The Seven Deadly Sins of Enterprise Management: What are the pitfalls that previous entrepreneurs fell into?

Seven major management mistakes

We have identified seven common management errors, which also explain why so much of the imprisoned value has not yet been unleashed by existing enterprises. Many of these management errors are the result of generations of executives following best management practices. Every mistake is aimed at solving a specific problem, but it either fails to take into account its long-term impact on the organization's health, or fails to scale up quickly enough during the acceleration of disruption.

Overly lean management.

American entrepreneur and writer Eric Ries suggests for startups in his book "The Lean Startup" that the first step is to sell the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) as quickly as possible, and then use low-cost channels such as social media to closely interact with customers, seek their feedback, and iterate the product quickly based on this.

Although lean methods are popular among both new and old companies, if a company invests all its resources in a single product, it will encounter failure. Nowadays, the saturation rate of the market is getting faster and faster, and the ability to produce new products is more important than the specialized ability to produce only one product, no matter how popular this product is among customers.

Although there are clear signs that customers are tired of a certain product, companies still allocate all their resources to that product, which can accumulate confinement value at the enterprise level. By doing so, companies will miss the opportunity for talented developers and wise entrepreneurs to utilize the next wave of new technologies to carry out innovative activities.

If the market is simply developing and waiting for the next innovation, then according to the requirements of lean methodology, using core resources for product iteration and route correction can solve the problem of errors. But before the demand saturates, the management must organize a new team to initiate the development of new products. If not, it will fall into a so-called death spiral: on the one hand, loyal customers continue to decrease; On the other hand, the company must spare no effort to provide better services for customers' incremental needs. If such a company can survive, the only opportunity is to be acquired by more diversified companies, and the acquisition price is usually the selling price.

Let's take a look at Groupon, a loyal believer in lean methodology and still operating around the core innovation of "social shopping". Social shopping is a shopping method where consumers use their scale advantage to negotiate product discounts with sellers. Although there are clear signs that the enthusiasm for social shopping has faded, Gaopeng Group is still focused on proving this concept, systematically adjusting the website interface, acquiring the soon to be bankrupt competitor LivingSocial, and possibly entering the travel group buying field - which is not a wise move. At the same time, the company's failure to adhere to fundamental principles has led to a surge in operating costs. Before and after going public, the company had a dispute with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over embarrassing accounting errors. By mid-2018, the market value of Gaopeng Group had dropped by over 70% compared to its listing in 2011, and its sales revenue had been declining since 2014.

It is not only the staunch followers of lean philosophy who have missed the market "forest" due to their obsession with existing customer "trees". TiVo is an American television recording technology company that launched digital video recorders in 1999 and was the first to popularize the product, earning it the reputation of a disruptive innovator. Soon, it became synonymous with video on demand services: TiVo, as the company name, became a verb meaning to record a program for later viewing. However, since then, the company has been overtaken by Internet based streaming media applications, which have broken the pay TV business model in a more thorough way, including Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.

TiVo continues to make incremental improvements to its products and license its technology, but many of the company's key patents are about to expire. Although TiVo was acquired by entertainment software company Rovi in 2016, its market value has still fallen by two-thirds in the past five years. At present, it has outsourced its hardware and retail business, but it has recently denied the possibility of conducting further mergers and acquisitions.

In the fiercely competitive jungle of smartphone applications, the problem of instant saturation is even more severe. There, if the continuous improvement of technology cannot create potential new value, it usually means the end of the fate of the enterprise. In this regard, product developers often get the focus wrong.

Taking Zynga as an example, it is a very successful game developer that has developed many popular games such as FarmVille, but it almost fell on the ups and downs of Draw Something. As a drawing and guessing game, "Draw and Guess" attracted 16 million players in just a few weeks after its release in 2012. But in the following months, due to the company's inability to find a suitable alternative game, players quickly lost out. Although the company's revenue situation has recently improved, it is still unknown whether it can develop the next popular game.

Although many cases come from start-up companies, the impulse to lean can also affect existing and asset intensive enterprises. The popular trend in the communication, utility, and financial services industries is to outsource research and engineering operations. However, such actions often harm a company's innovation capabilities and increase the risk of being disrupted.

Establish a capital structure that is destined to fail.

