Five principles of knowledge-based employee manage

For knowledge intensive enterprises, especially software enterprises, intellectual resources are the driving force for the survival and development of enterprises. In a sense, the success of such enterprises depends entirely on the "quality" of the intellectual resources they explore and the mechanism of applying resources. Take Microsoft Asia Engineering Institute as an example. It has only been established for more than two years, and the engineering institute has recruited more than 300 employees (excluding logistics support and service personnel). Each of them fully conforms to Peter Drucker's definition of "knowledge worker with the characteristics of simple structure, convenient use, small size, light weight, intuitive reading and so on". From the perspective of the academic composition of employees, about 80% of them have master's degrees, and 15% and 5% of them have doctoral degrees and bachelor's degrees respectively. It is no exaggeration to say that these people can be called elite figures in the field of software research and development in China. Then, how can we effectively stimulate their work passion, release their innovation potential, and turn these "passion" and "potential" into the driving force for the continuous growth and progress of Microsoft Asia Engineering Institute

in my opinion, the management of "knowledge workers" must follow five "rules" - although the environment and culture, values and employment mechanism of each enterprise are very different, in the final analysis, the result of management depends on the leader, the essence of management is communication, and the effect of communication is affected by factors such as object quality, communication objectives, information quality and expression methods. This requires enterprise leaders to be insightful, reasonable and responsible, so as to achieve the double harvest of enterprise value and employee personal value

the first rule of knowledge-based employee management is: as long as the right person is recruited, the management will be half successful

"Recruitment" is not only the "simple task" of enterprise human resource managers, but also a core work of common concern and collective participation of enterprise management. Thomas H. Davenport is the director of Accenture Institute for strategic change. In the article "knowledge management of Microsoft Corporation", he mentioned that Microsoft's competitive advantage lies in "high-quality employees", and Microsoft's demand for "high-level talents" stems from "the rapidly changing nature of its competitive field" - in fact, any competitive participant in a rapidly innovating and violently turbulent industry, Both face the same problem as Microsoft, that is, how to find real "high-level talents" from so many candidates - it is obvious that employing excellent knowledge-based employees can effectively reduce the management cost of enterprises and the management difficulty of leaders at all levels of enterprises

when Microsoft Asia Engineering Institute (including other Microsoft institutions) is recruiting, it is bound to expand. What foam granulator attaches most importance to is not the "knowledge" of knowledge-based employees, but their personality and "attitude" - whether they are honest, good at cooperating with others, and whether their attitude towards things is positive or negative, etc. Although it is not possible to understand a person through oneortwo interviews, we can "see the ice in a bottle of water and know the cold in the world and the hidden place of fish and turtles". Through the unique and rigorous interview process and well-designed interview links, we can still roughly perceive whether a candidate is compatible with Microsoft's values

in addition to personality and attitude, we also pay attention to whether the candidate's basic knowledge is solid. I firmly believe that impetuous people cannot have a solid knowledge foundation - of course, it is difficult to make impeccable products. In addition, the creative potential is also quite important. Students who grow up under China's education system often lack the spirit of hard work, and the continuous improvement of national strength since the reform and opening up has also made the new generation of talents more confident than before, but the general lack of creativity is still a practical problem. Software is both a science and an art. People who lack imagination and creativity are not easy to succeed in the software industry. Therefore, in the selection process, we will focus on assessing the applicant's programming ability and ideas to solve practical problems, which can enable us to quickly capture the creative sparks usually submerged in the applicant's miscellaneous thoughts

the second rule of knowledge-based employee management is to help employees realize their career dreams according to their personal interests and pursuits

in addition to salary and welfare, knowledge workers are of course most concerned about the development of personal growth space and the upgrading of ability. They are often well-educated and have attracted the attention of their families, classmates and teachers because of their outstanding talents in the process of growing up. Because of this, they often have high expectations of themselves. However, in a relatively balanced working environment, these people will soon find that it is difficult to find the previous feeling of "standing out from the crowd", and everyone's knowledge and ability are at almost the same level - some people are even higher. Therefore, some people with low inverse quotient may have psychological fluctuations. Managers must create a suitable atmosphere to let all employees know that they can learn a lot from their colleagues. Being with the strong will only make them stronger, so as to help them work with passion - rather than stop there and complain about their fate. At the same time, managers should also patiently examine the expertise of employees, so as to clarify their interests and pursuit trends, and encourage them to follow their dreams and unleash their potential - in any job, interest will be the driving force for employees' continuous progress, and pursuit will be the light that illuminates the road to the ultimate goal

