Jim Collins: And there's multiple pieces if you were eroding your capital structure, taking too big of a risk, we could go through a number of them. But, the biggest one is breaking Packard's Law.
Packard's Law basically says, that if you allow growth in revenues, growth in scale, growth in complexity, growth in new adventures, to exceed your ability to have all of the key seats filled with the right people, to execute on that growth brilliantly, you will fall.
So, really the throttle on growth, the constraint on growth turns out not to be external opportunity, and turns out not to be size of the market,or growth rates, it's one thing above all others.
It's getting enough people in the key seats to execute on that growth brilliantly, which means then if you're an entrepreneur building a new company or a leader in China building a company, one part of it is, "I'm looking out there, what are the opportunities, what are the markets, what are my competitors..." These are all good things to do, but it means shifting your attention to say, but we can't pursue any of it that would break Packard's Law.
So, my first task all the time has to be, how do I get enough of the right people? How do I put them in the right seats? How do I make sure that ability to get the right people keeps up with our opportunities? And then to have the discipline if you see that the growth is much larger than the people that you have, to say no to the growth.
That's what the great ones do, they will say no to the growth. Because if you don't, you will all of a sudden have this gap between your people capacity and the opportunities and you'll leave yourself in peril.
Second, what are the things that happen, how do you know if an undisciplined growth might be happening? Here's something that might seem surprising. I think it comes hand in hand with a rising bureaucracy.
So, think about it this way, so you're going after these new opportunities. You're doing it, doing exciting new things. And all of a sudden once you've got all these, you're starting to have not as high of a proportion of people for key seats. So, what do you do? The right people don't need a lot of rules, a lot of management, a lot of people telling them what to do, because they're the right people. But, because you're starting to get a higher percentage of people who are not the right people. You start putting in place bureaucracies to deal with that, to compensate for that. But, we need rules to say this and rules to say that and then of course, what happens is the right people look at that and they start to chafe.
And they say, and this happens to entrepreneurial companies, you watch entrepreneurial companies rise; they rise with out a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of really great people work really hard getting stuff done. And then all of a sudden it kind of reaches a certain point; it's like we've got to deal with the fact that we've got more people, we've got to make sure people do things, so now we're going to put in a bunch of bureaucracy. And all the people who created this success in the first place say, I didn't sign up for that, I'm out of here. So, those people start to be driven away by the rising bureaucracy, which means the percentage of seats filled by the right people starts to go down, and the response is: well, we need more bureaucracy. Which then, further drives the right people away, and tends to attract more of the wrong people. Which then causes you to put more bureaucracy in place, and you're just in a vicious cycle.
Where if you go the other way, and you're saying, no I'm always going to focus on getting the right people where I have a minimal amount of bureaucratic rules, because the key is I have the right people, rather than the right rules, then what happens is you tend to keep the percentage high and don't get into that doom loop, but it starts over again, with the wrong people.
And I think the third is, we were speaking about the Hedgehog Concept. And again, I've been reflecting on this idea, you know, there may well be a culture- specific fourth circle. I think that's a very, I don't know that yet, but I think it's a very provocative idea that there's a floating circle that is different depending in which culture you're in.
But, in any case, you've got your intersecting circles and an undisciplined leader would say, we're going to do something big and bold and untested, a giant acquisition, a bold move into a new business, that clearly fails the three circle test. You're either not passionate about it, you truly can't be the best in the world at it; or it doesn't fit with your economic engine. Ignore one of those three and if you do that, you're making an undisciplined bid for more and for growth.
So, the interesting thing is, it's not that folks become lackadaisical in order to stay at stage two, and we just sort of let growth go.
