Ten laws of management: Matthew Effect, Catfish Effect, Bucket Rule, Murphy's Law

1. The Matthew Effect: You have to be big to keep your edge

The king gave three servants a pound of silver each and told them to do business. 10 cities will be awarded to the servant who earns 10 minas of silver; Reward the servant who earns 5 ingots with 5 cities; To the servant who did not earn money with silver, give his mina to the first. The king said, "He will take from him whatever he has. Give him whatever is much, and the more the merrier." This is the Matthew effect.

For business development, the Matthew effect shows that in order to maintain an advantage in a certain field, you must become big in that field quickly. When you become a leader in a field, you can easily outperform your weaker peers even if your investment returns are the same.

If you don't have the strength to quickly expand in a field, you have to constantly look for new areas of development, in order to ensure better returns.

2. Washington law of Cooperation: There is not always strength in numbers

The law of cooperation in Washington says: one gets things done, two prevaricate, and three never get anything done. Somewhat similar to the story of the Three Monks. The cooperation between people is not the simple addition of human beings, but much more complex and subtle. In the cooperation between people, assuming that everyone's ability is 1, then the cooperation result of 10 people is sometimes much greater than 10, sometimes even less than 1. In our traditional management theory, the research on cooperation is not much, the most intuitive reflection is that most of the current management systems and industries are committed to reducing the unnecessary consumption of manpower, rather than using the organization to improve the effectiveness of people. In other words, it might be said that the main purpose of management is not to make everyone do their best, but to avoid too much internal consumption. Bonny's law of manpower: one man can dig a hole in a minute, but sixty men can't dig a hole in a second. Cooperation is a problem, and so is how to cooperate.

Occam's Razor Law: Solve the fundamental problem

Occam's Razor: Do not add substance unless you want it. If you think the only way to be successful is to be busy and busy, you're wrong. Things always move in the direction of complexity. Complexity leads to waste. Efficiency comes from simplicity. Most of the things you do are probably meaningless. The truly effective activities are only a few of them, and they are often hidden in the clutter. Find the key parts and cut out the extra activity. Success is not that complicated.

Occam's Razor law in business management can be further deepened into the law of simplicity and complexity: making things complicated is simple, and making things simple is complex. This law requires that when we deal with things, we should grasp the main substance of things, grasp the mainstream, and solve the most fundamental problems. In particular, it is necessary to comply with nature and not to make things artificially complicated, so that things can be handled well.

Four, watch theorem: One person can not let two people command

The watch theorem states that a person can know what time it is when he has one watch, but cannot determine when he has two watches. Two watches do not tell a person a more accurate time, but can make the viewer lose confidence in the exact time. All you have to do is choose the more reliable one, try to calibrate it, and use that as your standard and follow its guidance.

Watch theorem in the enterprise management of inspiration, is to the same person or the same organization of management can not use two different methods, can not set two different goals at the same time. Even each person can not be commanded by two people at the same time, otherwise it will make the enterprise or the person at a loss. Another implication of the Watch theorem is that you can't pick and choose two different values at the same time, otherwise, your behavior will be confused.

5. Catfish effect

Previously, sardines had a low survival rate in transit. And it turns out that if you put a catfish in the sardines, the survival rate is much higher. Why is that? The original catfish in a strange environment, will be "impatient", disorderly swimming around, this for a large number of good quiet sardines, undoubtedly played a stirring role; And the sardines found such a "different molecule", naturally also very nervous, accelerated swimming. So the sardines don't have enough oxygen, so they don't die. Later generations called this the "catfish effect."

6. The Peter Principle: Effective rewards don't have to be promotions

Peter's Principle is a conclusion drawn by Lawrence Peter, an American scholar, after studying related phenomena of personnel promotion in organizations -- the habit of promoting competent people at a certain level makes employees always be arranged to their incompetent positions.

This phenomenon is everywhere in real life: a competent professor who is promoted to the presidency of a university is incompetent; A good athlete was promoted to a sports official and did nothing.

