Enterprise & Organization · Career & Wealth

Money, a tool of the mortal world, is a tool for cooperation that you neither bring at birth nor take at death

Power, a tool of rule, is a management tool affecting the strength and scope of control

Reputation, a tool of word of mouth, is a calling card that lets you move through society’s various strata

As Zhou Dunyi writes in Tongshu, Chapter 11, “Following and Transformation”: “Thus the multitudes under heaven have their root in one person.” From this we can realize that the secular world is not complicated; it all comes down to human nature. Human nature is “power and status, money, material things,” which ordinary worldly people find difficult to escape. We therefore need to understand and accommodate human nature fully.

The skills stage

Almost everyone entering the workplace begins at the skills stage. Skills here are broad, not just a specific professional skill: sales, human resources, and finance also count as skills. At this stage, you yourself are a tool worker, a skilled worker, exchanging skills for compensation. As your skills improve and mature, they expand horizontally and vertically. Horizontal expansion enriches core skills: an editor who learns design, for example, becomes an art editor. Vertical expansion extends into the tasks before and after a job’s core process: in new media work, for example, being able not only to write but also to promote. At the skills stage, be quick and eager to learn, continually progress, and enrich your skills. Your core professional skills must be outstanding, and you must continually learn about management and improve your management abilities and qualities. Only with strong skills and a management mindset can you advance to the next stage: management.

The management stage

With strong skills and a management mindset, entering management is inevitable. Management tests not your own execution, but your ability to organize the team’s execution. At this stage, pay attention to making external contacts, such as industry conferences and managers at partner companies. Contact with the outside world is an important way to accumulate resources. The more people you know, the richer your initial resources. After lengthy consolidation and accumulation, you enter the resource stage.

The resource stage

The difference between relationships and resources is that relationships need maintenance, while resources do not. This depends on whether your own value is great enough and whether you can become a resource for your target resources. Your own value is an important means of exchanging and maintaining resources. The purpose of consolidating and accumulating resources is to continually increase your ability to raise financing. Once you have that ability, you enter the capital stage.

The capital stage

Capital is the top level of business and of the economy. Capital determines business companies’ success or failure. A continuous, unending injection of funds can help a project pass through its simple development phase into maturity. From seed financing through angel investment, venture capital, private equity, and an IPO, capital must continually be deployed strategically. Knowledge and experience of investment and financing must continually grow at this stage. After using capital to develop yourself, you will also make a series of investments to keep expanding capital. What investment values most is people. When results can be controlled, it is investment; when they cannot, it is gambling. Whether they can be controlled depends on your assessment of the person seeking financing. What you investigate is precisely the three stages of skills, management, and resources.

To soar in your career

You must continually change circles

An ordinary boss depends on insight

An expert boss depends on circles

The very best boss depends on a “master”

Ordinary people judge people by listening to talk; good and bad live in other people’s mouths!

Businesses divide into large and small businesses, or regularity-based and guerrilla-style businesses. Small businesses have no regularity, only obedience: everyone can attend a meeting at two in the morning. Life is work, and work is life; building a successful enterprise is the greatest joy in life.

Why can managers not support the boss?

Poor character, lack of gratitude, disloyalty, failure to understand the boss, lack of a broad perspective… These are all appearances. The underlying core is that they and the boss are not “one of us.”

“One of us” essentially means “one group.”

“One group” essentially means “one position.”

In other words, the secret behind business management is bringing core employees and the boss into one position, one group, becoming one of us.

New: a newly initiated project

Additional: an added item

Transformation: an item involving transformation

When a problem arises, calling a meeting is convenient. Gather people and explain again, and progress seems made. But if the problem needs one confirmation, handover, or document, full attendance may simply make more people wait together.

Before meeting, clarify who provides information, who decides, and who implements decisions. Matters involving few people can be discussed thoroughly by them. Share changes everyone needs to know through a suitable method. Attendance depends on whom the problem involves; room size need not prove importance.

During the meeting, move a blockage forward. Specify missing material, locate disagreement, retain available decisions. Afterward, tell relevant people their next actions and unsettled conditions. Repeating a vision seldom replaces these concrete steps.

Small meetings are not inherently efficient. Without information or authority, attendees still talk in circles. Some work genuinely needs shared understanding by everyone, so allow adequate communication. What matters is the meeting’s task. Connecting those who must collaborate is more useful than making everyone hear identical words.

