Load: system, export problems down, crisis and behavior strategy
In the crisis of 2008 there was a popular joke about the news on TV:
- Good evening. Well, enough about good ...
We are in a crisis. Welcome.
Perhaps it was with you that terrible and irreversible that nothing happened yet. It happens right now. The only question is where you are: inside the grinder or above it.
')
We decided to make a cycle of materials and devote the next couple of weeks to how to live and what to devote time to now.
But first, a few words that you have taught us over the past few years.
We have been creating and launching educational products and programs since 2008. Since 2010, we have been doing this as the Stratoplan School of Managers. The field of adult learning is well understood. Over time, we learned how to do it well, and in this we are strong.
And we are constantly experimenting with information marketing and how to position and sell our products and services. And there are no sustainable models and guaranteed recipes. Media is constantly changing. Formulas for launching new projects or products become obsolete in less than six months.
After 10 days, we will launch our new, great educational program, which we have come to after two years of continuous work and experiments with training formats. We know that it works. We do not know with 100% certainty how the launch will work. and how to make it so that you can reach those who need this program and don’t bother with cannon shots of those who don’t have time for it.
But we know you, because they themselves are. You taught us that if we explain what we are doing, tell you why we are doing this right now, you will understand us better than if we do everything and sell everything. “Black Friday”, “Cyber ​​Friday”, “White Monday” - wind up the cost and then issue a charge as a discount ... we do not play it.
This time we decided not to play by the rules of information marketing, but to tell you right away: what and how will we do. If you are with us - OK, if not - we will give you the opportunity not to receive us letters about this this exceptional in all respects, the launch of Stratoplan School of Managers.
We want to tell you how this program was designed and why we decided to launch it right now, when there is a crisis in the courtyard, information wars and chaos are raging that our generation has not yet seen.
In any crisis, there are two logic of behavior - the one that is imposed on you by the media and the one that you choose yourself. Outward, which pushes you to rash actions, and inward, which helps you to be stronger and smarter and calmly survive the crisis.
Our understanding of how to be and what to do in a crisis, we will try to reveal in a series of articles that will be published in the next 2 weeks:
From this series of articles / thoughts you:
All this, of course, is only our idea of ​​the world. But, if you are interested in seeing the world through our eyes - let's move on. And today we will talk about what a system is, how it addresses problems, why so much of it falls on us and who the information war in the media and the Internet is aimed at.
We are in a crisis
The crisis of power and economy. We are trying to maintain common sense and continue to work in the conditions of a new war. For this you need to understand how the system works and how it behaves when faced with problems.
Any system, state or corporation consists of 4 main modules:
The system is functional in a dynamic environment and can develop if a series of simple static and dynamic laws are fulfilled, one of which says that any problem in the system must be corrected at the same level at which it is detected or one level higher.
In theory, this means that the official or manager who found the problem should analyze it, understand what he can do at his level, and if there are no decisions in his field of authority, go with it to a higher level.
In practice, when a crisis or a problem arises in politics, economics or business, one of the ways to solve it is the so-called “export down” - transferring the problem from the level of detection of the problem, on the contrary, to a lower level , because to escalate the problem or scary from - for potential consequences (they will be fired because they are not coping and are not competent enough for the position held) or simply there is no place (if you are a director, there is not enough knowledge or experience, and for some reason it’s impossible to involve third-party expertise).
Examples of how this works.
Fell sales. Objective reality expressed in numbers.
What management decision is most often made? Let's stimulate the sales department (the decision of the director of sales) or hire a new director of sales (the decision of the CEO or owners).
Logical only at first glance. We are with you and our product or service in a market where there are other players, where there is a price, where there are other ways to solve the problem that your product solves, where there is a dollar rate and bank interest rate on deposits, where there is your target audience and promotion channels information about your product or service and there is also definitely the way you sell and the amount of effort (work) that your sales team does.
