Defending your principles

After writing the previous article "take your own path and let others say", I received a lot of feedback from readers. One of the readers has the following problems:

 

「 It is estimated that many people want to say that the Helper is not smooth. The key is what can be compromised and what principles must be discussed. The boss wants you to penetrate into the opponent's system and the manager wants you to violate company regulations, if the company wants you to participate in tax evasion and the partner is engaged in illegal industries, will it be better to offend people or continue to develop emotional intelligence? This is the specific problem most programmers face .」

 

Recently, I have been talking to many different people about company management and entrepreneurship. The key words are "courage", "Leadership", and "defending principles. I have met some of the more successful CEOs who are paranoid and others who are gentle, but none of them are very ambitious.

 

A very extreme CEO friend said to his subordinates, "I don't need you to like me. We're just doing something that has a common goal, after a successful career (such as going public), we can all get the wealth we deserve. Therefore, I will not please you. I will treat you very harshly. You can scold me in the back, and I will not care .」. This friend thinks that a good CEO is a tyrant. He once said to his best engineer, "what you have made is rubbish. Redo it !」 Two months later, he asked the engineer to check what he had done, which is much better than before. Yes, he is so brutal and rule his staff, but he is very successful. PS. This friend was not created by me, nor was it by me.

 

Another friend is also the most outstanding among all the entrepreneurs I have met, but he has also done the following things on weekdays: one time, one of his investors did not know what he was doing with him. He was very angry and ran to the investors to film the table and threatened to say that if you did this again, I will sell your shares, and some of them are lined up for purchase. This domineering entrepreneur is actually my first time seeing him. Later, he asked me, "Have you ever made a table with investors? Sometimes you have to pat the table .」 I felt embarrassed not to pat the table with the investors. In fact, the relationship with investors is not necessarily to beat the table, but it must have the courage to pat the table.

 

The stories of these two CEOs do not mean that CEOS or startups must have bad temper, but that they cannot compromise on principles, some things must be defended. In the previous article, I mentioned "Emotional Intelligence" and "Mellow", not to say that we should be smooth. I just want to say the truth I have observed: "In a cooperative society, whether a person can become a success is often determined by what he looks like in the eyes of others. 」

 

Interestingly, a straight-forward person is often able to get a high rating in the eyes of others. A person who is too smooth will often receive a negative score and think that this person is not trustworthy. So smooth is definitely not round.

 

A friend who is an executive in a large company once told me that his boss is willing to support him, not because the boss understands what he is sticking, the only reason is that the boss appreciates his persistence attitude. (Because the scale is too large, delete 1000 words in this case .)

 

Let's talk about one thing I have encountered, and pick one with the smallest scale.

 

Because of the company's strategic adjustment, I once raised the price of a paid product by 100 times, the meaning behind this is that the target market has been adjusted from the personal webmaster group to the enterprise market (of course, the value-added service content is also different ). However, many old customers are obviously unable to accept such pricing, so some old customers are beginning to lose. This change is what we foresee.

 

However, an old customer was very interesting. After he tried the products of other competitors on the market, he thought they could not meet the requirements and ran back. However, he is only a webmaster, and the maximum payment capacity is 1000 yuan. After our adjustment, the price in ten thousand units cannot afford it, but he does like our products. So during that time, he sent me Weibo private messages every day and called customer service every day. He hoped to continue using the service at the old price, so the customer service would be annoying. At the beginning, I didn't have much time to deal with him, so I directly forwarded it to customer service to see if I could negotiate for special handling. After more than a month, he was sending me a mail, so I began to ask what the situation was.

 

Later, the feedback was that the customer had to pay a small amount of money, which was quite troublesome. at ordinary times, we often asked our customer service to do this. serving one customer is equivalent to serving four or five customers, it takes a lot of time for customer service. I was a little angry at the time, so I asked the customer which request was not within the scope of Customer Service's work, and asked the customer to renew for another half a year at the old price, so the customer was anxious. Later, the CEO asked me about the situation. I still think: An angel customer who can give a lot of comments is not measured in money, it is our happiness to have such customers. For an old customer, we need to return them with gratitude. At this time, we are not willing to abandon our customers. We must be the most valuable customers.

 

With my repeated persistence, the company decided to continue the customer for another half year at the original price. This customer was very grateful. Later, he took the initiative to publish Weibo to promote our products. He also said that he would send me some special products. I declined. In fact, I have always thought that I had insisted on doing the same thing. At that time, even if there was a great deal of resistance and even the opposition of all partners, I would stick to it because attaching importance to customer value is my principle. Without such a principle, I don't even know what the meaning of this company is.

 

Courage lies in courage.

 

Some decisions will face everyone's opposition, damage the company's financial income, and hurt the feelings of friends, but they have to do the right thing to stick to it. As long as I think of a letter from Amazon's CEO Bezos to all shareholders, saying that Amazon is focusing on long-term value rather than short-term interests, I will not consciously respect them. Afterwards, we just wanted to look at the story, but to make such a decision in that position, we must have the courage and courage to withstand everything. This is a decision that only world-class ceos can make.

 

Once I talked to a friend about his startup, I suggested that he talk to his boss about some very good conditions. I know that like many technicians, he has a very delicate face. In many cases, he is reluctant to talk about things very well, especially for a boss he respects. But I told him seriously that if I want to be a CEO, I must have such courage. If I don't even have the courage to do this, I 'd better die early.

 

Some principles must be defended.

Defending your principles