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：過度冒險侵蝕資本結構的情況有很多，我們可以說幾個。其中主要的一個就是對帕卡德法則的違背。
據帕卡德法則，如果你放任利潤、規模、復雜程度和新的業務一味增長，超過了你的能力所及，導致不能在關鍵崗位都安排合適的人選來確保很好的執行力，那么你終將失敗。
因此，增長所受到的限制不是由于外在機遇，不是由于市場規模或者增長率，而是這些之上的因素，那就是要為關鍵崗位找到關鍵的人手來出色地掌管這些業務增長。
如果你是一家新公司的領導者，或是中國一家新公司的建設者，你的任務之一就是，“尋找機遇、尋找市場，了解我的競爭者中都有誰。”這些都是有益的方向，但同時也意味著注意力的轉移。一旦違背帕卡德法則，我們就不該追逐這些目標。
所以，我的首要任務一直都應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遇一起增長？之后我們需要堅持一個原則，如果業務的增長遠遠超出了人力所能應付的范圍，那么就應舍棄這份增長的機會。
這就是卓越企業的做法，他們會拒絕某些增長機會，因為如果不這樣做，就會突然在機遇和人員能力之間拉開巨大的差距，從而深陷險境。
第二，（要考慮）你如何才能發現正在逐漸產生的混亂無序的增長？令人吃驚的是這和不斷增長的官僚態度密不可分。
試想一下，你正在追尋新的機遇，開拓令人興奮的新業務。突然，當這一切都得到了之后，你發現關鍵崗位的人手不夠了。這可如何是好？合適的員工不需要規章約束、不需要太多的管理、不需要很多人去指揮他們，因為他們是崗位上的稱職人選。但是，如果公司中不合適的人越來越多，你就必須開始設置官僚機制來處理、彌補這些問題。于是我們需要這樣那樣的規章制度，它們的存在會讓本來稱職的員工產生抵觸。
有人會說，創業型企業成長中也會經歷這些問題。一家創業型企業崛起之時并沒有很多官僚作風，只有很多很出色的人在勤奮工作。之后忽然某一天企業達到了一個發展階段，擁有了更多的員工，而這時為了確保他們好好工作，就需要引入一系列的官僚機制了。這樣一來那些公司的元老就會退出不干了，因為這不符合他們最初的期望。這些人會被日漸增長的官僚做派排擠走，同時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制。這就進一步加劇了人才流失，同時可能招進來更多不合適的人員，如此之下你需要進一步增加官僚機制。這樣就陷入了惡性循環。
如果你向相反的方向去推進，堅持尋找合適人選并且盡可能減少官僚成分，因為核心不在正確的規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職員工，從而避免陷入惡性循環。但是如果不斷招入錯誤的人，那么你又會重蹈覆轍。
我認為第三點就是我們在討論的刺猬理念。當我再一次想到這個理念時，意識到可能還有一個因文化而異的第四環。我初步猜想可能有一個浮動的環，它因你身處文化環境的不同而不同，這是個很有吸引力的觀點。
但是無論如何，你都會有自己交叉的環，一位毫無章法的領導會說，我們要勇敢地做一番大事業，管它有沒有經過檢驗，比如進行一項巨額收購、或者勇敢進軍一項新的業務。這顯然通不過前三個環的考驗。如果你對此不抱熱情，那么你肯定也不會是最優秀的；或者這項業務和你的經濟引擎并不匹配。忽視這三環中的任何一個，那么你就是在盲目地追求增長。
所以，有趣之處在于，并不要認為員工們為了停留在第二階段就會變得無精打采，不要以為這樣會放棄了增長機會。
他們真正要做的是在擴大業務規模、提升復雜程度、利潤和機遇的同時加強自我約束。 |
