On Three Characteristics of the Chinese Style Management Held by Zeng Shiqiang

Like-minded People Working together Led by a Powerful Leader 
As mentioned above, people-oriented management must have like-minded people working together, 
since making reasonable changes depends on people, because it is people who can think and judge 
before taking action. Only when people are of one mind, can they establish an agreement in essentials 
while differing in minor points. This can be regarded as the foundation for making reasonable 
changes to everybody’s satisfaction. 
Prof. Zeng claims that no matter how big the enterprise is, the administrative level is only 
composed of a few leading figures, whose responsibility is to lead the enterprise to survive the 
competition by relying on the whole staff. 
[2][3][4]
The famous prime minister of Tang Dynasty Wei 
Zheng once said: “If one gentleman is highly thought of and respected, all the gentlemen would 
willingly serve for the royal court, thus all the villains would be driven away; if the evildoers 
dominate the state and keep the state affairs under their control, gentlemen would get excluded from 
the power of the royal court, and the loyal and honest people would be framed and get hurt. Isn’t it 
inevitable for such country to be destroyed?” 
[5]
Therefore, what is most important for the 
management of an organization is to have a united team composed of loyal and honest people with the 
common goal cherished in mind, working together to make contributions for the enterprise’s success. 
If it is made up of a gathering of crowds who have their own axe to grind and bear different interest 
pursuit, they would scatter once with any sign of trouble, and the organization would dissolve. 
At the beginning of the venture, the organization may only have a few like-minded people working 
together, who share the common goal and follow the same path. When the organization expands, it 
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attracts more and more people to join it by its organizational culture. Pro. Zeng thinks that in fact it is 
the organizational culture that brings about the thriving and success. 
[6]
Organizational culture can be 
understood as a kind of belief and also a management strategy, which can be further illustrated by the 
following well-known stories in ancient times. 
The story of 
The Oath of the Peach Garden
is a fictional event in the historical novel 
Romance of 
the Three Kingdoms
. This event is set at the end of the Eastern Han dynasty around the time of 
the Yellow Turban Rebellion in the 180s. Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei took an oath of fraternity 
in a ceremony in the Peach Garden, and became sworn brothers from then on. Their goal in taking the 
oath was to protect the Han Empire from the Yellow Turban rebels. The oath bound the three men, 
who would later play important roles in the establishment of the state of Shu Han during the Three 
Kingdoms period. The Peach Garden Brotherhood of Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei creates the 
best organization pattern, whose organization culture has been cultivated by three of them, and 
attracted many talents of the time to participate in their cause. Finally they founded Shu Han, ranking 
top three of the ancient China of the time, which can be regarded as the rich fruit borne by the 
like-minded people working together with the help of the flexible strategy based upon the constantly 
changing situation.
[7] 
However, from the story of paying three visits to Kongming, people would find that Guanyu and 
Zhuangfei did not agree with Liubei on this issue at the beginning by holding different opinions. For 
Liu Bei, Kong Ming is an unusual and remarkable talent at policy making, and will surely help him to 
seize the power of the world and achieve the social stability at last. For Guan Yu, Kong Ming only 
enjoys undeserved fame in name, but not in reality. For Zhang Fei, Kong Ming is even regarded as an 
uneducated ordinary person. It can be seen that on some occasions it is quite common and normal for 
leaders and his men not to understand each other. Liu Bei successfully persuades his two brothers to 
change their opinions about Kongming, and stops them from doing any unreasonable things just in 
time. At last, Liu Bei succeeded in his quest of the great talent. Prof. Zeng concludes that there must 
be an influential and powerful policy-maker in the organization, which is essential and absolutely 
necessary in having the reasonable policy and decisions successfully made and smoothly 
implemented. Supposing all the members of the organization vie with each other in voicing their own 
different opinions in a chaotic way, supposing tomorrow’s decision reverses today’s verdict, then 
everything would be in a mess for lack of the real power and the last say in the organization to lead 
the whole business. Therefore, an influential decision maker with powerful authority is indispensable 
in the organization. Different from Liu Bei, Cao Cao makes every decision by himself, and under no 
circumstances would he authorize others to do it. Even the people he trusts only play the role of 
reliable assistants rather than decision makers. Cao Cao’s individualistic heroism and Liu Bei’s 
Group participation style represent the different ways of tackling the changing situations, or different 
different organization culture if dealt with from the perspective of organization. To the general public, 
Liu Bei is seemingly neither wise nor brave, but good at making use of talents, which shows his true 
wisdom and talent. 
Prof. Zeng suggests that in the people-oriented Chinese management, the company members are of 
a family, so the concerted effort can create the really unified power in realizing the purpose to bring 
peace and harmony to people. However
，
it is inevitable that people’s individuality can create 
differences. As a good leader, he should respect individual differences and try to bring out the 
harmony through compromising strategy, which can help reconcile contradictions, resolve conflicts, 
assimilate differences and bridge them. A tune cannot be created by repeating a single key, only when 
individual differences are recognized, respected and tolerated, can an organic and harmonious whole 
be yielded to have the conflicts kept in a considerable degree, and to prevent tiny problems rolling 
into large ones, then no chance to maintain the long-term and favorable cooperation of the 
organization! 
Prof. Zeng raises many insightful suggestions about how to settle differences and realize harmony 
in a compromise and modesty manner, such as making expedient self-adjustment for reaching the 
common goal; being careful not to do or to say anything that will hurt the organization’s harmony; 
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taking a humble peaceful attitude to treat everything and people; never employ unscrupulous divisive 
tactics to get a promotion to avoid vicious competition; always taking time out to reflect oneself to 
see if any mistakes have been made; taking consideration of saving “face” while telling the right from 
wrong; carrying on the conversion ponder; being willing to accept reasonable unfairness; trying to 
build staff consensus by means of understanding; putting emphasis on before-after-meeting 
communication, etc.. In a word, adopt humanized management to realize harmony and bring peace to 
all staff.