Click 'Read Original' for details. The Organizational Transformation of the U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ships Let me share a story from the July issue of The Atlantic. It's not short, but trust me, it's worth reading carefully. In 2001, after Rumsfeld became U.S. Secretary of Defense, he immediately demanded that the Navy significantly reduce personnel on warships, redesign ships, and use revolutionary technology to completely change the status quo of the U.S. Navy. During Rumsfeld's tenure, intelligent warships quickly moved from idea to practice. The result was a series of ships called Littoral Combat Ships (LCS). These ships are highly automated; most equipment does not require continuous monitoring by crew. The weapons and sensor systems are automated, including autonomous identification, automatic mission decision-making, and automatic scene analysis. However, what's more special is that the U.S. military tried a new management concept on these ships called "Minimal Manning." The ship was designed with a planned crew of 75, which is 1/4 fewer than ships of the same tonnage. The core crew is even smaller, totaling only 40 people, just 20% of WWII-era ships. It's worth noting that the logic of "minimal manning" is not that automation replaces jobs, but that after automation, the nature of crew work, job content, and personnel quality requirements undergo significant changes. What changes? Every crew member on this ship is a multi-skilled generalist. For example, the job of pulling ropes. On a typical ship, there's a dedicated person because pulling ropes, though simple, is dangerous; a rope can easily sever fingers or toes. But on LCS, there's no dedicated rope puller. This job is done by three part-timers: an information systems technician, a gunner's mate, and a ship's cook. The cook, besides cooking and handling ropes, also has two other jobs: patrolman and boundaryman, meaning they monitor for water ingress and prevent smoke spread in case of fire. Another example: guess how many people do these jobs: fire team leader, search seaman, crane operator, patrolman, helicopter rescue coordinator. Looks like a lot, but only two people do all these. Automation frees up time, allowing people to become multi-skilled. A multi-skilled person's efficiency exceeds that of several people in the past. If we summarize the characteristics of LCS crew in one sentence: they are not specialists, but generalists. The U.S. Navy's transformation deeply shocked me. I realized that what the FMCG industry is experiencing now is exactly what the U.S. Navy went through. Today, this trend of "generalist" talent is not just happening on warships or in the military; almost all fields are seeing a trend toward "generalists" rather than "specialists." There are two reasons for this trend: First, with technological progress, repetitive, mechanical, and process-driven work is largely taken over by machines and systems. What machines and systems can't do is left for humans. Such work is often fast-changing and irregular. Second, with accelerated intelligence and social change, most core skills and experiences quickly become obsolete. A World Economic Forum report says that from 2016 to 2020, one-third of core skills in occupations will either be replaced by machine learning or become less important due to environmental changes. The trend toward "generalists" means that mastering specialized skills is no longer as valuable for career development as before. In the future, those who thrive will be generalists capable of solving different types of complex problems. The article cites Deloitte's prediction that in 10 years, 70%-90% of jobs may be "super jobs," meaning one job integrates the work of several current jobs. Skills Become Obsolete Faster: The Anxiety of Marketing Professionals It's a problem we must face: marketing professionals' skills are becoming obsolete faster and faster. In recent years, the FMCG market environment has changed rapidly. Last year, we were discussing unmanned retail; this year, community group buying. Online is eating into offline at an accelerating pace. Most marketing professionals' current skills are rapidly losing effectiveness and becoming outdated. But the reality is that most marketing professionals are confined to their job roles, with few learning opportunities beyond colleagues and clients, and lacking chances to use new technologies and tools. When the environment undergoes huge changes, we are unable to learn and respond to new changes in time. To put it bluntly, many are just coasting along. The reasons are multiple. On one hand, company leaders demand all means to push inventory and promotions to maintain growth; on the other hand, marketing professionals face resource constraints. Marketing professionals caught between bosses and distributors exhaust their methods but cannot achieve growth as impressive as new channels, and may even see slight declines. Fines, salary cuts, demotions, or even dismissal are the Sword of Damocles hanging over every marketer's head. We can compare the skill requirements of traditional marketers and new marketers. Traditional marketers are proficient in deep distribution, terminal management, and team management, and can talk about these at length. But the entire FMCG industry is undergoing