When progress falters, “poor execution” is easily heard. Pressure then shifts to the worker, who may still not know priorities, required results, or where to find missing things. Tension rises while the original problem remains.

I think we should first check whether the organization has clarified the work. Are directions aligned, tasks conflicting, and materials and support available? One person fills earlier gaps, another awaits another department’s confirmation; both appear unfinished, for entirely different reasons.

For unfamiliar work, training and guided practice are also organizational provisions. Expecting quick onboarding requires showing references and feedback routes. After supplying these conditions, observing results better distinguishes insufficient ability, unclear methods, and poor coordination.

Once conditions are clear, individuals must own their execution responsibilities too. Both can hold together. The organization provides clear support; implementers provide honest feedback and results. Do not rush to cover every detail with one verdict. Unpacking why work stalls makes concrete solutions possible.

With vacancies and much work, we easily hope a newcomer immediately takes over problems. But if they find unclear duties, missing materials, and no handover, later poor performance becomes hard to attribute: inability, or no conditions for starting?

Before hiring, I think we should clarify their first-stage responsibilities. An independent problem-solver and a willing learner needing development require different support. Identical titles may hide very different expectations; “strong ability” cannot substitute for explaining them.

Observe newcomers’ learning speed, questions, and actual results, while also checking our explanations and timeliness of feedback. A clearly bounded task offers better grounds than conversational impressions for judging overall ability. Specify unmet requirements to keep assessing whether improvement is possible.

Some roles genuinely require experience; training cannot solve every deficiency. But if we plan to develop newcomers, include the necessary time and cooperation. Selecting people and preparing work together clarifies the partnership for both sides. The role deserves serious attention, and so does its new occupant.

Seeing a new direction, we most readily discuss its potential and forget to ask what the current team can use. What others already do may require us to begin with learning, hiring, and building processes. The direction may match, but different starting points bring different work after entry.

I think we should first inventory existing accumulation. Which experience helps judge demand, which abilities deliver directly, and can existing customers and partnerships still contribute? If these connect, the new direction has practical foundations; if most cannot be used, seriously account for the time to rebuild capabilities.

This does not mean only doing familiar things forever. Previous accumulation may no longer fit change, and new abilities require active learning. Start with a clearly bounded task to locate specific gaps. Lay out missing people, methods, and understanding, so entering a new direction becomes more than an excited judgment.

Use opportunities while continuing to build your foundation. Reusing accumulation for a quick start and spending time entering unfamiliar territory both have their occasions. Know which you choose and prepare accordingly. Clarifying the starting point is steadier than staring only at where others have arrived.

Two people continually communicating does not mean relevant managers know the work’s stage. When smooth, this seems convenient. Once a step stalls and remains only between those two, outsiders may first learn of the broken connection through a complaint.

I think management needs visibility into key processes. What is ongoing, complete, awaiting confirmation, or abnormal needs appropriate records and feedback. Shared basic information lets relevant people support before problems grow, rather than rely entirely on ad hoc inquiries.

Records should serve actual needs. Retain information affecting delivery and coordination, with clarity about who updates it, who reads it, and what happens afterward. If growing material does not help next-step judgment, feedback becomes extra burden. Promptly revealing a real blockage is more useful than an apparently complete report.

Managers need not enter every conversation, and implementers need normal working room. But key exceptions cannot remain private. Connect necessary visibility to everyday processes. Handling complaints afterward remains necessary; arranging to detect problems before they grow deserves equal care.

Organizational efficiency comes from coordination between goals, division of work, rules, and trust.

The larger the undertaking, the more it needs individual ability to become transferable institutions and team capability.

An absence of opposition sometimes proves only that opposition costs too much.

Within an arrangement, whoever controls evaluation, opportunities, and resources receives nods more easily. No immediate objection may mean agreement, uncertainty, or a belief speaking is useless. I cannot select only the most reassuring explanation and call it consensus.

Where collaboration is needed, separate questioning from obstructing execution. Before deciding, let differing views be fully expressed; afterward, record reasons adopted, disagreements retained, and conditions needing review. Clear duties still require fulfillment, but fulfillment need not mean every inner judgment matches mine.

I am willing to retain opposition because judgment needs to outlive face. If consensus is affirmed only in my presence, it remains far from shared understanding.