Click the image for details Not long ago, I saw a passage in a marketing group, roughly saying: strategic positioning planning requires people over 40; marketing planning can be done by those around 30; advertising planning can be done by those in their 20s. I think that's absolutely right. Only middle-aged people with rigid thinking, no desire for progress, and never updated knowledge structures would hold such blind superiority, treating outdated theories as treasures and useless age and seniority as thresholds and barriers. In an era where post-95s and post-00s are starting businesses, there are still people who believe that only those over 40 can do strategic positioning planning. That's really something. Of course, I understand the meaning of this passage. It says that strategy is too important and profound, so those who lack deep understanding of human nature and society cannot construct perfect strategies. To understand human nature and society, you naturally need to have eaten more salt and crossed more bridges, i.e., have seniority. But strategy is not about pondering in isolation, drafting a perfect plan on paper, and then implementing it without deviation. According to management guru Henry Mintzberg, the strategy-making process is more like a craft: while implementing, you think and adjust; the unity of mind and hand is the essence of craftsmanship. (Henry Mintzberg) Strategy is often forged through execution; it's not that strategy determines execution, but execution drives strategy. Strategy is not building a cart behind closed doors, but crossing the river by feeling the stones. Therefore, the word to describe strategy formulation should be "carving and polishing," not "planning and programming." A grand strategic blueprint carefully planned is more likely to be shelved. Action-thought-correction, that's how strategy comes about. For strategy formulation, what matters is not precise and profound thinking, but constantly proposing new ideas and quickly validating them. It's like climbing a mountain: when you look down from the summit, you see paths everywhere; but at the foot, there's only one path up. You can only look up and climb, turning back when you hit a dead end, then continuing upward. This applies to companies and individuals alike. What determines your destiny and future is not what you already have, but the process of "learn-validate-learn-validate again." In today's rapidly changing era, new things, inventions, technologies, and concepts emerge every day. The changes in the next year may be greater than those in the past decade. So, is unchanging seniority still useful? Can the experience of the past 10 years help you meet the challenges of the next year? In the era of information scarcity, knowledge transfer was slow, even stagnant. Skill and technology improvement relied mainly on master-apprentice relationships, often kept secret. At that time, knowledge was a social barrier, and seniority was a precious asset. But today, everything can be found on the internet and learned quickly. Even rocket science can be self-taught. So what is there that a 40-year-old can do but a 20-year-old cannot? So you can only learn, put aside existing experience, start learning new knowledge from scratch, and then validate. 1 In November 2017, Alibaba acquired RT-Mart. What is RT-Mart? A legend in the retail industry. It set a record of no store closures for 19 consecutive years, with average single-store performance exceeding 300 million yuan, defeating global giants like Walmart and Carrefour. RT-Mart's founder, Huang Mingduan, earned the reputation of "King of Land Warfare." (Huang Mingduan) After Alibaba acquired RT-Mart, the internet was flooded with a quote attributed to Huang Mingduan as he left in disappointment: "I won all competitors but lost to the era." This quote shocked everyone, and its spread and influence were so great that Huang Mingduan came out to deny it, saying he never said it and didn't leave. But it's an indisputable fact that RT-Mart, which won repeatedly in offline retail, failed with its e-commerce platform Feiniu.com, which invested billions. Huang Mingduan, with over 20 years of seniority and achievements in offline retail, couldn't figure out the online world despite his efforts. Huang Mingduan once publicly said to the media that he hoped Brother Qiang and Ma Yun would come and scold him; they looked for them to scold them every day, but they never did, and they felt quite frustrated. But after all, Feiniu.com was too small to catch the attention of Liu Qiangdong and Ma Yun. Liu Qiangdong is more than ten years younger than Huang Mingduan. Isn't Huang Mingduan more senior than Liu Qiangdong? But in the e-commerce era, everything resets to zero; you have to return to the starting line. The times are changing. If you don't change with them and still want to bask in past achievements, then the era will abandon