Jim Collins: I mean, Darwin Smith at Kimberly Clark, was just kind of strange. He's idea of a good social event was to sit by himself on a tractor and move rocks from one end of the property to another. I mean, that was his idea of a good time. That was his idea of socializing, right? To move rocks about, and when asked about his style, he just simply said, "eccentric." He's not your sort of smooth guy and yet he was one of these great leaders.
But on the other hand, you have someone like Anne Mulcahy, of Xerox, who is somebody who I greatly admire, who was dealt a very difficult set of cards. Company in real difficult straights, may be going away, company with great historic track record. And Anne really brought Xerox back and she though, she is magnetic, she's social. I've seen her in front of hundreds and thousands of people having them like weeping and stomping and cheering and with a sense of goose bumps.
And you ask yourself, what is the awkward Darwin Smith riding around on his tractor, and Anne Mulcahy, who is this magnetic, wonderful person, who just makes you feel good when you walk into a room, what do they share in common, that makes them different?
It's not about them. And, that is really the difference.
Both of them care deeply about doing whatever it took to build or to rebuild something into a great stature that would go on beyond them. And that in the end, really stood for something.
Their extra little personality traits, really different. But, that inner drive and the steely determination -- same.
You meet Anne Mulcahy and she's a nice person, but boy, whatever difficult decisions need to be made to save Xerox, she would make them, and they were very painful. She said, "I don't ever want those decisions to become easy." It's not that they were easy, it's just they had to be done.
And when Darwin Smith sold the mills, hundreds of years of company history, it's not that is was easy, but as he said, "If you have a cancer in your arm, you have to have the guts to cut off your own arm." Right?
So the level five is someone, we don't want to sort of get caught up on the fact, that they are necessarily, self-effacing, necessarily shy, that they necessarily have a charisma by-pass. They may or may not have those external attributes, but it's the internal drive, it's not about them, they have the relentlessness to make very painful decisions.
And finally, the humility comes in the form of never feeling they've got all the answers worked out, and always feeling they're on the edge of potential catastrophe. And that helps keep their edge, that they are very aware of the brutal facts all the time. |
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吉姆·柯林斯：金佰利公司的达尔文•史密斯就是一个有些奇怪的人。在他看来，如果让他一个人坐在拖拉机上，把石头从一块地的这头运到那头，就算是一次很好的社交活动。这就是他心目中的惬意时光，就是他的社交观念。当人们问他是什么风格的人，他只是简单地回答：“（我是）特立独行的人”。显然他不是一个善于社交的人，但是这不妨碍他成为一位卓越的领导者。
不过卓越的领导者中也有像施乐公司（Xerox）的安妮•马尔卡希（Anne Mulcahy）这样的人物。我对她非常欣赏。她面对的是一个棘手的烂摊子。她当年担任CEO时，施乐这样一家曾经十分辉煌的公司正深陷困境，而且还有破产的可能。不过安妮却将施乐从破产的边缘挽救了回来。她是一个富有魅力、并非常擅于社交的人。我曾经见过她面对成百上千的听众，令他们激动得时而流泪、时而跺脚、时而又欢呼。
我会问自己：这位不善交际、开着拖拉机瞎转悠的达尔文•史密斯，还有这位迷人的、让所有人如沐春风的安妮•马尔卡希女士，他们身上究竟有什么共性使得他们如此与众不同？
答案就是，他们的奋斗目标都不在于自身。这就是真正的区别。
他们更为关注如何建立或重建某项事务，然后将其提升到一个卓越的、超越自身的高度，为此不惜付出任何代价。这就是最终起作用的因素。
他们的性格也许各有不同。但重要的是他们都有内在的驱动力和钢铁般的决心。
安妮•马尔卡希是个非常温和的人，但如果为了挽救施乐公司，不管要做多么艰难的决策，她都不会皱一下眉头，而这些过程往往是非常痛苦的。她说：“我从不指望这些决策会变得简单。”这些决策从来没有简单过，但是再艰难也非做不可。
比如，达尔文•史密斯卖掉了公司所有的造纸厂。这不是一个容易的决定，这些造纸厂代表着金佰利公司几百年的历史。然而他指出：“如果你的胳膊上长了恶性肿瘤，你就必须有胆量切掉整只胳膊。”对吗？
所以第五级领导者是这样一种人，我们不能只专注于他们的外在层面，比如他们是否谦逊、是否害羞、或是魅力四射。他们完全可能没有这些外在属性，因为他们的内在驱动力与这些外在特点无关。关键是他们可以坚忍不拔，义无反顾地做出极为痛苦的决定。
最后，他们之所以谦逊，是因为他们从不认为已经解决了所有的问题，而是永远如履薄冰。这种态度令他们一直处于领先优势，因为他们对现实的残酷程度一直保持清醒的认识。 |