Microsoft Asia engineering institute holds two large-scale internal meetings every year, namely "mid year career discussion" and "year-end career review". The mid year meeting is mainly for employees to talk about their ideas for the long-term development of their career, as well as their learning gains and shortcomings. At the same time, employees also have to score their boss - we hope to grasp the ideological changes of employees and understand their needs in time through this form

if conditions permit, managers should provide employees with an extremely broad stage - the ideas of knowledge workers about their personal career can be roughly divided into two types: one is to follow a certain linear development path. These people have clear goals, and they are eager to conquer, surpass, and challenge higher - in response to such needs, Microsoft Asia Engineering Institute provides employees with ceiling free room to rise. Promotion does not depend on seniority, let alone the boss's "one word determines the world". As long as employees show extraordinary strength in a certain job, they will be found and promoted. Another kind of employees always want to try to explore new professional fields. For example, software designers and developers want to work in Program Manager (PM). At this time, they can put forward requirements to managers, who will arrange them to do something within the scope of PM functions and evaluate their performance. If their performance can meet the requirements of the Engineering Institute for PM, these people will soon take up new positions as they wish. In other words, Microsoft Engineering Asia respects employees' desire to change roles and provides them with a wonderful opportunity for "role translation"

the third rule of knowledge-based employee management is to set up "rungs" for employees to continuously improve their abilities

an environment with "ladder differences" in employees' abilities can encourage people to face up to their shortcomings and actively try to improve. When Microsoft Asia Engineering Institute was just established, I found it difficult to select talents with rich experience in software development process management from many job seekers - this does not mean that domestic students are not excellent, on the contrary, I was impressed by the talent and enthusiasm shown by many job seekers in software development. However, since China's software industry has not yet incubated enterprises capable of developing large-scale software projects, most practitioners are not familiar with the relevant processes and management - in a word, there are relatively few talents who can fight and win. In view of this, while recruiting potential talents from domestic colleges and universities, we recruited a group of experienced "experts" from the United States to lead those extremely hard-working but inexperienced "novices" to gradually become familiar with their business fields. New employees have a strong learning ability. Soon, they will become the role models and models of the next group of employees. The natural formation of steps can always make our employees find room for improvement

Microsoft Asia Engineering Institute took the initiative to learn from the talent training experience of the headquarters and established the "excellent software training department", which will conduct 90 minutes of technology and process management training for employees every week, and encourage them to establish "study groups" in the fields of program manager, software design, development and testing, so as to cultivate a group of talents who are familiar with the software development process and good at project management. In addition, Microsoft Asia Engineering Academy also has a "future star" talent training project, which aims to fully release the potential of excellent software talents. The engineering institute has customized training plans for some employees and provided them with various resources (such as working in the headquarters) to accelerate their growth to the greatest extent. In the future, the project will also be extended to all product R & D departments set up by Microsoft in China

the fourth rule of knowledge-based employee management is to build a "unique" corporate culture

the culture of Microsoft Asia Engineering Academy is different from that of Microsoft headquarters and any Chinese company

at present, there are about 50 experienced and skilled talents returning from overseas in Microsoft Asia Engineering Academy - more than 30 of them are from Microsoft headquarters. In addition, more than 80% of employees are local talents educated in domestic colleges and universities. At the beginning of the founding of the Academy, a major issue we faced was how to make knowledge workers with different thinking habits and cultural backgrounds learn from each other and cooperate tacitly. We have built a Microsoft developer culture with Chinese characteristics - on the one hand, we have turned the engineering institute into a "learning organization" to deepen the understanding of high-quality local talents on the large-scale software development process, strengthen their awareness of collaboration and communication, and cultivate their habit of facing problems and admitting deficiencies; At the same time, it also helps those industry elites who come to China from overseas to understand China more clearly and thoroughly, understand the Academy of engineering, and understand their colleagues around them

from mentor system, we can see a spot of engineering academy culture - "mentor" comes from Homer's epic. Mentor is a good teacher and friend of Odyssey, and Athena becomes the protector and teacher of Telemachus by dressing up as him. In order to make every new employee adapt to the environment of the enterprise in the shortest time, understand their own function definition, and master relevant knowledge and skills, Microsoft Asia Engineering Institute has implemented the montor "system" - when each new employee joins, the company will assign him a senior employee as its mentor. Newcomers can get all necessary help from mentor

on the other hand, the Academy of Engineering emphasizes the "Americanization" of software development process - the United States is the most developed country in the world's software industry. In the past, domestic students wanted to understand this "software kingdom"