Thomas D. Gorman: Ok.
Jim Collins: But, then you couldn't explain Gordon Moore of Intel, right? And you couldn't explain, Bill Gates and you couldn't explain David Packard, you couldn't explain, Akio Morita of Sony. These are people who were entrepreneurs, who then became company builders.
So my first point that really relates to your question is, we'll get to the succession piece in a moment, but the first task for those that are young, for those that are building a company, for those that are entrepreneurial, first thing they need to do is to make the shift, to say, I am shifting from being an entrepreneur into being a company builder, and the greatest ones do that.
They make that shift from what Jerry Porras and I called the difference between the time teller and the clock builder, right? And that's a conscious shift, it's not a temperament, it's a decision.
You look at Sam Walton, he was an entrepreneur, he started with a single dime store and over the course of his very long career, he was meeting on his deathbed with store managers at the very end. He spent his whole life doing this but, he became a company builder, and like he'd like to say, "I have the personality of a promoter, but I have the soul of an operator."
And so he really had that clock building trait and then he eventually, he became a company builder, so you have the entrepreneur, who gets this great machine going. So, Sam Walton, does that, but then he doesn't stop, he goes on and himself becomes a company builder.
Grows it to, at that time, somewhere on the order of 30 or 40 billion dollars in revenues. But the whole time he's also worried about the next generation, because he knows he won't be there forever. He's watching people from within and he's starting to identify, a few people, not all of them proved to be the ones to succeed. And then he made a very smooth handoff, to David Glass.
And David Glass, was a very different package, back to that thing: it's not the personality, right? If you looked at David Glass, who was almost the "anti-Sam" on the outside. But on the inside they were very similar. Very different person, I think what Sam was doing, was deliberately demonstrating that the success of the company wasn't a personality. It was somebody who could build and lead a company, which may come in multiple packages.
How do you prove that?
You give the company to David Glass. Very smooth transition and what happened? Then we look at Wal-Mart today and it is, what? Almost four hundred billion dollars in revenues. When Sam, who is one of the greatest entrepreneurs in American business history, died, it was less than a hundred billion.
So it just keeps right on going, why?
Because he did really great succession planning, he went from entrepreneur to company builder, to somebody who passed the company on to someone else.
He started worrying about that, not months before, not years before, but decades before. Because he was building a company and he wanted it to be successful beyond him.
So the answer is, it's absolutely essential and I would point to two things about it.
The first is, that your report card as a company builder, or an entrepreneur, or as a CEO, doesn't come in until your successor succeeds. You don't get to say, your report card is in when you're done. So if you haven't set up your successor, like Sam did, then if your successor fails, you have failed.
This is a very important point. If your successor fails, you have failed. And so, if you come at it as if, I don't want to fail, so therefore, I have got to figure out who to pick, and then what I need to do, is set them up to be successful, rather than to set them up to fail.
Now, how do you do this? How do you start preparing for this? And there are a couple of things that I would point to.
We're going to come to this a little bit later.
But, succession planning is probably 20% of the equation; the other 80% is just a relentless nonstop effort to continue to fill your key seats with great people. Because ultimately what you have to have, are a pool of people who you have empirically tested.
Why was Lou Gerstner able to pass it on to Palmisano? Why was Sam Walton able to pass it on to David Glass? Why was Anne Mulcahy able to pass it on to Ursula Burns? Because they had someone in place that they had seen, they had watched, they had worked with, they had been empirically tested, validated, they knew how they would work. And so when they passed off to that person, it was a proven quantity.
Well, you have to have the people in the company to be the proven quantities. Then your problem is, I've got five great people. Question is, which one am going to pick?
To what extent in those examples that you cite that there was a successful or phenomenally successful transition. To what extent was the process transparent at some stage? Or, was it pretty much-closed loop in that the company builder had to just figure it out and announce when the decision was made?
It's actually very interesting how it happened in different situations; there was actually quite a range.
Sometimes it's just a growing span of responsibility and you can really see who's coming up. I think by the time that David Glass became Chief Executive of Wal-Mart, it wouldn't have been a surprise to anyone.