you without even saying goodbye. Master Kong instant noodles fought for over a decade to become the industry leader, but within two years of the rise of food delivery, its position was replaced. Master Kong was founded in 1992, Meituan in 2010. Isn't Master Kong more senior than Meituan? Where does Meituan win? It's continuous learning-validating-adjusting. When Meituan launched in March 2010, it was a group-buying site; then group-buying faded, Meituan became an O2O platform, then a life services e-commerce, and now Meituan is into food delivery, ride-hailing, shared bikes... In this era, the only way to survive is rapid learning and rapid validation; only rapidly evolving companies and individuals can survive. In other words, the most valuable thing is not seniority or experience, but learning and improvement. 2 Zhao Pu, a prime minister of the Song Dynasty, once said, "Half of the Analects governs the world." The Analects was compiled by Confucius's disciples from his sayings, completed in the early Warring States period; the Northern Song was founded in 960 AD, with an interval of about 1,300 years. Yet this book from the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods could still govern the Song Dynasty. (Zhao Pu) This is because China was a stable agricultural society for a long time; dynastic changes were only quantitative, not qualitative, and the essence remained unchanged for thousands of years. In a continuous and stable society, seniority is naturally a precious asset. Since everything is constant and there's nothing new under the sun, you can use existing experience and methods to do things. After agricultural civilization, humanity entered the industrial age, and our knowledge system experienced a big bang. Classical mechanics led the way for the Industrial Revolution, which in turn pushed physics toward the electrical and quantum revolutions. Pasteur opened up microbiology to solve beer souring, Darwin founded evolution theory after sailing on a Royal Navy ship, and so on, too numerous to mention. As China's door was opened by the guns and ships of the industrial age, Chinese elites suddenly realized that old experience and old ideas couldn't save China; long braids were useless (they even blamed Confucius and the Analects, and thousands of years of traditional culture, for China's backwardness). So they began to learn from the West, studying Western science and political systems, practicing and validating in China, and finally found a new path. This was a new era, and seniority suddenly became useless. The youth are strong, so China is strong; but experienced people became old fogeys, stubborn antiques. After the Industrial Revolution, humanity entered information civilization. New technologies and things emerged in large numbers, only to be quickly replaced by the next wave, and then another batch emerged. (Wang Dongyue) According to Wang Dongyue, this is called "decreasing compensation": the simpler, the more stable; the more advanced, the more fragile. The higher the degree of differentiation and freedom, the more likely it is to collapse and perish. Agricultural civilization lasted 10,000 years; industrial civilization only three to four hundred years; information civilization should not exceed a hundred years before being replaced by a new industrial revolution. At this point, seniority not only doesn't help you, it can even mislead you. Google founder Sergey Brin famously said: "The only fact we know is that most of what we learned in the 20th century is wrong." (Sergey Brin) From Zhao Pu to Sergey Brin, it's time to overturn the past and start anew. 3 When I resigned from my first job, I wrote this in my resignation letter: Photographer Koudelka once said in an interview: "If you always stay in one place, people will put you in a cage, and gradually they won't want you to come out." My point is that it's not mainly others' views, but your own self-limitation. I don't want to limit myself to a fixed role. (Josef Koudelka) When you stay in a position too long, spend a lot of energy on one thing, you gradually get used to it, become adept, and increasingly senior. You enter a comfort zone. And when you become more and more adept, it means you're not progressing but standing still. More precisely, you're not even standing still; you're regressing. Because society is moving forward rapidly; if you don't advance, you fall behind. According to the oil seller, this is called "No other trick, just familiarity." You haven't added new knowledge or skills; you've only increased proficiency, repeating your past self. This is experience. Moreover, if you keep doing what you're good at, using mastered skills, you'll become less willing to try new, unknown things. Because it means challenges, difficulties, even failure. According to the Dunning-Kruger effect chart that went viral last year, you've entered the valley of despair; the confidence from your seniority and experience is collapsing. But the essence of growth is to force yourself to leave the comfort zone, learn new things, and embrace a growth mindset. Many times, seniority not only doesn't help you, it can trap you. Experience is a cage, comfort zone is a trap, and seniority is a stumbling block on your path forward. You must kick it away. But most people, at a certain level of seniority and age, do get trapped. They give up effort and evolution, start coasting, and just wait for retirement. At that point, you're not far from being eliminated. 