Perhaps the market has changed. Or the niche has become less flexible in relation to the “price offer - a problem to be solved”, that is, it is not ready to pay more for your product or some more global problem has supplanted the problem that your product solved. That is, the problem with sales, it is quite possible is not only in the department / department of sales / sales, but is a more systemic problem of the product / marketing / market. And if the person in charge of sales is sure with the full functioning of the sales body (let us, for simplicity, further generalize the department / division / group to the word "body"), then he can go to the neighboring divisions or above and suggest something to do with marketing, product or service.
Or another example:
People began to quit , because the dollar went / ran / flew up, and the salary is pegged to the national currency? Let's give an instruction to “retain and motivate” or “hire new ones for the same money + bonuses for the transition,” instead of seeking access to foreign markets, multiplying the company's revenue scheme or optimizing business processes and increasing the company's profitability per employee, allow to pay other salaries
That is, in most cases, the problem detected at a certain level of the system is not solved, but turns into a problem of a lower level:
There are 2 reasons why the right step is to make sure that everything is in order and to initiate changes in neighboring parts of the system does not happen.
There are exceptions - someone figured out sales or production, everything was adjusted and went on - to establish marketing or develop an affiliate network, or at all took a managing position in the company. Exceptions are therefore called this because there are fewer exceptions than non-exceptions.
If you are not at a high controlling position in a self-sufficient system, then you are the working body of the system, the transmission mechanism or the controlling element of the system. In other words, if you are not the owner of a sustainable business or not the head of state, most likely you have already been let down or are right now are putting down some kind of systemic problem.
The situation gets worse for you once you are part of a big system: a country or a corporation.
To deceive face to face or to manipulate one person is bad, because if he catches your hand, it will be very difficult to negotiate with him in the future and have to give him something.
Manipulating the team, gradually overestimating the plans, twisting the handle of the conveyor by 0.5% per month is easier: you can always find or come up with a strategy / model / theory that will explain that working tomorrow even more than yesterday is not just the right approach to business and life , but also makes us all evolve almost spiritually.
Manipulating an organization, a party or a people is called making politics, managing public relations, shaping public opinion or, if you wrinkle your brow for a moment, then remember that this is simply ... “propaganda” in one form or another.
The situation is also complicated for you, if you have a head on your shoulders and you know how to analyze the facts / situation in time or simply have a banal logic.
It is difficult to control and manipulate a thinking person.
It is difficult to launch a new plan 2 times higher than the previous one and at the same time deftly reducing% exactly twice, in order to pay as much in fact, and the sales manager, whom we now call the “regional manager” and hand him not subordinates, but simply 5 Once a large base of cold contacts, it is easily accepted and agreed.
It's hard to sell the idea to the programmer “but now we have a super-hyper-new-fashionable methodology in which you have more responsibility for your code and more authority to fix it at any time of the day or night + here's a 2-day course and certificate, because next year we promised the customer double the amount of functionality for the same money. ” He simply knows how to count: his time, the output, the product he creates, and he understands how much his head is worth on the market.
It is very tight if we try to sell the ideas of a “bright future” through TV to people who have the skills of critical thinking and information analysis.
So what can we do to make these guys more: yes, yes, you and I, people with money above average and above average brains, are forced to believe in what people who manage oooooo big systems need to believe?
"Export down", as we remember, still has not been canceled. That is, to dump the problem, make it work and pay even more someone lower in the system still somehow wants.
Everything is very simple: you need to clog the input channels with information, overload the organ of analysis with contradictory data, create and throw in situations that paralyze the logic of the situation and cut down at least partially brain functions that can be called common sense.
These are the goals and objectives of any information war. The crisis is, by the way, another result of this war.
And more than others, we are the ones who suffer from this war: those who are used to processing huge amounts of information, who are able to quickly build conclusions (only this works in an environment where you control the quality and accuracy of information at the entrance), who live in the world of information. In the world of the Internet, which has long been the same springboard for the use of technology influence, which used to be radio and television. We hid from the TV with its hundreds of channels? And they dove into the Internet with its million channels of incoming information.