major transformation. New retail, online-offline integration, e-commerce platforms, social platforms, content platforms, and ubiquitous transaction touchpoints require marketers to adapt with more innovative marketing methods. In the new environment, new marketing talks about scenarios, traffic, IP, communities, KOLs, fans, fission, cross-border, reconstruction, two-dimensional, big data, supply chain, content operations—but how much do these relate to traditional marketers? The emergence and application of new technologies have changed consumer behavior. To adapt to consumer changes, corporate marketing organizations and functions must change accordingly. So it's not that new technologies replace certain jobs, but that the large-scale emergence and application of new technologies lead to drastic environmental changes. These drastic changes bring about the reconstruction of entire organizations and division of labor. This reconstruction will eliminate and reorganize many jobs, while also creating many new ones. This is the core reason why marketers' skills become obsolete quickly. In this era, it's impossible not to be anxious. We are already in an era of accelerating change; you cannot refuse or choose the era. For today's marketers, if they don't actively learn and try to change, elimination will happen in a very short time. One day in the future, the reason we lose our jobs may not be that the company is failing, but that the position we are good at no longer exists. Learning Ability is Self-Iteration Ability When the environment changes drastically, who can adapt faster? To figure this out, the U.S. Navy hired psychologists to test sailors. The findings were interesting: qualities that once made people successful in the workplace are now disadvantages; some qualities once considered weaknesses are now advantages in the new environment. First, sailors who didn't score high on tests often scored very high on conscientiousness. We all like such people in the workplace. They are the ones who arrive early, pay attention to details, and are meticulous. But when test rules suddenly change, they tend to stick to past experience, making their response to new rules slow. Second, those who performed well in tests often had an open attitude toward new things and experiences. This trait, to put it nicely, is openness; to put it bluntly, it's distractibility. Such people have a "looking at the pot while eating" characteristic, thinking about other things while doing one thing, rather than focusing on doing one thing well. These findings not only overturn our understanding of workplace skills but also our understanding of education. In recent years, a popular concept in education is "grit." People with this quality can set long-term goals and overcome many difficulties and resist temptations to achieve them. We often talk about the 10,000-hour rule: to become an expert in any field, you need 10,000 hours of practice. But we must realize that the pace of social change is accelerating. If rules are frequently updated and roles constantly shift, then grit or the 10,000-hour principle may not help us adapt well to the new environment. So what should traditional marketers do to avoid being eliminated by this era? There's only one suggestion: lifelong learning, making yourself a lifelong apprentice. All the experience and skills you've accumulated in the past may become burdens in the future. Only by letting go of the past, continuously learning, crossing boundaries, and iterating yourself can you avoid being eliminated by this era. In the FMCG industry, Teacher Liu Chunxiong is the most worthy of our learning. In the 1990s, Teacher Liu was already a renowned marketing expert, writing popular works like "Chinese-style Marketing." I also grew up reading Liu Chunxiong's content. Over the past 20 years, Teacher Liu has accumulated extensive industry experience and cases, making him a top marketing expert in China. With such a reputation, Teacher Liu could easily retire. But starting in 2013, he began studying new marketing from scratch like an elementary school student. Teacher Liu set aside all the knowledge he had accumulated over decades in the marketing field, traveled light, started anew, and achieved excellent results in a short time, leading the new marketing transformation in China's FMCG industry. It can be said that Teacher Liu Chunxiong essentially re-energized himself in the digital age. Nassim Taleb said: "The strategy of antifragility is to remember: accidents always happen." Specialists often face the risk of success traps. Relying on a single skill is like putting all your eggs in one basket, which is dangerous. Social changes and environmental shifts require people to learn more knowledge, master more skills, and have the ability to organize and apply multiple skills to adapt to new changes and meet the challenges they bring. The 2019 FMCG Conference organized by New Distribution aims to build a platform for learning and sharing. We hope more excellent case operators will share their experiences and insights face-to-face and in depth, opening a new window and creating new learning opportunities for brand owners and distributors. We do our best to let every attendee keep up with the times, understand what is happening now, and what is about to happen.