4 Many people go to work hoping to find an iron rice bowl. Unexpectedly, they don't find it; they're eating a youth meal. First, the iron rice bowl doesn't exist; there's no company that lasts forever. In 1994, two Americans, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, wrote a book "Built to Last," listing 18 companies that seemed long-lived. But not many years later, 4 had already collapsed, several were on the verge, and the survivors had changed beyond recognition. (Jim Collins) You think that becoming a senior executive or core employee at a company means stability and peace of mind, but in the blink of an eye, your company may decline, your industry may be disrupted, and you'll have to prepare for your next job. When you change companies, will your achievements and fancy titles from the previous company still be recognized? When you change industries, will your accumulated experience and impressive seniority really be useful? Even the government can't guarantee an iron rice bowl now. In early 2018, when Tangshan, Hebei, abolished toll booths, the staff collectively opposed it. "We can't do anything but collect tolls," "We're old, we can't learn new things," "I'm 36 now, they want people under 30; when they hear I'm 36, sorry..." Ask those laid-off middle-aged people whether age and seniority are liabilities. Second, except for a very limited number of public institutions, most industries are youth-oriented. Half of companies' job postings say only under 35, and the other half are trying hard to lay off employees over 35. This has long been an open secret in various industries; JD, Huawei, IBM—who hasn't done this? Why hire people over 35? They're more expensive and not as useful. On one hand, they're senior and socially experienced, hard to manage; on the other, they have family responsibilities, can't guarantee full focus on work, and their health is declining; they can't work overtime or push hard. If you were the boss, would you hire someone over 35? When we first start working, we're eating the age dividend, trading time (health) for money; by middle age, the dividend is almost gone, time is insufficient, health declines, money doesn't grow, and the ceiling appears—that's the midlife crisis. You think your seniority makes you an asset to the company, but actually you've become a cost. A few clear-headed people start looking for a way out. Generally, there are three:
First, refine your expertise and skills to become irreplaceable. But there aren't many companies and positions that truly need expertise; it's good if a company has one or two true experts.
Second, switch to management, but this doesn't provide fundamental security; layoffs start with the highest salaries.
Third, go it alone, but entrepreneurship has a survival rate of less than one in ten. And more people start coasting on seniority, then become greasy, networking, playing politics, pleasing superiors, and oppressing subordinates. Meanwhile, they feel anxious, fearing the day the company fails, they get fired, and young people take over. But in the workplace, always remember: seniority is not capital, but cost. Whether you rely on technology, management, or going it alone, what matters is making yourself a resource, an indispensable resource for others. Having seniority isn't important; making yourself a resource is. Source: Kong Shou (ID: firesteal13) New Distribution will hold the 2019 (5th) FMCG + Internet Conference during the Chengdu Spring Sugar and Wine Fair from March 16 to 18. This conference will focus on the topic "Breaking the Game" , with in-depth discussions among brand owners, supply chain service providers, distributors, retailers, and others. Compared to previous conferences, this summit will be fully upgraded. In addition to original topics like channel innovation, city distribution logistics, and distributor transformation , it adds multiple parallel forums on new marketing cases, IP + FMCG empowerment, community group buying, and innovative retail . Through ten high-density, high-quality expert sharing sessions over three days, we believe every brand owner and distributor can learn the latest business models, expert insights, and practical methods, finding new tools and approaches to break the game in 2019 and return to high-speed growth. Review of Previous Conferences -END-