????風險投資家本?霍洛維茨在他的新書《難事之難：如何在沒有簡單答案的時候打造企業》中根據自己的親身經歷總結了5條寶貴的創業經驗。

????由HarperCollins出版社出版的新書《難事之難：如何在沒有簡單答案的時候創建企業》（The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers）于今天面市。作者本?霍洛維茨在書中就如何組建和管理創業公司提出了自己的建議。

????霍洛維茨是風投公司安德森?霍洛維茨（Andreessen Horowitz）和軟件公司Opsware的聯合創始人，在這方面自然有資格發言。下面是他在這本書中給出的五條管理經驗：

????1. CEO應該實事求是

????CEO這個群體往往天生樂觀向上，原因不難發現：誰會愿意追隨一個悲觀失望的領導呢？如果管理者無法給公司帶來光明前景，誰會愿意為這家公司工作呢？

????霍洛維茨在這本書中聲稱，誠實的品質遠比樂觀的態度重要。為什么呢？首先，它有助于建立信任。“在公司的發展過程中，溝通是最大的挑戰，”霍洛維茨寫道。“如果員工從心底里相信CEO，那么他們之間的溝通會比不信任的情況下有效得多。實事求是是建立這種信任的關鍵。”其次，向員工隱瞞問題實際上得不償失。“要想建成一家偉大的科技公司，需要聘請許多非常聰明的人，”他寫道。“擁有這么多高級人才，卻不讓他們幫助解決最難對付的問題，簡直是巨大的浪費。”再次，CEO的誠實品質有助于形成一種正確的企業文化。“這種文化應該獎勵、而不是懲罰那些說出問題的人，因為問題只有被凸顯出來才能得到解決。”還有一個原因，實際上，員工們很容易看出來CEO有沒有在某個問題上撒謊。

????2. 裁員要講究正確的方法

????對于面臨裁員難題的CEO，霍洛維茨給出的很多建議聽起來像是常識：關注公司的未來發展而不是過去；不要拖延；講清楚原因（提示：因為不這么做就無法達到你的目標）；培訓下層經理，讓他們自行處理裁員事務，而不是因為難處理就推給人事部門。但霍洛維茨的另一個觀點并不那么顯而易見：你處理裁員的方式不僅會對被解雇的人產生影響，對留下來的人也同樣重要。裁員往往會破壞CEO在員工身上贏得的信任，要重建這種信任，CEO必須表現得公平而坦誠。霍洛維茨寫道：“被解雇的員工與繼續留在公司的員工之間的關系會比你與他們的關系更為緊密，因此，要對被解雇的員工保持適當的尊重。”總而言之，如何處理裁員會決定公司是重新走向輝煌，還是就此開始沒落。

????In his new book The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, which arrives in stores today courtesy of HarperCollins, Ben Horowitz offers his advice on building and managing a startup company.

????As the co-founder of the firm Andreessen Horowitz -- not to mention the enterprise software company Opsware -- he should know. Here are five lessons from the book.

????1.) CEOs should tell it like it is.

????As a group, CEOs tend to be a constitutionally upbeat bunch, and it's not hard to see why. Who would follow a leader who is not relentlessly positive? Who would go work for a company whose top executive doesn't paint a rosy picture of the future?

????In The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, Horowitz says honesty is far more important than positivity. Why? First, it helps build trust. "As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge," Horowitz writes. "If the employees fundamentally trust the CEO, then communications will be vastly more efficient than if they don't. Telling things as they are is a critical part of building this trust." Second, concealing problems from your employees is self-defeating. "In order to build a great technology company, you have to hire lots of incredibly smart people," he writes. "It's a total waste to have lots of big brains but not let them work on your biggest problems." Finally, honesty in the CEO helps to build the right culture, "a culture that rewards -- not punishes -- people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved." Oh, and employees usually can figure it out pretty easily when a CEO is not telling it like it is.

????2.) There is a right way to lay people off.

????Much of Horowitz's advice to CEOs confronting layoffs sounds like common sense: Focus on the future of the company, not its past; don't delay; be clear about why you are doing it (hint: you fell short of your plan); train your managers to handle layoffs directly, rather than delegating the dirty work to HR employees. But Horowitz also makes a point that's not entirely intuitive: How you handle layoffs matters as much to those getting pink slips, as to those who stay. A layoff tends to break whatever trust a CEO has earned from his employees, and in order to rebuild that trust, the CEO has to be seen as fair and forthright. "Many of the people that you lay off will have closer relationships with the people who stay than you do, so treat them with an appropriate level of respect," Horowitz writes. In short, how you handle layoffs could be the difference between a shot at success in rebuilding your company and the beginning of a downward spiral.