owner of the enterprise, not the operator. From an economic perspective, the owner of the enterprise generally refers to the possessor of wealth ownership (or property rights), and ownership or property rights are a collection of rights that economic entities have over scarce resources, including possession, use, income, and disposal rights. To ensure the normal operation of the enterprise, it hires a group of operators who can formally take responsibility for the business and asset allocation of the company. Many people mistakenly interpret the "boss" in "whether the boss is present or not makes no difference" as the operator, which is incorrect. In fact, the boss here refers to the owner of the enterprise. For example, Li Ka-shing is the owner of the enterprise we refer to as the "boss." His enterprises are spread all over the world, so does he need to manage them directly? The answer is no. Most enterprises have professional operators managing them, and Li Ka-shing only needs to select a good management team. From this perspective, when discussing "whether the boss is present or not makes no difference," we should distinguish between the owner and the operator. Generally, the owner may not be present, but the operator usually is.
Secondly, when the chairman concurrently serves as the general manager, the position and the person are separate. In most private enterprises in our country, the chairman and the general manager are the same person. The chairman is what we call the boss, and the general manager is the operator fully responsible for the enterprise's operation. The boss not being present means the chairman is not present. Normally, the chairman only needs to attend the board meeting once a year, and it doesn't matter if he is absent during regular times. Thus, in the management process, the position and the person are separate. That is, even if the person serving as the general manager is not in the company, the position of the general manager still exists. Regardless of the method used, the responsibilities of the general manager can be implemented. If the general manager is virtual, meaning the person is not physically present, but matters can be reported via phone or email for the general manager to decide. If authorization is used, the general manager can authorize someone else to exercise his authority. Therefore, the position of the general manager always exists, regardless of the person holding it. In the enterprise's operation process, there is a set of standardized management procedures, and each decision and document must follow the corresponding procedures. If the general manager is absent for half a year, and the company cannot find him to make decisions without authorization, would the company continue to operate? Definitely, the company would collapse.
Thirdly, the original intention of this inequality is good, but its validity depends on certain conditions. From the growth of China's enterprise management system, it needs to go through a process from "rule by man" to "rule by law" and then to "rule of law." Our experts also hope to achieve a leap from "rule by man" to "rule of law." So-called "rule by man" mainly refers to a management model where the will of a few leaders dominates the enterprise's management. When an enterprise is in its start-up phase, its main management power is usually held by the enterprise's owner or the person who controls key technologies, and the enterprise's management is often dominated by "rule by man." As the enterprise grows stronger, the leader's will alone cannot effectively cover all aspects of the enterprise, objectively requiring...