我的老板希望我失败

在我的职业生涯进入第30个年头的时候，有一次当我讲述自己的管理小故事时，我的父亲打断了我，问道：“你的事业相当成功，这是因为你真的很聪明，还是因为你只是运气好？”仔细思考后，我的答案是两者兼有。一方面，我父亲给我遗传了一部分“聪明”的良好基因——他是一名火箭专家——我也接受了良好的教育，进一步培养了这些天赋。

另一方面，我也有足够的运气，抓住了一些很好的机会，由于出色的业绩被提拔至管理层，与一些优异的领袖和导师进行了直接接触。在我的职业生涯中，从雷富礼到迈克尔•波特，再到斯坦•麦克里斯托尔将军，这些指导者的智慧让我受益匪浅。这些人在领导力、战略、未来管理等许多问题上，帮助我在思想和个人上有所发展。

然而，我生涯中形成的最宝贵的特质，并非出自这群杰出的领袖的指导。我学到的最重要的教训并不来自其他人的经验和智慧，而是来源于我自己的经历。在我看来，那段经历是我作为领导人以来表现最糟糕的一次。

2005年，我在Scotts Miracle-Gro负责北美地区的销售。公司当时刚宣布收购了一家位于旧金山、名为Smith & Hawkin的小型户外产品零售商。我们的计划是把它转变为我们公司的户外生活品牌。这个品牌声誉很好，我们在从大型经销商到小型草坪和花卉商店的各级分销领域也处于领先位置。表面上看，我们似乎已经拥有了成功的所有要素。

公司决定，最好的办法就是让Scotts的高管来负责运营，让我们这次最新的收购成果变成一种批发模式。Scotts的主席和首席执行官吉姆•哈格多恩让我担任这个项目的领导人。起初我很犹豫。我喜欢领导北美地区的销售，感觉我正在发挥作用。但是吉姆让我相信，公司需要我来迎接这次挑战，并表示这对我个人的发展也很有帮助。

如果我成功了，对每个人来说都是好事。如果我失败了，如他所说“撞得鼻青脸肿”，对我来说也是一次重要的学习经历。更重要的是，他和董事会也有机会看看我会如何应对失败。吉姆对我说，他们还没见过我失败，如果我没有展示出自己应对失败的能力，就不可能在Scotts内部晋升到总裁的岗位。

当时，这个建议听起来就像奇怪的评价，不过，我还是把它当作个人的挑战。我去了旧金山，开始了我在Smith & Hawken的领导之旅，成败在此一举了。

起初一切顺利，我很快就掌握了领导零售业务的心得，试图开始把它转变为批发模式。我们与塔吉特公司（Target）达成了批发协议，搭造了向餐饮和酒店业销售产品的架构。在这个转型过程中，我们的核心业务需要稳定运转，这样才能提供转型所需的资金（这是我当时没有重视的关键要素）。我认为我的计划十拿九稳，排除了所有不可预知的事件，已经要把另一次成功收入囊中了。

2007年，经济危机爆发了。当你要靠销售价格3000美元的户外柚木餐桌椅为生时，低迷的经济和糟糕的房地产市场给你营造的环境就与稳定完全无关。我的战略很快就开始瓦解。由于核心的要素“稳定”已经不复存，我们的收购效果远低于预期，将公司转变为契合我们模式的批发商的计划突然就失败了。看起来我做的唯一成功的事情，就是招来了我的继任者，来自沃尔玛的高级商人。

最后，吉姆•哈格多恩看到了我是如何面对失败的。我想必是通过了他的考验，我的职业生涯也没有结束，因为我在2010年成为了Scotts Miracle-Gro的总裁。不过，就算我没有获得这个职位，我依旧学到了能用于任何地方的宝贵教训：

•时刻做好可能出问题的准备，做好应急计划，不断评估风险。

•确保你的团队完全理解计划，接受计划；一个忙碌的团队的群策群力要胜过一个单独的领导者。

•不要对自己的能力过度自信，以保留和谦逊的姿态把握每一个机遇。

我从这次失败中学到的教训，被当时Scotts的总裁鲍勃•博恩斯托克很好地概括了出来：你需要理解骑师和马匹的差异，再优秀的骑师也不可能骑着劣马获胜。（财富中文网）

本文作者Barry Sanders是McChrystal Group管理合伙人。

Thirty years into my career, my father interrupted one of my management stories to ask me a question: “You have been reasonably successful in your career. Are you really that smart or have you just been lucky?”After considering the question, my answer to him was actually both. On the one hand, he passed on some decent genetics in the “smarts department”– my father was a rocket scientist — and I received a decent education to nurture these gifts.