For an organization, once a considerable number of personnel are pushed to the level of their incompetence, it will lead to overstaffing and low efficiency of the organization, resulting in mediocre people to excel and stagnant development. Therefore, it is required to change the simple "promotion based on contribution" promotion mechanism of enterprise employees. Because someone has done well in a certain post level, it cannot be inferred that he is qualified for a higher position.

It is necessary to establish a scientific and reasonable personnel selection and recruitment mechanism, objectively evaluate the ability and level of each employee, and arrange the employee to the position that he or she is competent for. Instead of taking job promotion as the main way to reward employees, a more effective reward mechanism should be established, with more salary increases, holidays and other ways as the means of reward.

Law of wine and sewage: Don't let the rat droppings spoil the whole pot

The law of Wine and sewage states that if you pour a spoonful of wine into a bucket of sewage, you get a bucket of sewage; If you pour a spoonful of sewage into a bucket of wine, you will still get a bucket of sewage. In almost any organization, there are a few difficult characters whose sole purpose seems to be to mess things up. Worst of all, they are like rotten apples in a fruit box. If you don't treat them quickly, they can quickly spread and rot the other apples in the fruit box too. The scary thing about "rotten apples" is their incredible destructive power. A man of integrity who enters a chaotic department may be swallowed up, while a man of no virtue and no talent can quickly turn an efficient department into a shambles.

Organizational systems are often fragile, based on mutual understanding, compromise and tolerance, and can easily be violated and poisoned. Another important reason for the ability of the saboteurs is that it is easier to destroy than to build. If there are such people in the organization, they should be eliminated immediately; If you cannot afford to do so, you should.

8. The Law of Unworthiness - Do what is worth doing

The most intuitive statement of the law of unworth is: what is not worth doing is not worth doing well. This reflects the psychology of people who are engaged in a job they think is not worth doing and tend to remain cynical and perfunctory. Not only do they have a low success rate, but even if they succeed, they don't feel much of a sense of accomplishment.

What is worth doing? Work worth doing matches our values, fits our personality and temperament, and gives us a vision of what we want. If your job does not have these three factors, you should consider moving on to a more suitable job and work hard at it.

9 Bucket Law: The shortest board determines the capacity

The law of the bucket states that the amount of water a bucket can hold depends entirely on its shortest piece of wood. This means that any organization may face a common problem, namely, the constituent parts of the organization often determine the level of the organization. The advantages and disadvantages of each part of the organization are not uniform, and the inferior part often determines the level of the entire organization. The "shortest board" is a useful component, but a little worse than the rest, and you can't throw it away as a rotten apple. Strength is only a relative term, can not be eliminated. The question is to what extent you tolerate this weakness. If it's serious enough to become a bottleneck, something has to be done.

If you're in an organization, you should: Make sure you're not the weakest part; Avoid or reduce the impact of this weak link on you; If you are unlucky enough to be in the middle of this process, you can take effective steps to improve, or move on to another job.

Murphy's Law

Murphy's Law was inspired by a captain named Murphy. He thought one of his colleagues was unlucky and casually joked: "If a thing can be messed up, it will be messed up." The phrase spread quickly. Over the years, this "law" has gradually entered the idiom category, and its connotation has been endowed with infinite creativity, with numerous variations, "If something bad is possible, however small the probability, it will happen and cause the greatest possible loss."

"If anything can go wrong, it will.

(Things can and will go wrong), "Smile, tomorrow may not be better than today." "The better it is, the less useful it is." "Don't try to teach the pig to sing. It will not only get no results, but also make the pig unhappy!"

In its own words, Murphy's Law says: If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.(If there are two options, one of which will lead to disaster, then someone will do it. ) According to Murphy's Law,

First, nothing is as simple as it seems;

Two, everything will take longer than you expect;

3. Things that can go wrong will go wrong;

Four, if you fear a situation will happen, it is more likely to happen.