30岁前当上CEO要做的三件事

    24岁时，我半开玩笑地告诉老板我想当CEO，他几乎从椅子上掉下来。那是1974年，我还在IBM当软件开发员。那时，没有人觉得一个小工程师应该奢望坐上专为金牌销售预留的位置。

    但在老板的指点下，我认真做了一番自我审视，把当上CEO真正作为了目标。最终，30年后，我在Business Objects公司实现了这一目标，但期间付出了大量的精心规划，以及专注和决心。

    今时今日，成为CEO的路径看上去有了非常大的变化，特别是在那些科技和互联网初创企业。但成为得力领导者所需要的那些技能一如既往。它们通常需要靠长期实践来获得，但有些方法可以克服这个时间上的障碍。就算你阅历不足，但只要敢想敢干，做好以下三件事，你也能成为合格的CEO。

    1. 组建一个团队来补己所短

    就连经验丰富的管理者也经常需要别人给他提供指导，特别是在其专业领域以外。对年轻的领导者来说，这是避免犯下重大错误的关键。缺乏经验可能带来非常严重的后果，比如用错了人，花冤枉钱，陷入合同陷阱，或者违反法律，等待。

    以Facebook的马克·扎克伯格和谢莉·桑德伯格为例，前者决定产品的方向，后者则更有生意头脑。他们的技能可以互补，并为创建一家成功企业协同作战。谷歌联合创始人拉里·佩奇和谢尔盖·布林（两人创立谷歌时都是25岁）则请来了更有经验的埃里克·施密特，进而使管理有了深度，然后他们就能发挥各自的特长。

    因此，在组建管理团队时，别找那些跟你非常相像的人，而要找那些能让你变得更全面，并能通过质疑让你获得成长的人。

    2. 利用正向和逆向思考的力量

    如果在二十几岁就建立了自己的公司，而且没有经受什么磨难，你就会有一些优势和许多劣势。

    最大的劣势是没什么履历，而潜在投资者可能希望用这样的纪录来评估你成功的可能性。唯一的解决办法是花大量时间向所有愿意倾听的人宣传你的点子。在风投界，旧金山湾区的投资者传统上最愿意在一张白纸的团队身上搏一把。另一个可能有用的策略是聘请更有经验的人来负责融资工作，但要当心，别在这个过程中失去了对公司的控制权。

    作为年轻领导者，你可能会有一个很有意思的优势，那就是你也许不知道什么事不可为，你不管怎样都会尝试去做。这也许会让你获得突破，而更有经验的人或许会因为以往的负面经历而错失突破的机会。这是一件很棒的事。但真正的突破相对稀缺，大多数进展都是渐进的。要逐渐接近成功，从以往的成功和失败中汲取教训会大有裨益。

    3. 保持谦逊

    领导者需要有透明度，而且要在该谦虚的时候（经常会出现这样的情况）放低姿态。实际上，谷歌等巨头进行招聘时，会把思想上的谦逊——能够做出让步并接纳他人更好意见的能力，置于文凭之上。可惜的是，人们经常把谦逊视为软弱，而实际上这是领导者最强大的力量之一。

    谦逊的人会听取别人的意见，学习别人的长处。在解决问题时，如果有人比他们更强，他们就会退居二线。他们会肯定别人的贡献。当一切顺风顺水时，他们也不那么容易骄傲自大。他们总是反思自己的观点和动机，以确保不偏离既定的经营目标。所有这些优点都是建立一家优秀企业的关键。不过，企业最终的目标是成功。

    谦逊固然很好，但一位领导者必须要有成功欲。

    所以，我的建议是：保持谦逊，但别忘了胜者为王。（财富中文网）

    本文为与《创业者》杂志的合作内容。原文最初发表于Entrepreneur.com网站。

    译者：Charlie

    校对：詹妮

    When, at age 24, I told my boss (somewhat tongue in cheek) that I wanted to become a CEO, he nearly fell off his chair. It was 1974; I was a software developer working for IBM IBM 0.42% . At that time, lowly engineers were not expected to aspire to roles reserved for successful salespeople.

    But my boss’ guidance helped me take a hard look at myself and make becoming the CEO a real objective. I eventually achieved my goal 30 years later at Business Objects, but it took a lot of careful planning, as well as focus and determination.

    Today, the path to becoming a CEO can look very different, particularly within tech and internet startups. But the skills required to be an effective leader are the same as ever. These skills typically take a life of experience to acquire, but there are ways to overcome that time challenge. Here are three things you should do to qualify as CEO material, even if you are short on life experience — but still big on energy and bold ideas:

    1. Build a team to compensate for your shortcomings.

    Even a seasoned executive needs a sounding board of people who can offer guidance, particularly for areas that fall outside his or her core expertise. For young leaders, this is essential, to avoid serious mistakes. Lack of experience can lead to very painful consequences: hiring the wrong people, spending too much money, getting stuck with bad contract terms, or falling afoul of the law — to name just a few.

    Consider the example of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook FB 0.27% : He drives the products, while she is the more business-oriented person. They complement each other with their skills, and work together to achieve a common goal of building a successful company. GoogleGOOG 0.74% co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin (both 25 years old when they founded the company) brought in a more experienced Eric Schmidt so that they could gain management depth before taking over in their own right.

    When building your leadership team, then, don’t look for people who are exactly like you. Find those who can round you out and challenge you to grow.

    2. Use the power of positive — and negative — thinking.

    If you are launching a business when you are still in your 20s — without scars from past challenges — you will have some advantages and many disadvantages.

    The biggest disadvantage is the lack of a track record, which a potential investor might want to use to evaluate your probability of success. This can be overcome only by spending many hours selling your idea to as many people as will listen to it. In the venture capital universe, Bay Area investors have traditionally been the most willing to take a gamble on an untried team. Another potentially helpful strategy is to hire a more seasoned person to front the fund-raising, but take care not to lose control of the business in the process.

    An interesting advantage you may have as a young leader, meanwhile, is the likelihood that you probably do not know what is not possible; yet, you will attempt to do it anyway. This might result in a breakthrough that a more experienced person might miss due to a past negative experience. And that would be wonderful. But real breakthroughs are relatively rare. Most progress is incremental, and to attain incremental success, tapping into the experience of previous successes and failures can be very helpful.

    3. Practice humility.

    Leaders need to be transparent, and humble when humility is appropriate (which is very often). In fact, intellectual humility — the ability to step back and embrace the better ideas of others — is, for Google (to name one leading company) a more important hiring criterion than credentials. Unfortunately, humility is often perceived as a weakness, when in fact it is one of the greatest strengths a leader can possess.

    Humble people listen to and learn from others. They take the backseat when someone more able than themselves is available to solve a problem. They give credit where credit is due. They are less prone to hubris when things go really well. They constantly question their own views and motivation to ensure that they are truly aligned with the desired business outcome. All of these values are essential to build a high-performance organization. But of course business is all about winning.

    Being humble is fine, but a leader also must be willing to lead to victory.

    So, my advice is to practice humility — just don’t forget to win.

    This post is in partnership with Entrepreneur. The article below was originally published at entrepreneur.com.