The remembrance of the past is the teacher of the future
During the five thousand years of Chinese civilization, countless outstanding figures wrote magnificent and thrilling historical legends with unparalleled wisdom. Thanks to the historian culture in China, these stories have been recorded and handed down. If today's enterprise managers can learn a thing or two, it will be of great reference significance to enterprise management. Many people know the chronological history book Zi Tongzhi Jian edited by Sima Guang in the Northern Song Dynasty. Sima Guang opposed the failure of Wang Anshi's political reform and retired to Luoyang to repair this history book. This book has a very high historical status and is regarded as another masterpiece after Historical Records, but Sima Guang's original purpose is simple, that is, to make history into a story and tell it to the emperor. The Chinese Empire is like a joint-stock company. The emperor is the chairman. How can he be a good chairman? Sima Guang believed that the emperor should learn from historical experience.
Buried in the depths of history, it is not only the story of ruins, but also the way to learn from the past and know the present. Enterprise managers can learn a lot from the history of managing modern enterprises. For example, three people start a company together and work together. When the company grows bigger, it will be respected and faced with the problem of how to treat its elders. On this issue, the ancients in China designed a very good system, called "officials should be able to do whatever they want, and nobles should get something from their work". Official positions are given to professional managers and talented people; Titles are for elders, for people who have made great contributions, and titles can be passed down.
When you come to the project of "Management from a Historical Perspective", we are not trying to cultivate our morality or make friends, but to learn a technology called "Management from a Historical Perspective". Specifically, it is to learn how to manage enterprises, how to employ people, how to fight in business, how to inherit enterprises, and apply historical technology to management practice. We are in a fast-paced era, the foundation of ancient Chinese is not solid enough, and we have no time and ability to read the twenty-four histories intensively. During this year, we invited masters and experts to the class and asked them to interpret history. The classrooms in Peking University are open. You can disagree with the professor's point of view, or you can share your unique opinions. We welcome the collision and contention of various viewpoints. We should read history with critical thinking. History is a social science, not an ideology.
Read history and understand management.
Enterprises are autocratic, top-down and hierarchical. The core problem facing the empire and the company is the relationship between entrustment and agency. The chairman entrusted the general manager to manage the company, and the emperor entrusted the prime minister to govern the country. Since Qin and Han dynasties, monarchical power and relative power have been in a state of balance of unity of opposites: when monarchical power is strong, the right space of prime minister is squeezed accordingly; When the monarch's power is weak, the power space of the prime minister will expand accordingly. The emperor can hand over the country to the prime minister, such as Wanli's absence from the court for 28 years. There are also male lords who distrust the prime minister, weaken their relative power and manage the country personally. In the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the prime minister system and strictly ordered that "future generations should be emperors and no prime ministers are allowed". The rulers of the Qing Dynasty were ethnic minorities, and they had a strong sense of crisis. On the one hand, they show their strong control everywhere, on the other hand, they are particularly worried about rebellion. There was no prime minister in the Qing dynasty, and the minister of military affairs only had the right to participate in politics and had no decision-making power. The ministers of military affairs are essentially a group of spin doctor, and all the rights are concentrated in the hands of the emperor. The unity of opposites between imperial power and relative power has both interests and conflicts in essence.
The relationship between the central and local governments is another complicated relationship that the Chinese empire needs to deal with, and enterprises are also facing such problems. After the company reaches a certain scale, it faces a realistic problem, which is to continue to expand in the form of franchise stores or direct stores? How the central government manages local governments, how to grasp the scale of decentralization and supervision, and how to realize the internal checks and balances of local institutions are all problems that the Chinese empire and large companies have to face and deal with.
Read history and learn to be a man.
The competition between shopping malls and battlefields ultimately boils down to human competition, and the philosophy of being a man contained in historical stories can be used by managers of enterprises. Take Li and An Dehai, courtiers around Empress Dowager Cixi in Qing Dynasty, for example, they can be said to be two typical cases of being human. An Dehai's arrogance, interference in political affairs, accepting bribes to recruit power, making public his personality, disrespecting princes and ministers, was finally captured and executed by Governor Ding Baozhen. Li, who is in a high position, is conservative and keeps a low profile. He won the trust of Cixi, but he took care of Guangxu, the puppet emperor. Cixi wanted to abolish Guangxu, but Li kept silent on this matter, stuck to his own principles and left room for himself everywhere, so he died a natural death. Li summed up his life in eight words before his death, that is, "respecting things and forgiving things." The story of the two reminds the world that "people can't be complacent at heights, they can only hide their light and bide their time."
Read history and see the world.
When reading history, entrepreneurs should know how to manage, learn to be a man and see the world more. Not only to see China, but also to see the world. Now many people like to read Zeng Guofan and Hu Xueyan, but there are still too few people who read the West. How many people know about the Rothschild family and the Morgan family? What are the cases worth learning from these family-owned enterprises? There is a book, Currency War, which is all the rage. It is said that the Rothschild family controls the financial lifeline of the Federal Reserve and the world. If you don't read history, you don't know if it is tampering with history, or it is stupid or has ulterior motives. Entrepreneurs need to know the original appearance of western history in order to deeply understand the present western society and its system.