You and I will be the first to be bombed in this information war: you know a lot - BOOM, read quickly - BOOM, try to analyze - BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, drown in information mixed with explosive shells of contradictory facts and simple lies.
Politics is always not only a manifestation of power, it is also a stratum between business and people. The economy also does not need your common sense. What for? Because you earn well and generally the basis of society? On the contrary. Work more, think less, pay non-transparent taxes, take strange loans and shut up, please.
Now we are under a triple pressure:
How can you deal with the fact that foreign policy or the economic situation leads to the fact that your income is depreciating right now? How can you minimize the consequences of the fact that in the vast majority of hierarchical systems, problems of a higher level are transferred to a lower level, where 80-90% of all employed people in any business are located?
Exit strategy: invest time and money only in yourself
We see how many companies spend an enormous amount of time to return people to a resource state and direct their energy to work. We see how all sorts of influence groups have intensified, which are dragging people into empty squabbles not even in political forums, but on entertainment or professional sites.
And we want to invite you to a protected place. In the annual vocational training program, which we have designed and filled with useful and practical materials for the last 2 years of the Stratoplan School of Managers.
Today we had the first meeting with you, the first “touch” with the topic of behavior in a crisis. As we said at the very beginning, we decided to make this launch absolutely special: to consistently tell you why we are launching the program right now (because it’s not enough to do the right things, we still have to launch them on time: we think that now is the time) and why The program of qualitative changes is relevant now more than ever. We will talk about this and what a “bifurcation point” is, what results we achieved in the last crisis of 2008 and what our colleagues and students say about the “crisis of opportunities” in the next article. Make sure you follow our blog. Until communication on Monday, December 8th.
Good luck to us,
Slava Pankratov
Managing partner and business coach,
Managers School Stratoplan
- Good evening. Well, enough about good ...
We are in a crisis. Welcome.
Perhaps it was with you that terrible and irreversible that nothing happened yet. It happens right now. The only question is where you are: inside the grinder or above it.
')
We decided to make a cycle of materials and devote the next couple of weeks to how to live and what to devote time to now.
But first, a few words that you have taught us over the past few years.
We have been creating and launching educational products and programs since 2008. Since 2010, we have been doing this as the Stratoplan School of Managers. The field of adult learning is well understood. Over time, we learned how to do it well, and in this we are strong.
And we are constantly experimenting with information marketing and how to position and sell our products and services. And there are no sustainable models and guaranteed recipes. Media is constantly changing. Formulas for launching new projects or products become obsolete in less than six months.
After 10 days, we will launch our new, great educational program, which we have come to after two years of continuous work and experiments with training formats. We know that it works. We do not know with 100% certainty how the launch will work. and how to make it so that you can reach those who need this program and don’t bother with cannon shots of those who don’t have time for it.
But we know you, because they themselves are. You taught us that if we explain what we are doing, tell you why we are doing this right now, you will understand us better than if we do everything and sell everything. “Black Friday”, “Cyber ​​Friday”, “White Monday” - wind up the cost and then issue a charge as a discount ... we do not play it.
This time we decided not to play by the rules of information marketing, but to tell you right away: what and how will we do. If you are with us - OK, if not - we will give you the opportunity not to receive us letters about this this exceptional in all respects, the launch of Stratoplan School of Managers.
We want to tell you how this program was designed and why we decided to launch it right now, when there is a crisis in the courtyard, information wars and chaos are raging that our generation has not yet seen.
In any crisis, there are two logic of behavior - the one that is imposed on you by the media and the one that you choose yourself. Outward, which pushes you to rash actions, and inward, which helps you to be stronger and smarter and calmly survive the crisis.
Our understanding of how to be and what to do in a crisis, we will try to reveal in a series of articles that will be published in the next 2 weeks:
- (today) Download. What is a system, what is a crisis, what to do during a war
- Bifurcation points. As in the previous crisis, we reached a new level.