Lean management can indeed be effective in the field of corporate finance: in selecting investors, the number should be as small as possible, the investment period should be as long as possible, and at the same time, heavy debt should be avoided. The high leverage capital structure is only applicable during periods of exceptional growth for the company. If the market contracts, even if only moderately, traditional creditors will soon become nervous. At critical moments when innovative investment activities affect a company's survival and future expansion, they may encourage or even force the company to reduce its investment scale.

Short term creditors will directly come to the door to exert pressure. In this way, value will be confined at the customer level. Users see the potential value that the next wave of innovation may unleash and are expected to slow down their purchasing pace. In other words, a downturn does not necessarily mean advocating frugality, but implies accelerating the development speed of the next generation of innovation. If a company lacks the funds or freedom to ride the next wave, it may be left behind. The credit crisis will not only remain unresolved, but will also further intensify. For example, Tao'er Records has long relied heavily on debt financing to drive expansion, with debt levels even reaching $300 million at one point. The heavy debt burden has brought great financial pressure to the company, and with the sharp decline in record sales at the beginning of the 21st century, this pressure ultimately overwhelmed the company.

In 2000, Tao'er Records lost $10 million and nearly $100 million the following year. As expected, creditors tightened the reins and cut off any hope of re creation through investing in emerging online services. In 2004, Tao'er Records filed for bankruptcy, leaving creditors with 85% of the company's shares and $80 million in debt relief.

Let's take a look at the large children's toy chain store Toys R Us, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017 and permanently closed its stores in 2018. The media inevitably attributes the company's failure to its inability to compete with online companies that offer better and cheaper products, such as Amazon. The seeds of its sudden collapse have already been planted, and all of this is related to unsustainable debt.

In 2005, Toys R Us was acquired by private equity investors for nearly $7 billion, and has since been burdened with heavy cheap debt. Afterwards, it continued to engage in refinancing until the outbreak of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. When the company applied for bankruptcy, it had to pay $400 million a year to repay $5 billion in debt, which far exceeded its expenses on stores and computer systems.

除了资本，那些脆弱的公司通常还背负着其他不必要的长期负担，从而限制了未来的灵活性。对既有公司来说，未来负债包括多年期租约、基于债务融资的设备采购，以及可能严重限制管理层改变经营策略能力的长期外包合约等。

初创公司一般不存在这样的问题，但它们经常会产生过高的运营成本，包括提供午餐、慷慨的休假政策、免费的日托，以及在高端写字楼租赁办公室等。如果这些成本所占的比例过高，那么对初创公司来说同样危险，尤其是在市场突然变化的时候。

比如，野心勃勃的商业无人机软件初创公司Airware于2011年成立，在7年后的2018年，它突然倒闭，共烧掉了超过1亿美元的风险融资。

钱去了哪里呢？这家公司总是不计后果地更改战略，一度要自行制造无人机，后又准备转型成为行业顾问。它并购了其他初创公司，甚至成立了自己的无人机投资基金。

正如该公司创始人承认的，Airware的软件一向过于复杂，很难兼容现有的无人机硬件。在等待行业迎头赶上的同时，它并没有选择保留现金，反而推出了一系列昂贵的变通方案，拒绝放弃成为行业最先进企业的雄心。

一名前雇员在接受TechCrunch（美国一个科技类博客）网站的采访时说：“Airware善于从谷歌、欧特克（Autodesk）等公司挖极具天赋的、身价不菲的人才。我们这里甚至还有SpaceX（美国太空探索技术公司）和美国宇航局（NASA）的前雇员。Airware在招人方面从不吝惜金钱。”

失去领导者。

无论是在初创公司还是在企业孵化器的新产品开发领域，最佳做法通常都是尽快迫使创新者卸任领导职务。外部的风险投资者和内部的风险委员会会在组织运营方面给予有远见的创业者相当大的自由，有时候这种信任是非常随意的。这种情况会一直持续到某种成功产品上市为止。

但一旦有了真正的客户，投资者和企业监督者就会迅速推动富有经验的管理层或“成人监督层”（adult supervision）接管公司的日常运营。创始人常常会被边缘化，被安置到角色有限的工程岗位上， 比如雅虎（Yahoo）的杨致远和推特（Twitter）的埃文·威廉姆斯（Evan Williams）等。由于缺少了持续创新的资源或激励机制，他们很快就会辞职。之后，他们通常会继续成立初创公司，并拉他们最信任的同事入伙。