There are other situations that we all know about, the great decisions within General Electric and their whole process that had selected Jack Welch. Welch was kind of a surprise when he was picked. Surprise or not a surprise, Greg Jones went to a lot of effort in these different people, and he was testing, and the different interviews and finally a selection. And while the process may have been somewhat transparent, it wasn't clear who would win.
So it could be either way, I think that the critical thing is, however it is done, is picking the right person and then making sure that the transfer of power is smooth.
In "How the Mighty Fall" where we looked at companies that fell.
Remember I started out as a leadership skeptic?
I grudgingly came along to see how important these level 5 leaders are, and ok, I accept what it is. Now, were looking at the decline side and seeing something more.
And I still don't believe a single leader makes a great company. I don't think the evidence supports that, not a big enough company; it has to be more than that.
But, I do believe that the wrong leader vested with power can bring them down.
And so, there are very few mistakes that you cannot afford to make, you can recover from most. Getting your successor wrong is one you cannot make. |
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高德思：是的。
吉姆·柯林斯：但如果這個理論成立，你就無法解釋英特爾公司（Intel）的戈登?摩爾（Gordon Moore），對嗎？你也無法解釋比爾?蓋茨（Bill Gates），無法解釋惠普（HP）的創(chuàng)始人大衛(wèi)?帕卡德（David Packard），無法解釋索尼（Sony）的盛田昭夫（Akio Morita）。這些人都是企業(yè)家，后來成長為了企業(yè)建設者。
所以我們稍后再談接班人的問題。因為對于那些年輕的企業(yè)家，那些正在試圖建立一家企業(yè)的人，那些有著企業(yè)家精神的人來說，他們的第一要務是要實現(xiàn)這一轉(zhuǎn)變，也就是從企業(yè)家轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)槠髽I(yè)建設者。那些最卓越的領導者都會這樣做。
這一轉(zhuǎn)變也就是我和杰里?波拉斯所說的“報時人”和“造鐘者”的區(qū)別。對嗎？這是一種有意識的轉(zhuǎn)變，這與氣質(zhì)性情都無關，而是一種決策能力。
比如沃爾瑪?shù)膭?chuàng)始人山姆?沃爾頓（Sam Walton）。他是一位企業(yè)家。他由一個小小的廉價商店起步，經(jīng)過漫長的職業(yè)生涯，到臨終時，手下已經(jīng)有了無數(shù)個店鋪經(jīng)理為他工作。他把一生的精力都奉獻給了沃爾瑪，最終成為了一名企業(yè)建設者。就像他所說的：“我有一個推銷員的性格，但我有一個運營者的靈魂。”
他具備了“造鐘者”的特質(zhì)，作為企業(yè)家能夠讓一臺巨大的商業(yè)機器運轉(zhuǎn)起來，并最終成為了企業(yè)建設者。山姆?沃爾頓就是這樣一步不停地完成了轉(zhuǎn)變。