On the other hand, I was lucky enough to receive some great opportunities, progressive performance-based management promotions, and direct exposure to some amazing leaders and mentors. In my career, I have benefited from the collective wisdom ofvarious advisors, from AG Laffley to Dr. Michael Porter to General Stan McChrystal. Each of this individuals have shaped my thinking and personal development on a host of issues from leadership to strategy to the future of management. However, the most formative part of my career didn’t come from my access to these tremendous leaders. The most important lesson I learned was not from the experiences and wisdom of others, but from my own, arising out of a situation that I would characterize as one of my worst performances as a leader.

In 2005, I was leading North American Sales forScotts Miracle-Gro Company. The company had just announced the acquisition of a small outdoor products retailer in San Francisco called Smith & Hawkin. Our master plan was to turn the company into the outdoor living brand for our organization. The brand was respected and we were a leader in distribution at scale — from mass retailers to the smaller lawn and garden centers. On the surface, it appeared as though we had all the ingredients for success.

The company decided the best approach would be to put a Scotts executive in to run the operation and transition our most recent acquisition over to our wholesale model. I was asked by Jim Hagedorn (Scotts Chairman and CEO) to take on the leadership role for this project. At first I was hesitant. I enjoyed heading North American Sales and felt I was making an impact. But Jim convinced me that the company needed me to take on this challenge, and made the case that it would be great for my own personal development. As he explained it: If I was successful, it would be net positive for everyone. If I failed – -or as he said it, “got a bloody nose”– it would still be an important learning experience for me. More importantly, it would also give him and the board a chance to see how I responded to failure. Jim advised me that I could never make my way up to the president role within Scott’s until I showed them how I coped with failure, as they had yet to see me fail.

At the time, this advice seemed to be strange commentary, but I nevertheless took it on as a personal challenge. I shipped off to San Francisco to start my new leadership role with Smith & Hawken, prepared to sink or swim. Things started off well, and I very rapidly moved up the learning curve of leading a retail business and trying to convert it into a wholesale model. We were able to put a wholesale agreement in place with @targetTarget and create a structure to sell product into the restaurant and hospitality industries as well. During the process of converting our acquisition to a wholesaler model, the core business needed to stay stable enough to fund the transition (a critical factor I discounted at the time). Stability was the lynchpin of my strategy, and barring unpredictable events, I was on track to hang my hat on another success.

Enter the financial crisis in 2007. When you’re making a living selling $3,000 teak outdoor dining sets, a souring economy and a tanking housing market is far from a stable environment. My strategy quickly began to unravel. With its core stability undermined, our acquisition dramatically underperformed and the vision of converting it into a wholesaler that could plug into our model was suddenly failing. It seemed as though the only successful action I took was recruiting my replacement, a senior merchant from Walmart.

Ultimately, Jim Hagedorn was able to see how I responded to not succeeding. I must have passed his test, as it did not end my career, as I went on to become president of Scotts Miracle-Gro in 2010. But even if I hadn’t gotten the position, I still learned valuable lessons that I could take anywhere:

Always be prepared in case what can go wrong, does; have contingency plans in place and constantly assess the risks.

Ensure your team completely understands the plans and has bought into the idea; the collective intelligence of an engaged team far outweighs that of a lone leader.

Never be over-confident in your own abilities; approach every opportunity with reservation and humility.

The lessons I learned from this failure are best captured by something I was told by Bob Bernstock, the president of Scotts at the time: you have to understand the difference between the jockey and the horse. A great jockey can never win riding a bad horse.