在创始人出走之后，公司或部门的领导问题将会变得更加严重。随着禁锢价值缺口的不断扩大，这个问题总会早早地到来。富有经验的经理人最终会将重点放到原创产品的改进上，而原创产品往往会成为新进入者突然竞争的目标，因为它们随时都准备获取更新的价值释放技术，而且不会固守此前颠覆者采用的、或已过时的商业模式。

由于富有远见的领导者已经出走，所以这些公司可能会觉得它们别无选择，只能加倍下注现有策略。这样一来，一旦市场出现变化，它们就更容易陷入困境。比如，在创始人离开之后，雅虎未能找到充分利用其搜索引擎的新方式，也未能在其他领域找到实现多元化发展的新方式。

我们来看看谷歌的做法。在富有经验的首席执行官埃里克· 施密特（Eric Schmidt）稳定了核心的搜索和广告产品之后，该公司董事会意识到，严重依赖于单一产品的爆炸式增长是不可持续的。于是，他们又把谷歌最初的创始人请回公司，让其担任领导职务，从而激发了公司前所未有的大胆创新。

同样，史蒂夫·乔布斯（Steve Jobs）也是二次掌舵。在他富有经验的继任者未能推出消费者想要的产品之后，苹果又把他请了回来，而他也由此成为这家公司更辉煌的化身。

与之相对，雅虎则在一系列旨在推动业务转型的战略问题上苦苦挣扎，但在制定这些战略时，公司管理层却没有认真倾听用户的需求。当所有这些努力失败之后，在投资者的压力下，该公司以45亿美元的价格被出售给威瑞森（Verizon），这一价格与雅虎2000年1 250亿美元的市值峰值相去甚远。

多年来，雅虎一直是互联网搜索的主宰者，但自2004年谷歌占据第一位置之后，它就再也没有翻身过。在威瑞森并购雅虎时，谷歌的市值已经超过了6 400亿美元。

一切为了华尔街。

公众投资者以及为公众投资者提供建议的研究分析师，比持有公司债务的债权人更保守。那些过早上市的、深受追捧的初创公司发现投资者已经成为一种障碍—他们口口声声说想看到更具颠覆性的创新，但当利润增速没有达到预期时，他们又会打击公司股价，抨击公司管理层。

同样，成熟公司也会受制于老派的华尔街分析师：他们会把关注重点放到公司的日常绩效上，因而常常错失更深层次的、严重影响行业现状的颠覆性趋势和技术。公司捕获不断增长的禁锢价值的努力被延迟，因为它们的战略总是被强势的投资者改写，有时在这方面还会陷入致命循环。

色拉布和蓝围裙（Blue Apron）等公司的管理团队已经在全力平衡动态战略与公众需求之间的关系。这两家公司均在2017 年上市， 时间上可能过早了，而且自上市之后，它们都经历了关键高管的离职和股价的大幅下跌。

对2011 年上市的商业网络先驱领英（LinkedIn）来说，它陷入困境的原因很多，但更主要的是，由于几次都未能产生华尔街期望的收入，这导致公司上市5 年后股价暴跌。这使得领英成为一个对微软颇有吸引力的并购目标。微软认为它能够且现在已基本恢复了领英昔日的光彩。

对年轻公司来说，为取悦股东而改变战略的做法很快就会危及其使命，而最终结果就是让所有人失望。手工艺商品先驱易集（Etsy）于2015 年上市，时任首席执行官的查德·迪克森（Chad Dickerson）将零售投资者的单人投资上限设为2 500 美元，以此确保公司的社会和政治使命继续居于优先地位。

上市两年以来，公司成本暴涨。与此同时，易集手工艺品卖家对一项允许在该网站销售制成品的决定产生了疑惑。两相叠加，激进投资者迫使迪克森出局，与他一同离开的还有易集8% 的雇员。

易集由此放弃了它作为一家具有社会意识的“B 公司”（B Corp） 的地位，而其所承诺的公益公司（public-benefit corporation）重组计划也就不了了之。虽然专业管理提升了公司的收入和股价，但易集佣金的提升也疏远了一些生产者，而更多的实验计划则胎死腹中。对易集来说，上市并没有帮助它达到提升品牌和迅速扩张业务的目的；相反，过早上市给它造成的损害可能多于给它带来的好处。

