--- title: "Eleven Management Mistakes Distributors Should Avoid!" description: "Having served many trading companies annually and observed various issues, I've compiled common management mistakes in trading companies, hoping you won't repeat them. First: bosses often blame employees for business failures, but success and responsibility belong to the boss." author: "曹庆兵" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2019-09-28" categories: "Dealer Operations, Management & Methods" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/eleven-management-mistakes-distributors-should-avoid-c49fa787/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/eleven-management-mistakes-distributors-should-avoid-c49fa787.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XUmOKKfxv9tmtfrDilSQKg" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E7%BB%8F%E9%94%80%E5%95%86%E6%9C%80%E5%A5%BD%E4%B8%8D%E8%A6%81%E7%8A%AF%E7%9A%84%E5%8D%81%E4%B8%80%E4%B8%AA%E7%AE%A1%E7%90%86%E9%94%99%E8%AF%AF-c49fa787.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/eleven-management-mistakes-distributors-should-avoid-c49fa787/" citation: "曹庆兵. “Eleven Management Mistakes Distributors Should Avoid!.” New Distribution, 2019-09-28. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/eleven-management-mistakes-distributors-should-avoid-c49fa787/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # Eleven Management Mistakes Distributors Should Avoid! > Having served many trading companies annually and observed various issues, I've compiled common management mistakes in trading companies, hoping you won't repeat them. First: bosses often blame employees for business failures, but success and responsibility belong to the boss. Every year, I serve many trading companies and see various problems. I've sorted out the common management mistakes made by trading companies, hoping you won't make them again. If you have them, correct them; if not, take heed. **First: The boss always thinks employees' poor performance caused business failure.** Some bosses tell me, "My cadres are incompetent, my employees are incompetent. I've set the company strategy well, but their execution is poor, causing our difficulties and my entrepreneurial failure." Actually, this is a serious mistake. Always remember: most of the success benefits belong to you, the glory belongs to you, so responsibility also belongs to you. There is only one reason for failure: the boss didn't do well. Face the facts and bear the responsibility for the enterprise. **Second: Making all decisions yourself, not valuing employee wisdom.** As the boss, you have the final say, but decisions don't have to be made alone. We must admit our shortcomings in certain areas and listen to frontline voices. Although we may not adopt them, we must form a habit of inspiring employee wisdom. Gradually, employees can grow with the company, reducing the chance of the first problem. **Third: Judging solely by results, ignoring the power of accumulation.** Trading companies cannot survive without performance, so many bosses are result-oriented. That's fine, but the key is ignoring the power of accumulation. When most employees perform poorly, ask yourself if it's a problem of your own, resources, brand, or insufficient accumulation. When most employees do well but a few don't, everyone knows how to handle it. **Fourth: Neglecting teamwork, allowing employees to form cliques.** Trading companies vary in size, but forming a team and leveraging cooperation is crucial. Resource scheduling and integration are core tasks for the boss. Once employees form multiple cliques that don't cooperate or undermine each other, the company's results won't be good. How to build healthy competition? Allocate goals reasonably rather than equally, and rotate positions so everyone understands each other's difficulties. **Fifth: Rigid management, using one mechanism for decades.** Recently, Alibaba, with Ma Yun's retirement, released a new "Six Vein Sword" to create momentum. Look at the new one; it shows they are upgrading. No mechanism is universal. At different stages, our management mechanisms must be optimized and keep pace with the times. Some trading companies use one system for years, leading to rigid management, increased loss of old employees, and inability to retain new ones, naturally reducing competitiveness. **Sixth: Wavering between small and beautiful vs. big and strong, ignoring the importance of profit.** I often see bosses and senior management disagree: the boss wants to make money, while senior wants to grow; or the boss wants to grow, and senior wants profit. For trading companies, both small and beautiful and big and strong are okay, but between scale and profit, the boss should prioritize profit. Often, we die on the road of blindly pursuing scale. **Seventh: Lacking medium- and long-term planning and goals, focusing too much on trivial matters.** Some bosses are interesting: they don't focus on marketing, channels, or products, but concentrate on trivial matters. It's not that bosses shouldn't manage, but how can a company without medium- and long-term planning develop and unify employees' direction and mindset? Focusing too much on small things will also diminish employee enthusiasm and creativity. **Eighth: Not handling relationships with employees, especially old employees, well.** Some bosses naively hope to be brothers with old employees forever. That's naive unless it's a partnership where everyone is a shareholder. As long as they are employees working for you, they will eventually differentiate their mindset. If the boss indulges in brotherhood, management will be chaotic, and the company will have problems. **Ninth: No work standards, no process supervision.** Many trading companies like to assign tasks and work without specifying standards. After assigning monthly tasks, they ignore them until month-end settlement, then get angry when tasks aren't completed or completion is low. We must clearly know that employees aren't as excellent as you think; many excellent people won't play with you. So, when assigning work, include standards, and follow up and supervise during implementation to ensure overall completion or even overachievement. **Tenth: Bosses stagnate, refuse to learn, or bosses learn but employees don't, or bosses misapply learned knowledge.** Some bosses I've met haven't gone out to learn for ten years and never read books. Then they see good management articles on social media and apply them directly, messing up the company. Another type: the boss loves learning but doesn't focus on employee training, so employees are disconnected and can't understand the boss's intentions. These three situations make it hard for the company to succeed. **Eleventh: Your own execution is insufficient, but you demand execution from employees.** Some bosses talk nicely but delay decisions that should be made. They demand employees act immediately upon hearing tasks and do them well. In my view, that's a joke. The boss's level is often the highest level in the trading company. If the boss procrastinates, the team's chance of procrastinating is 99.99%. As the boss is, so is the company; as the boss's level is, so is the company's level. Source: FMCG Interpretation (ID: caoqingbinglaoshi) --- ## Citation metadata - Publisher: New Distribution - Author: 曹庆兵 - Published: 2019-09-28 - Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/eleven-management-mistakes-distributors-should-avoid-c49fa787/ - Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XUmOKKfxv9tmtfrDilSQKg ## Copyright and AI use This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL. Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671