- Behavior and reactions: 7 right things and 8 principles of growth in all conditions
- Set of Managers School Stratoplan for 2015
- Product presentation: webinar with answers to questions about the program
From this series of articles / thoughts you:
- Learn how any system operates (state, politics, business) and how most systems address problems.
- Understand how triple the press is now everyone who earns good money and is friends with brains
- See what you need to do in order not to be influenced by systems and mass psychosis.
All this, of course, is only our idea of ​​the world. But, if you are interested in seeing the world through our eyes - let's move on. And today we will talk about what a system is, how it addresses problems, why so much of it falls on us and who the information war in the media and the Internet is aimed at.
We are in a crisis
The crisis of power and economy. We are trying to maintain common sense and continue to work in the conditions of a new war. For this you need to understand how the system works and how it behaves when faced with problems.
Any system, state or corporation consists of 4 main modules:
- The parent body is the government, the composition of the board of directors or the founder / director / CEO of a company: a part of the system that is responsible for the purpose of the system’s existence and creates a structure of elements to achieve this goal
- The governing body is the next level of the state or organization, at which the laws of system management and the mechanisms for realizing its existence goals are created and monitored: legislative and controlling branches of power; production, development and operational management in business; department heads, vice presidents who are responsible for what products will produce or services will be provided by the business
- Gear mechanism - local officials, department heads; managers of the first and (more rarely) of the second level, team leaders, project managers who are responsible for the implementation of operational tasks: setting and controlling tasks to direct executors
- The working body is a subsystem or group of elements performing work: engineers, specialists, employees who directly perform working operations to provide a service or create a product
The system is functional in a dynamic environment and can develop if a series of simple static and dynamic laws are fulfilled, one of which says that any problem in the system must be corrected at the same level at which it is detected or one level higher.
In theory, this means that the official or manager who found the problem should analyze it, understand what he can do at his level, and if there are no decisions in his field of authority, go with it to a higher level.
In practice, when a crisis or a problem arises in politics, economics or business, one of the ways to solve it is the so-called “export down” - transferring the problem from the level of detection of the problem, on the contrary, to a lower level , because to escalate the problem or scary from - for potential consequences (they will be fired because they are not coping and are not competent enough for the position held) or simply there is no place (if you are a director, there is not enough knowledge or experience, and for some reason it’s impossible to involve third-party expertise).
Examples of how this works.
Fell sales. Objective reality expressed in numbers.
What management decision is most often made? Let's stimulate the sales department (the decision of the director of sales) or hire a new director of sales (the decision of the CEO or owners).
Logical only at first glance. We are with you and our product or service in a market where there are other players, where there is a price, where there are other ways to solve the problem that your product solves, where there is a dollar rate and bank interest rate on deposits, where there is your target audience and promotion channels information about your product or service and there is also definitely the way you sell and the amount of effort (work) that your sales team does.
Perhaps the market has changed. Or the niche has become less flexible in relation to the “price offer - a problem to be solved”, that is, it is not ready to pay more for your product or some more global problem has supplanted the problem that your product solved. That is, the problem with sales, it is quite possible is not only in the department / department of sales / sales, but is a more systemic problem of the product / marketing / market. And if the person in charge of sales is sure with the full functioning of the sales body (let us, for simplicity, further generalize the department / division / group to the word "body"), then he can go to the neighboring divisions or above and suggest something to do with marketing, product or service.
