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：过度冒险侵蚀资本结构的情况有很多，我们可以说几个。其中主要的一个就是对帕卡德法则的违背。
据帕卡德法则，如果你放任利润、规模、复杂程度和新的业务一味增长，超过了你的能力所及，导致不能在关键岗位都安排合适的人选来确保很好的执行力，那么你终将失败。
因此，增长所受到的限制不是由于外在机遇，不是由于市场规模或者增长率，而是这些之上的因素，那就是要为关键岗位找到关键的人手来出色地掌管这些业务增长。
如果你是一家新公司的领导者，或是中国一家新公司的建设者，你的任务之一就是，“寻找机遇、寻找市场，了解我的竞争者中都有谁。”这些都是有益的方向，但同时也意味着注意力的转移。一旦违背帕卡德法则，我们就不该追逐这些目标。
所以，我的首要任务一直都应该是如何找到足够多的合适的人手？怎样将他们安排在合适的岗位上？怎样确保获取合适人员的能力伴随着我们的机遇一起增长？之后我们需要坚持一个原则，如果业务的增长远远超出了人力所能应付的范围，那么就应舍弃这份增长的机会。
这就是卓越企业的做法，他们会拒绝某些增长机会，因为如果不这样做，就会突然在机遇和人员能力之间拉开巨大的差距，从而深陷险境。
第二，（要考虑）你如何才能发现正在逐渐产生的混乱无序的增长？令人吃惊的是这和不断增长的官僚态度密不可分。
试想一下，你正在追寻新的机遇，开拓令人兴奋的新业务。突然，当这一切都得到了之后，你发现关键岗位的人手不够了。这可如何是好？合适的员工不需要规章约束、不需要太多的管理、不需要很多人去指挥他们，因为他们是岗位上的称职人选。但是，如果公司中不合适的人越来越多，你就必须开始设置官僚机制来处理、弥补这些问题。于是我们需要这样那样的规章制度，它们的存在会让本来称职的员工产生抵触。
有人会说，创业型企业成长中也会经历这些问题。一家创业型企业崛起之时并没有很多官僚作风，只有很多很出色的人在勤奋工作。之后忽然某一天企业达到了一个发展阶段，拥有了更多的员工，而这时为了确保他们好好工作，就需要引入一系列的官僚机制了。这样一来那些公司的元老就会退出不干了，因为这不符合他们最初的期望。这些人会被日渐增长的官僚做派排挤走，同时意味着拥有合适员工的岗位所占比例逐渐下滑，后果就是：好吧，那么我们还得要更多的官僚机制。这就进一步加剧了人才流失，同时可能招进来更多不合适的人员，如此之下你需要进一步增加官僚机制。这样就陷入了恶性循环。
如果你向相反的方向去推进，坚持寻找合适人选并且尽可能减少官僚成分，因为核心不在正确的规章制度而是在于正确的人选，那么你就有可能保持住高比例的称职员工，从而避免陷入恶性循环。但是如果不断招入错误的人，那么你又会重蹈覆辙。
我认为第三点就是我们在讨论的刺猬理念。当我再一次想到这个理念时，意识到可能还有一个因文化而异的第四环。我初步猜想可能有一个浮动的环，它因你身处文化环境的不同而不同，这是个很有吸引力的观点。
但是无论如何，你都会有自己交叉的环，一位毫无章法的领导会说，我们要勇敢地做一番大事业，管它有没有经过检验，比如进行一项巨额收购、或者勇敢进军一项新的业务。这显然通不过前三个环的考验。如果你对此不抱热情，那么你肯定也不会是最优秀的；或者这项业务和你的经济引擎并不匹配。忽视这三环中的任何一个，那么你就是在盲目地追求增长。
所以，有趣之处在于，并不要认为员工们为了停留在第二阶段就会变得无精打采，不要以为这样会放弃了增长机会。
他们真正要做的是在扩大业务规模、提升复杂程度、利润和机遇的同时加强自我约束。 |