让我们来对比一下易集和亚马逊：亚马逊首席执行官杰夫·贝佐斯（Jeff Bezos）每年花在投资者关系上的时间只有6个小时，而这也是他深以为傲的。亚马逊不遗余力地开展分析师教育，告诉他们不要只关注短期利润，而是要把重点放到新业务上，比如无人机送货、亚马逊智能音箱Echo、亚马逊智能助理Alexa，以及针对物联网的大规模投资等。

虽然贝佐斯和他的管理团队持续不断地将收入用于再投资，但他们这样做是为了在未来创造更多的价值。可以想象，如果贝佐斯依照传统投资者的意愿，仅仅围绕成功的在线书店业务不断地优化和迭代更新，那么价值就会被禁锢。

凭靠运气。

在一个可通过组合互换性硬件和软件组件打造新产品和新服务的时代，越来越多的公司打破纪录，在最短的时间里实现数十亿美元的估值—有时还是公开市场的估值。这些“独角兽”的估值似乎并不是基于投资基本面，而是单纯基于早期用户的热情和未来的预期收入。近乎完美的市场信息造就了“赢者通吃”的成功。

无论是初创公司还是既有企业，在推出一款被证明是大爆炸式颠覆者的产品后，领导者往往会产生一种战无不胜的感觉。对企业来说，在很大程度上靠意外走红而取得的成功往往会被视为有先见之明的管理决策的结果，这是一种危险的幻象。更糟糕的是，业内会出现围绕公司首席执行官的个人崇拜现象。在此情况下，首席执行官会高估自己的能力，不再倾听客户的心声， 也不再从自身错误中吸取教训，反而沉醉于发表主旨演讲或就时下大事发表评论。经理人缺乏自主权，只能等最新指令，而不是将精力用于分析。成功中孕育着失败。

自以140 亿美元的估值上市之后，推特一直没有实现华尔街期望的收入和增速。付费推文、投票和长推文等新功能的引入惹恼了很多长期用户，他们甚至在推特自己的平台上对推特表示不满。与此同时，公司管理层就像一道旋转门，关键高管和工程师接连离开。

此外，推特的用户增长也呈放缓趋势。不过，最近通过削减薪酬、研发、销售和市场营销等方面的成本开支，以及基于新功能带来的收入增长，该公司已经实现了扭亏为盈。

将高估值视为个人天才成就的经理人也可能会破坏产品的优雅设计。在发布最初产品时被他们明智过滤的那些花哨功能，可能会出现在之后的产品中，从而疏远了最初推动产品成功的忠实用户。

举例来说，初创公司奥克卢斯（Oculus）开发的虚拟现实头戴式显示设备原型机在2014 年消费电子展（CES）赢得了“最佳展品奖”。几个月后，该公司被脸书以20 亿美元的价格收购。

但由于过度设计，该公司第一款商用产品直到2016 年才上市， 而售价800 美元的全套设备则让消费者望而却步，严重压制了他们的热情。

在此期间，宏达电（HTC）、索尼（Sony）和三星（Samsung）等公司开发的产品在第一年的销量就超过了备受期待的Oculus Rift（一款为电子游戏设计的头戴式显示器），奥克卢斯只占了总销量的4%。整体而言，虚拟现实硬件的销售已经趋于疲软，而早期的过度宣传也让消费者对这项技术的能力产生了怀疑。

这绝不是虚拟现实理念的失败，也不是虚拟现实在4个层面释放巨大禁锢价值的失败。它是市场洞见的失败，即错误地认为这家超级公司会塑造未来市场。

服务监管者而非客户。

当更好、更便宜的产品迅速瓦解某一成熟市场时，目瞪口呆的既有企业就会求助于它们的长期监管者，希望后者将“叛乱者”驱逐出市场或至少为它们争取更多应对时间。在金融服务（金融科技）、航空（无人机）、酒店（爱彼迎）和医疗保健（基因检测）等行业，既有企业首先会游说监管机构彻底查禁颠覆者。

当消费者代表颠覆者进行反击时，监管者就会退回到那些草率制定的且往往会造成严重后果的新规则上，而对于初创公司与既有公司在产品或服务上的区别，这些新规则了解甚少，甚或一无所知。讽刺的是，其结果往往是社会层面上的禁锢价值越积越多，旨在运用技术提升更广大人口生活质量的创新被人为地放缓了步伐，这些创新甚至还可能偏离轨道，进入生产率更低的领域。在这种情况下，被延迟的梦想意味着潜在的价值未被释放。