在他的領導下，沃爾瑪在當時發(fā)展成了一個收入300億到400億美元的巨型企業(yè)。但他也一直擔心下一代的問題，因為他知道自己不可能永遠執(zhí)掌沃爾瑪。他從內(nèi)部觀察，然后開始挑選一些優(yōu)秀的人才。這些人并非都具備接班人的潛質(zhì)。最后他將權力平穩(wěn)地交接到了大衛(wèi)?格拉斯（David Glass）的手上。
剛才說到的氣質(zhì)性格并不重要，作為印證，大衛(wèi)?格拉斯和山姆就是非常不同的人。從外在來看，他和山姆?沃爾頓截然不同。但在內(nèi)心，他們卻非常相像。山姆之所以要選擇一個和自己截然不同的人，就是要證明公司的成功并不依賴于領導者的個性。更為重要的是選擇一個能夠在各個方面建設企業(yè)并帶領企業(yè)前進的人。
怎么證明這一點呢？
首先，他將公司交給了大衛(wèi)?格拉斯。交接過程非常平穩(wěn)，然后發(fā)生了什么呢？今天我們再看沃爾瑪?shù)臉I(yè)績，我們看到了什么？沃爾瑪如今的年收入高達4000億美元。山姆?沃爾頓是美國商業(yè)史上最偉大的企業(yè)家之一。但在他去世時，沃爾瑪?shù)哪晔杖脒€不到1000億美元。
那么沃爾瑪為什么可以一直保持良好的發(fā)展勢頭？
因為山姆?沃爾頓的接班人計劃（succession planning）做得非常出色，他從企業(yè)家轉(zhuǎn)變成了企業(yè)建設者，變成一個可以將企業(yè)傳承下去的領導者。
他并非在權力交接前幾個月甚至幾年前才開始挑選繼承人，而是在幾十年前就開始關心這一問題了。因為他在建造一個卓越的企業(yè)，他希望這個企業(yè)在他離世之后依然能夠成功。
因此，接班人的選擇無疑是非常重要的。對于這個問題，我想指出兩點：
首先，無論你作為企業(yè)建設者也好、企業(yè)家也好、CEO也好，只有在你的繼任者成功之后，你才算交出了圓滿的成績單。別以為一卸任，你的表現(xiàn)就可以蓋棺定論。如果你沒有像山姆那樣選好接班人，比如你的接班人失敗了，那么你也失敗了。
這一點非常重要。如果你的接班人失敗了，你也就失敗了。一旦陷入這種境地，想要避免失敗的話，你必須找到繼承者，然后盡量使他們也獲得成功，而不是使他們陷入失敗的困境。
那么應該如何做？從哪里開始著手準備呢？對此，我有幾點需要說明。
我們稍后再回來討論這個話題。
要知道，在企業(yè)走向卓越的條件中，繼承人可能只占20%，另外的80%則是要不斷地讓卓越的人物占據(jù)公司的核心位置。因為你最終需要的是一群人，一群你在實踐中檢驗過的人。
為什么郭士納（Lou Gerstner）能將位子傳給彭明盛（Palmisano）？為什么山姆?沃爾頓能將位子傳給大衛(wèi)?格拉斯？為什么安妮?馬爾卡希能將位子傳給烏蘇拉?伯恩斯（Ursula Burns）？因為他們對這些人觀察過，了解過，與他們一同工作過，而且在實踐中對他們檢驗過，他們知道這些人以后會如何工作。所以他們將位子傳給這些接班人時，已經(jīng)胸有成竹。
也許你的公司里的確有這樣卓越的人才，但是遇到的問題是，這樣的人選一共有五個，那到底應該選擇哪一個呢？
你剛才問道，通過這些成功交接的案例來看，交接過程的透明度有多高？應該由企業(yè)建設者閉門挑選接班人，等到做出選擇之后再向外界公布嗎？
有趣的是，在我們的案例中，企業(yè)所處的情況不同，操作的過程也不同。
有時，可以給幾個候選人都賦予更大的職責，這時你就可以看出誰能真的能夠勝任。當大衛(wèi)?格拉斯最終成為沃爾瑪?shù)氖紫瘓?zhí)行官時，沒有人會覺得奇怪。
此外也有其它的情形。我們都知道通用電氣公司（General Electric）選擇杰克?韋爾奇（Jack Welch）的整個過程。韋爾奇有點像一匹黑馬。不管是否出人意料，格雷格?瓊斯（Greg Jones）在這些候選人身上都花了很大力氣。他在考察他們時，用不同的方法進行了面試，最終才做出選擇。這個過程可能一定程度上是透明的，但人們并不清楚誰終將勝出。
所以兩種方法都是可行的。不過我認為無論用什么方式進行選拔，選擇正確的人才、保證權力的平穩(wěn)交接才是最重要的事。
在《巨人如何倒下》一書中，我們研究了那些最終走向衰落的公司。
還記得我最初是個領導力論的懷疑者嗎？
然而，在隨后的研究過程中，我極不情愿地看到了第五級領導者有多重要，最后接受了這個觀點?，F(xiàn)在我們開始關注企業(yè)衰落的一面，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)了更多的跡象。
我仍然不相信一個領導者能夠單槍匹馬打造一家卓越的公司。我不認為有證據(jù)支持這一點，沒有一家足夠大的公司作為佐證。因此除了領導力之外，肯定還有其它因素。
不過我的確相信，如果錯誤的領導者被賦予了權力，就會將公司引向衰敗。幾乎沒有什么錯誤是你無法承擔的，你可以從大部分的錯誤中恢復過來。但挑錯接班人卻是不能犯的錯誤。
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