--- title: "If You're in Management, Avoid These Major Mistakes!" description: "This article outlines common pitfalls for managers and business owners, including prioritizing face over truth, lacking self-awareness, habitual credit deficiency, intolerance of subordinates' strengths, unhealthy habits, self-inflation, and refusing to learn. It also covers major taboos in enterprise development, such as partnership breakdowns, over-reliance on outside hires, nepotism, excessive pursuit of balance, and internal conflict, as well as investment mistakes like risk-taking, empiricism, extremism, edge-seeking, and imbalance between strategy and tactics." author: "New Distribution" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2014-05-30" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/if-you-re-in-management-avoid-these-major-mistakes-4c2e6af1/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/if-you-re-in-management-avoid-these-major-mistakes-4c2e6af1.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/UlSJKhqytF9Q_S2RIMzxjg" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E4%BD%A0%E8%8B%A5%E5%81%9A%E7%AE%A1%E7%90%86-%E5%8D%83%E4%B8%87%E5%88%AB%E7%8A%AF%E8%BF%99%E5%87%A0%E4%B8%AA%E5%A4%A7%E5%BF%8C-4c2e6af1.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/if-you-re-in-management-avoid-these-major-mistakes-4c2e6af1/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # If You're in Management, Avoid These Major Mistakes! > This article outlines common pitfalls for managers and business owners, including prioritizing face over truth, lacking self-awareness, habitual credit deficiency, intolerance of subordinates' strengths, unhealthy habits, self-inflation, and refusing to learn. It also covers major taboos in enterprise development, such as partnership breakdowns, over-reliance on outside hires, nepotism, excessive pursuit of balance, and internal conflict, as well as investment mistakes like risk-taking, empiricism, extremism, edge-seeking, and imbalance between strategy and tactics. **Warm Tip: Click the blue text above “FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting” to learn more about marketing and distributor internal management.** **First, face over truth.** Face means: I've already decided this, and the whole world knows it; truth means: this direction is a winding detour, and likely a dead end. A face-loving boss says: Just go with it, anyone who doesn't execute is out, and if that doesn't work, fire them—play it to the end. **Second, knowing others but not oneself.** You can analyze others clearly but are confused about yourself. You've never seen the key factors that made you a leader in your industry—a history of success, but a mind full of muddled accounts. Consequently, there's never a clear strategic plan: what to stick to, what to improve, how to innovate, how to defend. **Third, habitual credit deficiency.** Words not kept, contracts not honored, promises broken—relying on verbal credit that never materializes is the most common sight in Chinese business circles. Internally, rules and plans change constantly: established today, revised tomorrow, changed again the day after, leaving subordinates at a loss. Externally, contracts and promises are scraps of paper, altered, discounted, or torn up as circumstances dictate, and partners never return. **Fourth, intolerance of subordinates who excel in certain areas.** With heavy suspicion, to maintain psychological superiority and ease of management, such bosses prefer to hire and use people less capable than themselves. Such enterprises often lack vitality and find it increasingly hard to win in competition. **Fifth, unhealthy lifestyle habits.** Always starting exercise tomorrow, always complaining of fatigue during travel, always drinking at social engagements and getting drunk, full of passion for business but exhausted in body... **Sixth, self-inflation.** The logic of such businessmen: because I have more wealth, I must be more capable, more knowledgeable, and have better genes... Following this logic, one's confidence can skyrocket in a short time, and one's fate often takes a turn at the same moment. **Seventh, refusing to learn.** Bosses deal with all sorts of situations daily, and with so much on their plate, they don't want to study. Many don't read books, newspapers, watch TV, go online, or take time for training. In their view, the market is the best teacher, and learning is just a show for appearances. Due to long-term immersion in small circles, closed information, and outdated knowledge structures, they eventually get eliminated by the market or forgotten by the mainstream. **Major Taboos in Enterprise Development** **First, partnership like brothers, breakup like enemies.** The most common pattern of gathering and scattering in Chinese enterprises: at the founding, partners handle relationships with emotion and loyalty, with systems and equity either undefined or vague. As the company grows, systems become important and interests come to the fore, leading to "ranking seats, dividing gold and silver, debating honor and disgrace"—the enterprise either suffers from internal strife or scatters like the heroes of Liangshan. **Second, superstition about "paratroopers" (outside hires).** It's said that "monks from afar chant scriptures better." The correct approach: you can't avoid using outside hires, but you can't use them indiscriminately or exclusively. Chinese enterprises have too many lessons here, yet people always make the same mistake: neglecting the talent at hand and idolizing distant masters. **Third, making key positions a matter of cronyism.** An organization controlled by people rather than systems, a Chinese-style structure. Originating from the tradition of peasants conquering the world, it flourishes in contemporary business society with heightened trust crises, and is a major bottleneck for Chinese emotion-based enterprises moving toward standardized governance. **Fourth, over-pursuing system balance.** An enterprise is composed of various systems and departments that need dynamic balance. But if the boss overemphasizes balance, insisting on "leveling the bowl" in rewards and punishments, promotions, departmental authority, and performance reviews, the result is that the excellent aren't rewarded and the wrong aren't punished, all departments share equally, and the desired balance disappears. **Fifth, turning class struggle into corporate practice.** Internal balance is fine, but internal conflict is not. History tells us that "inciting the masses against each other" ultimately loses the enterprise's efficiency and cohesion. **Investment Taboos** **First, investment adventurism.** Investing money meant for basic living, or borrowed or even swindled money meant for others' basic living, staking everything on one throw, with life and fortune on the line, trembling, eager for quick success, and losing composure—how can one not fail? **Second, investment empiricism.** In a different time, with different resources, in a different market or industry, facing different employees or consumers, investing, laying out, producing, and selling based on past experience. The conductor is the same as yesterday, the music is the same, but why are there so few dancers this time? **Third, investment extremism.** Excitedly investing three months ago, then dejectedly pulling out six months later—one foot on the gas, the other on the brake, causing the enterprise to oscillate and petals to fall... This common investor ailment stems mainly from underestimating the depth of industrial investment and the complexity of corporate competition. (FMCG Distributor Professional Management Consulting, WeChat ID: kxpjxszyzxgl) **Fourth, the edge-ball complex.** Always hovering on the edge of what's legal and prohibited, always hoping to profit from policy loopholes. Those who've long played edge-ball games find themselves at a loss in new rules where playing straight offers better odds, fumbling at every turn. **Fifth, strong in tactics, weak in strategy.** The talent of such businessmen is almost entirely spent on salvaging a wrong strategic plan. **Sixth, strong in strategy, weak in tactics.** In plain terms, plenty of imagination but insufficient action. Of course, by their own account, a great concept always dies due to poor execution. --- **Like this article? Feel free to click the top-right corner to share it to your Moments.** About us: WeChat Name: FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting Management Account Intro: 20 years of FMCG distributor operation and management experience, professionally addressing distributor internal issues. Click "Read the original" below to enter our micro-community for interactive exchange and questions. **Learning and Exchange QQ Group: 344257092** --- --- ## 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