梦工厂CEO：用超预期的表现赢得最终胜利

    梦工厂动画公司（DreamWorks Animation）CEO杰弗里•卡森伯格回忆起1994年夏天的事，他感慨那一切仿佛就发生在昨天。

    卡森伯格时任华特•迪士尼制片厂（The Walt Disney Studios）总裁，肩负着复兴迪士尼动画电影业务的重任。他也幸不辱命。1994年，迪士尼重回顶峰：《狮子王》（The Lion King）成为票房排行第一的电影，电影原声带也极为畅销，共售出2,500万张专辑，世嘉公司（Sega）根据电影开发的视频游戏也风靡一时。此外，当年收视率最高的电视剧——由蒂姆•艾伦主演的时长半小时的家庭情景喜剧《家居装饰》（Home Improvement）——也属于迪士尼。然而，这些成功依旧无法阻止前任CEO迈克尔•艾斯纳因为两人之间无法调和的矛盾而将其解雇。

    这一事件带来的教训就是，“要把事情做好——但不要做得太好，”63岁的卡森伯格自嘲道。最近，这位好莱坞高管出席了由在线文件分享初创公司Box主办的会议，并登台接受了采访。卡森伯格现任梦工场动画公司CEO，2004年，他与媒体巨头史蒂夫•斯皮尔伯格、大卫•格芬在加州格兰代尔合作创建了这家公司。虽然梦工厂的电影并非部部卖座，比如今年3月的《天才眼镜狗》（Mr. Peabody & Sherman）便遭遇了票房滑铁卢，令梦工厂在第一季度损失了5,700万美元，但其制作的热卖大片也不在少数，比如《怪物史莱克2》（Shrek 2）和《怪物史莱克3》（Shrek 3）。最新电影《驯龙记2》（How to Train Your Dragon 2）的票房更是在最近突破了6亿美元。

    在制作电影的过程中，卡森伯格和梦工厂始终贯彻一条卡森伯格自己数十年来一直在践行的原则。他说道：“我做每一件事情，都会努力使其超出预期。不论遇到什么情况，比如接受一个任务，做一名推销员（数年前的事情），甚至是帮某人检索一个丹麦语单词，或者参加员工大会的时候，我都会考虑如何超出预期，让人们最终觉得：‘这样好多了。这出乎我的意料。’我希望人们来购买我们的产品或观看我们的电影时，会发现结果都超出了他们的预期。我们不可能事事成功，但是我们一直在努力。”

    一个很好的例子：明年年初，卡森伯格与妻子玛丽琳将迎来40周年结婚纪念日，但他已经开始计划，到时候给妻子一个惊喜。他若有所思地说道：“我正在考虑如何给她一个出人意料的惊喜。如果你能事事超出生意伙伴的预期，胜利肯定是属于你的。”（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg recalls the summer of 1994 like it was yesterday.

    Katzenberg was chairman of The Walt Disney Studios , a role that included reviving its animated film business. And revive it he did. Come 1994, Walt Disney Studios was back on top: “The Lion King” was the No. 1 movie, the top-selling soundtrack with 25 million albums sold, and a blockbuster video game developed by Sega. Oh, and the No. 1 TV show — a half-hour family sitcom called “Home Improvement,” with Tim Allen — belonged to Disney, too. But all that success did little to stop ex-CEO Michael Eisner from firing him over irreconcilable differences.

    The lesson learned? “Do good — just don’t do too good,” quipped the 63-year-old Hollywood exec onstage at a conference hosted by online file-sharing startup Box on Wednesday. Katzenberg is now CEO of DreamWorks Animation , the Glendale, Calif.- animation studio he co-founded with media moguls Steven Spielberg and David Geffen in 2004. Not every film has performed well at the box office — this March’s flop, “Mr. Peabody & Sherman,” cost the studio $57 million in the first quarter — but the studio has also produced blockbusters like “Shrek 2″ and “Shrek the Third.” And its most recent film, “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” crossed the $600 million mark in ticket sales this weekend.

    The process by which Katzenberg and his studio go about making movies follows a general philosophy he’s followed for decades. “The one thing I always tried to do a little bit better than what I was expected to do,” he said. “When I go into a situation, whether it was an assignment I had, whether it was as a gopher [years ago], retrieving a danish for someone, or when I come into a staff meeting, I think about how I can exceed expectations and have people walk out of those engagements thinking, ‘well, that was a little bit better. I didn’t expect that.’ When people walk into any product or movie of ours, we want it to be a little bit more than what they were expecting. We don’t always succeed, but we really try hard.”

    Case in point: Katzenberg’s 40th wedding anniversary with wife Marilyn isn’t until early next year, but the exec is already plotting a surprise for her. “I’m already working on how in the hell am I going to exceed her expectations,” he mused. “So, if you can you exceed the expectations of those people you’re in business with, almost every single time you will win.”