Relationship is the Target of Business Management
Keyword: management, relationship


It is said that management means how to manage people, but there are others who claim that management means how to manage matters, and I don’t share both of them. Talking about people management, nowhere but in the service is there a strict discipline to keep people in line. As the army is responsible for guarding the nation against any enemy, it is necessary to have a special relationship between the army and the soldiers, that is possessing and being possessed. To maintain this relationship, the army not only need to implement closed management and enacts strict and impartial disciplines, but also demands an integrated management by such specific resources as all levels’ officers, superintendents and martial court.  Things are different in an enterprise, where relationship between the enterprise and employees is, fundamentally speaking, cooperation, for they can make choices to stay or go. Compared with the management in the army, enterprise only has "officers", and lacks of such resources as superintendents and martial court. Therefore, enterprises are unable to manage people. In fact, taking management as controlling people has another fallacy that it defines its management within the enterprise. This definition for management is obviously incomplete, for instance, retailers’ management is outreached the boundary of a company.

By the way, it should be noted that many friends have found the fact that militarized management in an enterprise is the worst way to stifle individuality and innovation.

When it comes to business matter management, it gives us a notion of too abstract, how can we manage abstract matters? Business matters do not proceed along your wishes, though you might have the best intentions. Business matters are done by people, so how to motivate people to do their best counts for much. But we don’t want to slip into the old fallacy of placing too much emphasis on people management.

At present, there is a widely accepted view among employees: Working for the boss, you take too much pain and too less money. If you self-employ, no matter how small scale your business is, you will get better off. This statement reflects a universal management problem in small-medium sized enterprise: the critical relationship between enterprises and their employees.

Building and consolidating the harmonious relations between enterprises and society, enterprises and their employees, employees and their positions, shall be the goal of business management, since all the work, if it is to be successfully completed, relies on the harmonious relation. Some businessmen prefer to trust their non-talented relatives, instead of risking on trusting other qualified employees, for there is a stable relation to guarantee their loyalty. If employee viewed his position as his companion, the company his home, would there be such problems as malfunctioning and overstaffed? Of course not. In the contrary, the company will thrive for ever.

 
As a management consultant, I have worked with many enterprises of many industries, and I find that the fundamental way to improve management lies in harmonize the relations between employer and employee, the employee and his position. Most of the problem enterprises barely have the engagement relation between employer and employee, which is automatically established when the employee joined the company, and not good enough to motivate the employee to work hard and perform his best; because the rationale of this relation is: you pay my paycheck, I do the work you assigned. In fact, this word "do" should be read as "observe", to be more pertinent.

I believe that building and solidifying relations will be more important, even for powerful multinational corporations. No one will repetitively do a job well if he doesn’t like the work, and it is impossible to do the job well when he deems it irrelevant to himself. Whether you ‘like it’ or ‘do not like it’ are determined by ‘relations’, instead of instant feelings. This somewhat similar to the ancient arranged marriages which were always lasting and stable, as in the historical circumstances, it was natural for people to recognize and accept those marriages, relations between husband and wife who often play their roles automatically and later on affection formed naturally in the  relationship.

Therefore, the target of management should be relations.