Or another example:
People began to quit , because the dollar went / ran / flew up, and the salary is pegged to the national currency? Let's give an instruction to “retain and motivate” or “hire new ones for the same money + bonuses for the transition,” instead of seeking access to foreign markets, multiplying the company's revenue scheme or optimizing business processes and increasing the company's profitability per employee, allow to pay other salaries
That is, in most cases, the problem detected at a certain level of the system is not solved, but turns into a problem of a lower level:
- Fell sales - more cold calls to the manager and increase the percentage for the head of the department (stimuli!), Instead of a comprehensive effort in marketing, attracting customers and optimizing the sales funnel
- The product is not for sale, because competitors occupy a niche - we will make more product and compete in cost, shifting the burden on production and sales (we will lower prices / quality and fill up quantity - an excellent strategy that can be called simpler "let those who are lower, work more ") Instead of making another product and selling it differently
- People are leaving - we will hold one-time (!) Courses on motivating and retaining employees for managers instead of development and training policies, with the aim of increasing profitability per person and salary growth
There are 2 reasons why the right step is to make sure that everything is in order and to initiate changes in neighboring parts of the system does not happen.
- Because no one is sure that he is doing everything 100% right and he has 100% order in the processes and the unit is working at the optimum of capabilities / resources. No one knows how to make 100% work. Neither in business nor in the state. And how to go to the general and propose to change the positioning of the product or change the marketing policy, if in most cases you are immediately advised to put things in order first, and then “re-educate” or “improve” others?
- Upward changes are much more difficult than downward changes. A change up is always a change that you have to coordinate, develop, build and do it all without administrative authority (the head of the neighboring department, the general director or the owners do not obey you) and at the same time operating with the proposal in an environment where you may not have experts Knowledge: The vice president of marketing is unlikely to be an expert in the processes of production or personnel management. And the higher a person gets through the system, the more highly specialized are his skills and expertise.
There are exceptions - someone figured out sales or production, everything was adjusted and went on - to establish marketing or develop an affiliate network, or at all took a managing position in the company. Exceptions are therefore called this because there are fewer exceptions than non-exceptions.
The problems described above are characteristic not only of domestic politics or economics and our native management style. Lou Gerstner, who saved IBM from 1993 to 2002 or Erik Schmidt, who once pulled the company Novel out of another ass, wrote the same thing literally word for word: when a company has system problems, all vice presidents are fine - problems or directly with the staff (engineers are getting worse and worse and do not create more, you understand, breakthrough products: the problem is BELOW) or in the neighboring divisions (they need optimization there: the problem of the CODE). That is, even the vice-presidents of large Western and world corporations, people specially trained to manage, behave in exactly the same way: they solve their problem by moving it down - squeezing more of the employees or putting the problems aside to "subcontractors" or neighboring bodies / divisions / parts of the system .
If you are not at a high controlling position in a self-sufficient system, then you are the working body of the system, the transmission mechanism or the controlling element of the system. In other words, if you are not the owner of a sustainable business or not the head of state, most likely you have already been let down or are right now are putting down some kind of systemic problem.
The situation gets worse for you once you are part of a big system: a country or a corporation.
To deceive face to face or to manipulate one person is bad, because if he catches your hand, it will be very difficult to negotiate with him in the future and have to give him something.
Manipulating the team, gradually overestimating the plans, twisting the handle of the conveyor by 0.5% per month is easier: you can always find or come up with a strategy / model / theory that will explain that working tomorrow even more than yesterday is not just the right approach to business and life , but also makes us all evolve almost spiritually.
Manipulating an organization, a party or a people is called making politics, managing public relations, shaping public opinion or, if you wrinkle your brow for a moment, then remember that this is simply ... “propaganda” in one form or another.
The situation is also complicated for you, if you have a head on your shoulders and you know how to analyze the facts / situation in time or simply have a banal logic.
It is difficult to control and manipulate a thinking person.
It is difficult to launch a new plan 2 times higher than the previous one and at the same time deftly reducing% exactly twice, in order to pay as much in fact, and the sales manager, whom we now call the “regional manager” and hand him not subordinates, but simply 5 Once a large base of cold contacts, it is easily accepted and agreed.
It's hard to sell the idea to the programmer “but now we have a super-hyper-new-fashionable methodology in which you have more responsibility for your code and more authority to fix it at any time of the day or night + here's a 2-day course and certificate, because next year we promised the customer double the amount of functionality for the same money. ” He simply knows how to count: his time, the output, the product he creates, and he understands how much his head is worth on the market.
