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Many managers hope to hire the best employees, expecting these top performers to work together with the company to drive sales. This way, the company profits and employees earn well—a win-win situation! But in reality, in many enterprises, this idealistic thinking leads to mismatches between personnel and positions, contrary to managers' expectations, resulting in a series of problems:

  • Employees lack a sense of belonging, turnover rates remain high, and the company becomes a training ground for competitors.
  • Overstaffing is common, with widespread mismatches between positions, income, and abilities.
  • Employees interpret the company's business strategies differently, leading to inconsistent standards in market execution and unreliable results.
  • ...

So, how can managers select and use people to maximize effectiveness and jointly handle business operations? Consider the following three aspects:

1. Select: People Who Want to Work

Every manager has their own theory on how to select people. Some value education, others experience, appearance, connections, or intuition. Regardless of the criteria, it all relates to a core element: the subjectivity of the manager responsible for hiring. Thus, the hiring manager's abilities, experience, knowledge, and personal preferences outweigh the company's intentions. This can lead to subjective decisions and irresponsible hiring.

How can we avoid errors caused by the personal circumstances of the hiring manager? At the outset of selection, establish a mandatory standard, and make it the only one: "wants to work." Simply put, whether a person can do a job well is not determined by external conditions. The core lies within themselves—whether they want to do the job and want to do it well.

2. Use: People Who Can Work

After selecting people who want to work through the first step, we need to start using them. Among these motivated individuals, there will inevitably be differences in ability and quality. Therefore, usage should be tailored accordingly.

  • For those who want to work but are not yet skilled, use them reasonably. Do not place them in critical positions; give them ample learning and growth opportunities to gradually master methods and techniques.
  • For those who want to work, are capable, and have high moral quality, managers should promote them without prejudice. Offer good compensation and platforms to retain them and maximize their contributions, facilitating work progress.

3. Teach: Everyone to Follow Processes

After placing the right people in the right positions, managers must also establish a set of work processes so that all employees follow unified standards and procedures, ensuring maximum effectiveness.

We often discuss the differences between employees in domestic and foreign enterprises. Domestic employees are "a dragon alone, a worm in a group," while foreign employees are "a dragon alone, a giant dragon in a group." Why is there such a stark contrast in group performance despite similar individual capabilities? Besides objective factors, a significant reason is the gap in experience and operational process reengineering between domestic and foreign enterprises. For example, McDonald's fries require dozens of steps, each with strict standards: the size of potato strips, the oil level in the fryer, the optimal doneness, the type of paper for packaging, the quantity per package, the type of spatula, etc. In contrast, our traditional fried dough sticks have no such "rules." The amount of flour, oil, and frying time are all based on intuition. So, when we see nearly identical fries, it highlights the uneven sizes of our dough sticks. As Western fast food like McDonald's expands aggressively in China, our thousand-year-old dough sticks not only fail to compete but are also adopted by local chains like Dicos as a localization strategy, attracting domestic consumers at a few yuan each. What are we to think?

Therefore, enterprise management also needs to establish detailed processes for employees with different backgrounds and education, providing them with systems to follow and standards to check, standardizing their work, and enhancing overall team effectiveness.

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