For small companies with annual sales of a few million and fewer than ten employees, management is relatively simple. After all, with few people, the boss can directly see and control each person's work situation. Even if half of the employees leave, the boss and their spouse can still manage.

However, once annual sales exceed the ten million threshold, there are more people and more issues. As a result, problems arise between boss and employees, among employees, between middle management and frontline staff, between employees and the management system, and between employees and external customers. Various kinds of chaos, internal friction, and waste begin to appear. What's worse, these different types of chaos are interconnected and interact with each other.

Overall, the internal management of private companies with annual sales exceeding ten million is often a tangled mess, with problems everywhere. Of course, despite the chaos, the company still operates and moves forward amidst the confusion.

Management chaos directly leads to internal friction and waste, consuming a lot of the boss's energy and time. Bosses don't want this to continue, so various corrective measures are constantly proposed. But it's like "pressing down the gourd while the dipper floats up"—one problem is solved, another appears. Or problems that were just solved rebound later. So bosses face this mess with a headache, and problems must be dealt with. But where should they start?

Actually, looking at individual issues, the internal management problems of private companies are not that complicated, and individual problems can be solved. However, when various problems are intertwined, it becomes troublesome. Moreover, when bosses try to solve their company's management problems—that is, when they carry out internal rectification—they often have these characteristics:

  1. They tackle multiple problems simultaneously.
  2. They go straight to the point, hoping to solve problems directly.
  3. They basically don't consider strategy or preliminary groundwork.
  4. They are mostly led by the boss themselves, aiming to achieve the boss's own goals.
  5. They believe that rectification means improving various rules and regulations, and strengthening assessment and supervision.

If they continue like this, it's no wonder things go wrong—it might even get messier! Because most bosses of private companies have limited management skills (though their business skills are often strong), and they don't understand the core of management problems well enough. They even view employee management issues only from their own subjective perspective. The management or rectification measures they take are often simple, direct, and rigid.

All management problems, at their root, are people problems. People problems are mainly about mindset. People's ways of thinking are often asymmetric; in simple terms, the boss and employees think on different levels. For the same matter, different thoughts, different value assessments, and different execution lead to different results. Especially, bosses often don't have a good grasp of employees' inherent laziness, interests, and personal feelings. Under the premise of an unsound management system and no backup human resources, it's inevitable that the boss's direct rectification efforts carry high risk, low efficiency, easy rebound, and low success rate. After all, the relationship between boss and employees is cooperative; employees are not slaves who obey the boss completely, and the boss's orders alone cannot effectively command employees.

So, looking at this mess, where should one start?

First, clarify three premises:

  1. Do not introduce rigid management measures at the beginning, such as various rules and regulations, assessment, and supervision.
  2. Do not disrupt the current interests of employees, whether on the books or under the table.
  3. Do not increase employees' workload, or only reduce it, not add.

Based on these points, you can start internal rectification from the following four aspects:

  1. Improve employees' living environment. Employees are also living while working at the company. Start by improving their living environment. For example, add refrigerators, microwaves, personal lockers for everyone, drinking water, and tissue paper. Also, don't let employees do the on-site cleaning; hire a cleaner to handle it. If you want employees to work well and serve customers well, the boss must first take good care of employees' daily lives.

  2. Clear up historical issues. Almost every company has historical issues—some internal, some external, some forgotten by the boss. But employees haven't forgotten them, and some are forgotten by the company's own people, but external customers haven't forgotten. These historical issues won't disappear on their own; they persist and continue to hinder progress. Moreover, the longer they are delayed, the higher the cost to resolve them. So, to face the new future, you must first go back and solve these historical issues. Even if you can't solve all of them now, at least you should conduct a comprehensive collection so the boss clearly knows how many historical issues the company currently has.

  3. Rebuild employee files. The premise of management is understanding, and the most basic form of understanding employees is establishing employee files. Some private companies still use the interview registration form as the employee file, which contains too little information. You can rebuild employees' personal files to achieve a comprehensive understanding of each employee's situation.

  4. Make work schedules transparent. That is, create an annual schedule, mark out the arrangements for various work times, and post it on the wall for everyone to see. It should be open, transparent, and clear at a glance. It facilitates planning and recording, can be seen every day, and prevents forgetting. This can start with the boss, and then extend to all employees, who should have publicly posted annual schedules. This doesn't increase employees' workload; it just marks out the time points of work arrangements.

The above points are simple to implement and cost little. The key is that they don't add trouble for employees, nor do they make employees feel uncomfortable, so employees are easy to accept. Don't underestimate these points; behind each one, many things can be extended, and they can serve as preliminary groundwork for subsequent rectification projects.

Pan Wenfu: Born as a private business owner, he operated a family distributor company for over ten years. He also held positions as sales manager, marketing manager, and trainer in several well-known manufacturing companies, giving him dual perspectives and experience as both a distributor owner and a manufacturer's distributor manager. His research focuses on internal management optimization of distributor companies, corporate transformation, innovative business strategies, operating cost savings, and optimization of manufacturer-distributor relationships. He has the largest database of distributor topics in the country, with long-term material collection and solution research on over 400 topics related to distributor companies.