Today, when I was having tea and chatting with my friend, I heard my friend tell the story of "Lao Wang Build a House". Coincidentally, when I first arrived at my original workplace, my colleague Lao Huang shared this story with me:
Lao Wang has been a carpenter all his life and has built houses for his boss all over the country. Seeing that he was old, his legs were not very flexible, and it was not convenient to go up and down. He was finally about to retire, so he found his boss and said that he would leave the carpenter industry and go home to enjoy family happiness with his wife and children. Although the boss was a little reluctant, he also understood that time was ruthless, so he asked him if he could help build the last house. The old carpenter reluctantly agreed. The boss saw it, but said nothing.
However, everyone can see later that Lao Wang's heart is no longer at work. He uses soft materials and produces rough work.
When the house was built, the boss handed him the key to the door and said warmly: "This is your house. You have been with me for most of your life. This is the retirement gift I gave you."
The old carpenter was stunned and ashamed.
Just imagine: If he had known that he was building a house for himself, what would he do?
20 years ago when I heard Lao Huang share this story, I just thought it was a pity for the carpenter Lao Wang. Why can't I stick to the end and build the last house?
20 years ago, we spent most of our time working except to sleep. It can almost be said that at that time, work was life, and life was work.
20 After 20, we chose to start a business and always think about work, walking on thin ice and trembling. We hope that the company can have a good development, hope that the team will work well, and hope that the team will live well.
20 Today, when I heard this story again, I had a different experience.
First of all: Under what mentality did Lao Wang build the last house?
Let’s find a clue in the story: running around, working all your life, enduring until retirement age, wanting to leave the carpenter industry...
Let’s think from the perspective of others and subjectively infer: Perhaps Lao Wang does not like to be a carpenter. Like most people in that era, he may have been apprenticed with his master since childhood because of some opportunity or the order of his parents, and then embarked on this endless, day after day work path.
Perhaps, Lao Wang has never liked this job. This job was just when his parents arranged for him to be an apprentice with the old carpenter in the village, and then he started working everywhere with his boss, repeating the movements he learned from his master day after day and mechanically.
Or maybe, he has never loved this job; maybe he has had such a little love, but he has not received timely recognition and feedback from his colleagues and bosses.
From this perspective, combined with my current entrepreneurial path, the biggest inspiration for me is: what does every character in our team like to do the most? What are you best at? What do they love?
changed to a role similar to Lao Wang. I recalled my mentality when I was working in the system: Am I also tired of dealing with it? Stay up and live? The boss only takes one step by one? Even if you want to leave this industry in the end?
It can be seen that love is the driving force for doing a good job. After enduring life, you will end up losing your time and life.
You may ask readers, what should I do if I don’t like it or can’t love it?
I want to borrow what Teacher Chen Haixian said when he answered a couple who wanted to improve their relationship when they came to consult:
"Teacher Chen, I no longer love my husband/wife, what should I do?"
"Then you can try your best to love him/her through various details!" Teacher Chen Haixian answered patiently and firmly.
This is true for life and work.
Secondly: How did the boss deal with Lao Wang’s demand for retirement?
In the past, we changed our position to Lao Wang's role, subjectively inferred Lao Wang's status at that time, and then changed our position to the boss to boldly analyze it.
Let’s think about the following questions:
1. In his daily work, did the boss tell Lao Wang in time which house he built well? Which building is not well built?
2. When the boss saw that Lao Wang "reluctantly agreed", he did not see it and not say it, but immediately called Lao Wang and pointed it out clearly to him. Will the effect be different?
3. If the boss told Lao Wang in advance that the house was built by him himself, what would the result be?
Facing these three questions, I believe that different people’s understandings are different answers. Let me tell you my personal opinion:
is aimed at 1. Most of the time, I will be willing to point out the good ones in a timely manner, and point out the bad ones immediately, and correct them if there is, and encourage them if there is nothing.
is for 2. I may point it out selectively. I will point it out at the beginning, but if I often do this and don’t change it after repeated teachings, I may consider giving up. A single mistake is a very important characteristic of doing things; even if sometimes it is inevitable that a second mistake is made, it depends on whether it is a subjective mistake or an objective and unconscious mistake. Making mistakes subjectively cannot be forgiven; making mistakes objectively but not summarizing them in time and correcting them carefully is also unleashable.