What they do is they increase their discipline while they're also increasing their scale, their complexity, their revenues and opportunities. |
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吉姆·柯林斯：過(guò)度冒險(xiǎn)侵蝕資本結(jié)構(gòu)的情況有很多，我們可以說(shuō)幾個(gè)。其中主要的一個(gè)就是對(duì)帕卡德法則的違背。
據(jù)帕卡德法則，如果你放任利潤(rùn)、規(guī)模、復(fù)雜程度和新的業(yè)務(wù)一味增長(zhǎng)，超過(guò)了你的能力所及，導(dǎo)致不能在關(guān)鍵崗位都安排合適的人選來(lái)確保很好的執(zhí)行力，那么你終將失敗。
因此，增長(zhǎng)所受到的限制不是由于外在機(jī)遇，不是由于市場(chǎng)規(guī)?；蛘咴鲩L(zhǎng)率，而是這些之上的因素，那就是要為關(guān)鍵崗位找到關(guān)鍵的人手來(lái)出色地掌管這些業(yè)務(wù)增長(zhǎng)。
如果你是一家新公司的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者，或是中國(guó)一家新公司的建設(shè)者，你的任務(wù)之一就是，“尋找機(jī)遇、尋找市場(chǎng)，了解我的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)者中都有誰(shuí)?！边@些都是有益的方向，但同時(shí)也意味著注意力的轉(zhuǎn)移。一旦違背帕卡德法則，我們就不該追逐這些目標(biāo)。
所以，我的首要任務(wù)一直都應(yīng)該是如何找到足夠多的合適的人手？怎樣將他們安排在合適的崗位上？怎樣確保獲取合適人員的能力伴隨著我們的機(jī)遇一起增長(zhǎng)？之后我們需要堅(jiān)持一個(gè)原則，如果業(yè)務(wù)的增長(zhǎng)遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超出了人力所能應(yīng)付的范圍，那么就應(yīng)舍棄這份增長(zhǎng)的機(jī)會(huì)。
這就是卓越企業(yè)的做法，他們會(huì)拒絕某些增長(zhǎng)機(jī)會(huì)，因?yàn)槿绻贿@樣做，就會(huì)突然在機(jī)遇和人員能力之間拉開(kāi)巨大的差距，從而深陷險(xiǎn)境。
第二，（要考慮）你如何才能發(fā)現(xiàn)正在逐漸產(chǎn)生的混亂無(wú)序的增長(zhǎng)？令人吃驚的是這和不斷增長(zhǎng)的官僚態(tài)度密不可分。
試想一下，你正在追尋新的機(jī)遇，開(kāi)拓令人興奮的新業(yè)務(wù)。突然，當(dāng)這一切都得到了之后，你發(fā)現(xiàn)關(guān)鍵崗位的人手不夠了。這可如何是好？合適的員工不需要規(guī)章約束、不需要太多的管理、不需要很多人去指揮他們，因?yàn)樗麄兪菎徫簧系姆Q(chēng)職人選。但是，如果公司中不合適的人越來(lái)越多，你就必須開(kāi)始設(shè)置官僚機(jī)制來(lái)處理、彌補(bǔ)這些問(wèn)題。于是我們需要這樣那樣的規(guī)章制度，它們的存在會(huì)讓本來(lái)稱(chēng)職的員工產(chǎn)生抵觸。
有人會(huì)說(shuō)，創(chuàng)業(yè)型企業(yè)成長(zhǎng)中也會(huì)經(jīng)歷這些問(wèn)題。一家創(chuàng)業(yè)型企業(yè)崛起之時(shí)并沒(méi)有很多官僚作風(fēng)，只有很多很出色的人在勤奮工作。之后忽然某一天企業(yè)達(dá)到了一個(gè)發(fā)展階段，擁有了更多的員工，而這時(shí)為了確保他們好好工作，就需要引入一系列的官僚機(jī)制了。這樣一來(lái)那些公司的元老就會(huì)退出不干了，因?yàn)檫@不符合他們最初的期望。這些人會(huì)被日漸增長(zhǎng)的官僚做派排擠走，同時(shí)意味著擁有合適員工的崗位所占比例逐漸下滑，后果就是：好吧，那么我們還得要更多的官僚機(jī)制。這就進(jìn)一步加劇了人才流失，同時(shí)可能招進(jìn)來(lái)更多不合適的人員，如此之下你需要進(jìn)一步增加官僚機(jī)制。這樣就陷入了惡性循環(huán)。
如果你向相反的方向去推進(jìn)，堅(jiān)持尋找合適人選并且盡可能減少官僚成分，因?yàn)楹诵牟辉谡_的規(guī)章制度而是在于正確的人選，那么你就有可能保持住高比例的稱(chēng)職員工，從而避免陷入惡性循環(huán)。但是如果不斷招入錯(cuò)誤的人，那么你又會(huì)重蹈覆轍。
我認(rèn)為第三點(diǎn)就是我們?cè)谟懻摰拇题砟睢．?dāng)我再一次想到這個(gè)理念時(shí)，意識(shí)到可能還有一個(gè)因文化而異的第四環(huán)。我初步猜想可能有一個(gè)浮動(dòng)的環(huán)，它因你身處文化環(huán)境的不同而不同，這是個(gè)很有吸引力的觀點(diǎn)。
但是無(wú)論如何，你都會(huì)有自己交叉的環(huán)，一位毫無(wú)章法的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)會(huì)說(shuō)，我們要勇敢地做一番大事業(yè)，管它有沒(méi)有經(jīng)過(guò)檢驗(yàn)，比如進(jìn)行一項(xiàng)巨額收購(gòu)、或者勇敢進(jìn)軍一項(xiàng)新的業(yè)務(wù)。這顯然通不過(guò)前三個(gè)環(huán)的考驗(yàn)。如果你對(duì)此不抱熱情，那么你肯定也不會(huì)是最優(yōu)秀的；或者這項(xiàng)業(yè)務(wù)和你的經(jīng)濟(jì)引擎并不匹配。忽視這三環(huán)中的任何一個(gè)，那么你就是在盲目地追求增長(zhǎng)。
所以，有趣之處在于，并不要認(rèn)為員工們?yōu)榱送Ａ粼诘诙A段就會(huì)變得無(wú)精打采，不要以為這樣會(huì)放棄了增長(zhǎng)機(jī)會(huì)。
他們真正要做的是在擴(kuò)大業(yè)務(wù)規(guī)模、提升復(fù)雜程度、利潤(rùn)和機(jī)遇的同時(shí)加強(qiáng)自我約束。 |
