The outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic has a turning point for everyone. After the watershed of the epidemic, some changes have taken place in our cognition, lifestyle, consumption behavior, etc. Enterprise management methods, operation models, and economic and social development paths have also changed due to the epidemic.
What can we do? What needs to be done to cope with the changes now and in the future? There is a word that has been frequently mentioned recently – long-termism. What is “long-termism”? Do not pursue quantity, but strive to look long-term to see if the company can continue to create value for the society. Doing one thing continuously will give people the illusion of “life has thickness”. The accumulation of successive superpositions makes people feel that “I” is not an isolated point, not a separate “here and now”, but a coherent and extending line.
A McKinsey study also found that companies that pursued a long-term strategy had an average market capitalization of $7 billion higher than companies that pursued only short-term goals, with average revenue growth rates that were 47 percent higher and profits 36 percent higher. Bezos, Zhang Yiming, Lei Jun, Zhang Lei, He Xiaopeng and others have mentioned their belief in long-termism more than once in public. At the heart of this book is long-termism. In challenging times, a true long-termist will focus on short-term performance while investing in long-term growth to achieve personal and corporate sustainability.
The author of this book is the first executive in the history of General Electric to be promoted by leapfrog, Goldway, the former CEO of Honeywell. When he took over Honeywell in 2002, it was on the brink of bankruptcy. The owners of the company only focus on completing the immediate performance, even at the expense of financial fraud to achieve their goals. When he left office in 2018, the company revived into a global top 500 technology giant, and its market value soared from $20 billion to $120 billion, with an astonishing 800% return on investment. Goldway is a practitioner of long-termism. Based on the long-term development of the company, he proposed a set of management strategies, which is why Honeywell has always been good for a long time and continues to create history. After leaving Honeywell, Goldway brought together his management philosophy into this book. Reading this book, people can know that long-termism is not just a slogan, but the essence of the management of the company where Goldwell works.
Showing actual combat experience is the biggest feature of this book. For example, the book talks about making strategy a part of daily life, and the author lists the specific operation methods in detail. In order to further strengthen the momentum of long-termism at Honeywell and make corporate strategy a daily part of employees, he requires that each business unit must provide monthly reports on the following five matters related to the company’s overall strategy: growth, production capacity, cash position , employees, and Honeywell operating systems. He mandated that leaders at all levels must schedule some form of strategic thinking workshop every week, and these kinds of events help everyone pay more attention to their own market changes.
Similar to this, readers can learn that Goldway has made a series of adjustments and optimizations to the company’s management thinking, organizational process, corporate culture, investment and growth model, and personnel system. It reversed the short-term behavior of the whole company, and achieved rapid growth while bringing the company back to life.
The book puts forward 10 management principles of “win in the present, win in the future”. All the principle introductions and theoretical analysis, Gal Dewei explained and analyzed from his short stories of Honeywell management, combining theory with practice, and many business managers can even directly apply some of the views in the book. For individuals and business managers, it is of great guiding significance to understand the long-term thinking and decision-making model through this book and apply it to personal and business activities.