For 3. Some things are not convenient to say everything without the time, just like life never tells you the final answer in advance.
Writing this, careful readers may have found that effective communication is indeed very important. Only when effective communication is formed can the way of thinking be gradually converge. This is true for
, which is why I give everyone in the team a book "Methods of Communication" that I can't spend.
First reach a consensus of concepts and thinking modes, and then implement them in daily communication mechanisms, so as to form a team with outstanding combat effectiveness.
Again: What would happen if Lao Wang had built this last house seriously and responsibly?
Obviously, this is a heart-wrenching question, because Lao Wang may have been asking himself this question after retirement, or he is often complained by his wife and children for various renovations of the house in the future (because he did not build the house carefully at that time), and he himself may often fall into deep annoyance and self-blame.
In addition to seeing the heart-wrenching aspects of this problem, more questions arose in my mind?
1. Lao Wang has been a carpenter all his life, so why hasn’t he been promoted to become a carpenter foreman?
Let’s boldly speculate whether there are several possibilities behind this:
The owner’s business is not big, just hired two small workshops for carpenters, and worked like this all his life.
There is another possibility. The boss's business is not small, but because Lao Wang accompanied the boss to start a business, there is no big problem with his character. However, Lao Wang does not seek progress and does not know how to lead a team, so he has always been sticking to his own field. In the end, the boss is nostalgic, so he stays behind him and gives him an explanation.
Of course, there may be other possibilities, but one thing is certain: Lao Wang has not made continuous progress.
2. Lao Wang is so old, why do you still have to work on the front line "high and low, up and down"?
We also analyze with a close eye whether there are several possibilities:
The job of a carpenter building a house is an experience job, the older he gets, the more valuable he is. He must be on the front line to reflect his value. But if you think about it carefully, you will know that normal work will not reach the difficulty of being someone.
Or, Lao Wang did not bring out a decent apprentice, so he must be fighting on the front line himself, even if he is about to retire.
No matter what the reason is, Lao Wang’s years of work experience has not been passed down and he has not brought out a decent apprentice, which is a problem in itself.
Whether the problem lies with the boss or Lao Wang, it is worth reflecting on and learning from.
3. Why didn’t Lao Wang get his boss rehired as an expert, or win a position to guide new employees to do training?
Lao Wang said that he wanted to retire, leave the carpenter industry, and go home to accompany his family. At this time, although the boss was a little reluctant, he did not try to keep him, but made up his mind to give Lao Wang an explanation, but did not tell Lao Wang about this explanation in advance.
shows that the boss has no intention of rehiring Lao Wang. Even if there is, he hopes to see if Lao Wang’s attitude towards doing the last thing and whether he can start and end well.
Unfortunately, Lao Wang did not take the last thing seriously, but dealt with it. This is enough to make the boss give up rehiring him.
He thought he would just deal with his boss and just do it perfunctorily, but he didn't expect to end up perfunctorily.
This is how life is. You think you perfunctory it, but in fact you end up perfunctory yourself.
is written later:
Inamori Kazuo combined with his valuable experience in establishing two listed companies and being ordered to lead JAL out of the dilemma in the face of danger, he proposed three elements that determine life and work results, namely thinking style, enthusiasm and ability.
Not only that, he also gave the formula for life results: Life results = way of thinking * enthusiasm * ability . In other words, the result of life is determined by the product of these three.
The way of thinking is life attitude, which can be from negative 100 points to positive 100 points. Different ways of thinking will change by 180 degrees in the results of life and work.
Passion and ability can be scored from zero to one hundred points respectively. Because it is a multiplication relationship, compared with those who think they are strong in self-awareness, pride and complacent, and unwilling to work hard, those who think they are mediocre but work harder than anyone else can achieve better results.
A careful readers may find that the three analysis in Lao Wang’s previous story corresponds to passion, thinking style and ability, and are intertwined.
The difference between building a house is that a house can be rebuilt if it is not built well, and life is the only creation of your life and cannot be smoothed out and rebuilt.
Different people have different work concepts, and the same person also has different work concepts in different eras. Continuously maintaining the enthusiasm for learning and continuously improving their abilities, so that they can achieve the state of life they want.
I hope you can get inspiration from this story and welcome to leave a message to communicate, make progress together and grow together!
[Self-introduction]: Life is easy, life is easy, but life is not easy; what we can do is to understand the present with our heart, explore and witness the colorful life.