此外，政府也越来越担心信息革命带来的潜在社会成本，特别是一些实力强大的公司的影响。这些公司收集和利用消费者数据，通过广告收入推动免费在线服务的发展。目前，这种担忧正转化为新的监管规则，其或在无意中支持了那些有能力承担高昂合规成本的大公司。比如，在2018 年， 欧盟（European Union）实施了一项涵盖广泛的新法律—《通用数据保护条例》（General Data Protection Regulation），那些违反数据使用原则或滥用消费者数据的公司将会面临巨额罚款。

然而，在该法律生效后的头6 个月，有强有力的证据表明，该监管规则进一步提升了谷歌、亚马逊和脸书等巨头在在线广告领域原本就已经很高的市场份额。与此同时，欧洲初创公司获得的投资总体上呈大幅下跌趋势，原因就是市场考虑到了该地区的高合规成本。对新公司来说，高额罚款可能会让它们直接关门。

正如该案例表明的，初创公司现在必须尽可能早地聘请法律顾问，并将其极其稀缺的资源从公司建设中转移出来，用于处理与市议会、公用事业委员会和立法听证会等有关的事务。在世界各地， 优步、爱彼迎和其他共享经济企业已经在为争夺经商权而奋战，不接受既有酒店企业和交通运输公司的监管规则是完全不可能的。

对初创公司来说，重点关注监管者会产生潜在风险。急于留在行业内的颠覆者可能很快就会形成对监管者的依赖关系，就像既有企业对监管者的依赖一样。初创公司突然有了律师和顾问，就会更加谨小慎微。它们也认为它们可以以法律为壁垒，将下一代的创新者隔离在外。它们可能会赢得监管战，但这样做的结果是，它们将会失去前行的动力，而且可能会失去那些早先给予它们深刻同情的客户。

对客户抱有不切实际的期望。

“赢者通吃”的现象意味着购买颠覆性产品和服务的客户会一同全部出现，但在产品和服务的未来销售以及后续产品和服务的市场规模方面，这些客户往往会释放混乱的信号。特斯拉就是一个例子：当某种新产品出现时，消费者利用社交媒体和其他电子渠道发出信号，认为这是必备品，结果就是突然的抢购，紧接着就是迅速陷入沉寂。埃弗雷特·罗杰斯相对温和的钟形使用模式已经不复存在，存在的只是“鲨鱼鳍”形的使用模式。

以智能手表为例，它实际上是一款可穿戴的智能手机产品。2015年，苹果以相对较高的价位推出苹果手表（Apple Watch）。上市首日，便有超过100万的美国客户预订了该产品。然而，智能手表的替换周期并不像智能手机和平板电脑那样，由新功能、新外观或新硬件驱动而导致频繁换机。虽然现在苹果是可穿戴技术的领导者，但苹果手表的销量还是趋于沉寂，而很多早期的行业领导者，要么已经出现衰退，要么已经倒闭关门。

不幸的是，初期大获成功的公司往往会把早期销量视为未来增长的迹象。由于预计会有更多的客户和新的细分市场，习惯于钟形曲线的经理人会投入高昂的资源，扩大生产和配送网络，为实际上再也不会出现的后续销售做准备。他们招聘客服人员，打造生产和配送设施，开展市场营销活动，扩大销售渠道，投资高成本的专项信息技术网络，而待他们做好这一切之后，产品已经无人问津了。

或者更糟糕的是，他们生产了大量库存，但很快就发现这些产品无论以什么价格都已卖不出去。游戏开发商THQ在2010年凭借其为任天堂Wii（一款家用游戏机）生产的一款绘图平板电脑而大获成功，之后便贸然行动，大举投资，为其他游戏平台生产新的平板产品。

但随着苹果iPad（苹果的平板电脑）的发布，消费者的需求突然转向了与游戏机分离的独立绘图应用产品。THQ 仍在生产它的平板电脑，最终库存积压达到了140 万台。这家公司只得申请破产保护，就此销声匿迹。事发之后，THQ 的新总裁詹森·鲁宾（Jason Rubin）承认说：“我也不知道怎么会发生这种情况。”

且不论资源和库存的多寡，当企业应提早缩小投资规模时，如果没有缩小反而扩大了投资规模，就会产生禁锢价值。

信息来源：36氪