It is very tight if we try to sell the ideas of a “bright future” through TV to people who have the skills of critical thinking and information analysis.
So what can we do to make these guys more: yes, yes, you and I, people with money above average and above average brains, are forced to believe in what people who manage oooooo big systems need to believe?
"Export down", as we remember, still has not been canceled. That is, to dump the problem, make it work and pay even more someone lower in the system still somehow wants.
Everything is very simple: you need to clog the input channels with information, overload the organ of analysis with contradictory data, create and throw in situations that paralyze the logic of the situation and cut down at least partially brain functions that can be called common sense.
These are the goals and objectives of any information war. The crisis is, by the way, another result of this war.
And more than others, we are the ones who suffer from this war: those who are used to processing huge amounts of information, who are able to quickly build conclusions (only this works in an environment where you control the quality and accuracy of information at the entrance), who live in the world of information. In the world of the Internet, which has long been the same springboard for the use of technology influence, which used to be radio and television. We hid from the TV with its hundreds of channels? And they dove into the Internet with its million channels of incoming information.
You and I will be the first to be bombed in this information war: you know a lot - BOOM, read quickly - BOOM, try to analyze - BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, drown in information mixed with explosive shells of contradictory facts and simple lies.
Politics is always not only a manifestation of power, it is also a stratum between business and people. The economy also does not need your common sense. What for? Because you earn well and generally the basis of society? On the contrary. Work more, think less, pay non-transparent taxes, take strange loans and shut up, please.
Now we are under a triple pressure:
- Business in the majority of hired managers does not know how to solve their problems at their own level and throws them down: it was always, now it is just getting stronger
- Politicians do not want some incomprehensible "class of glasses" to tell how the prices of oil, the dollar rate and the cost of gasoline are related
- The economy wants you to continue to take loans for what you do not need: and you are a very valuable product for advertisers and technologists
How can you deal with the fact that foreign policy or the economic situation leads to the fact that your income is depreciating right now? How can you minimize the consequences of the fact that in the vast majority of hierarchical systems, problems of a higher level are transferred to a lower level, where 80-90% of all employed people in any business are located?
Exit strategy: invest time and money only in yourself
- Move up the system, minimizing the number of top-down problems and learn other ways to solve problems, except for “export down”
- To increase the zone of his authority in order to acquire more degrees of freedom in the decisions made and acc. increase your influence on the result
- Put your head in the mode of consumption of only the information that makes you more flexible, smarter and more functional
- Learn new knowledge and learn to convert knowledge into new behaviors and decision making
- Spend time getting, analyzing and digesting only information that strengthens your life and professional positions.
- To accustom the brain to “healthy and wholesome food”, and to do this, spend free time not on news and the Internet, but on training
- Focus as much as possible now on pumping yourself and moving towards your own long-term goals - this simultaneously reduces situational anxiety and works as a sustainable protective strategy for your information space.
We see how many companies spend an enormous amount of time to return people to a resource state and direct their energy to work. We see how all sorts of influence groups have intensified, which are dragging people into empty squabbles not even in political forums, but on entertainment or professional sites.
And we want to invite you to a protected place. In the annual vocational training program, which we have designed and filled with useful and practical materials for the last 2 years of the Stratoplan School of Managers.
Today we had the first meeting with you, the first “touch” with the topic of behavior in a crisis. As we said at the very beginning, we decided to make this launch absolutely special: to consistently tell you why we are launching the program right now (because it’s not enough to do the right things, we still have to launch them on time: we think that now is the time) and why The program of qualitative changes is relevant now more than ever. We will talk about this and what a “bifurcation point” is, what results we achieved in the last crisis of 2008 and what our colleagues and students say about the “crisis of opportunities” in the next article. Make sure you follow our blog. Until communication on Monday, December 8th.
Good luck to us,
Slava Pankratov
Managing partner and business coach,
Managers School Stratoplan
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/245199/
All Articles