盖茨与维珍老总妙语录

    “确实有人在工作时间玩电脑游戏，但他们同时也在用铅笔写写画画。难道你要拿走他们的铅笔吗？这并不是管理现代化劳动力的正确方法。你得信任别人。”

    据《急切的乐观主义者：比尔•盖茨的告白》（Impatient Optimist: Bill Gates in His Own Words）一书披露，1996年，时任微软（Microsoft's）董事长的比尔•盖茨说过这样的话。而与这本口袋书中引用的其他大部分比尔•盖茨语录一样，即便放在当下，这样的观点依然不过时。该书主编丽萨•罗格克的另一本书《巴拉克•奥巴马语录》（Barack Obama In His Own Words）是2008年的畅销书。这一次，她按照话题，从A（收购其他公司）到W（与妻子共事）的顺序，逐一收录了比尔•盖茨的如珠妙语。

    阅读这本书就像吃咸花生一样：开卷有益，爱不释手。盖茨关于公司规模的看法：“规模是卓越的敌人。虽然我们是一家大公司，但我们不能像大公司那样思考，否则我们会死得很惨。”关于风险，他说道：“些许盲目在冒风险时是必需的。不用凡事都必须完全确定，有一些不确定的状态也是必须的。”关于创造力：“我们告诉大家，如果你连一个点子都没被别人嘲笑过，说明可能你所有点子都不够有创意。”

    盖茨的有些语录让我们对他大慈善家的第二职业有了更多了解。比如，关于为什么公司应该捐钱的问题：“如果企业服务的对象非常贫困，产生利润的可能就微乎其微。这时，我们就需要另一个基于市场的激励手段，那就是认可。认可可以为公司吸引更多有良知的人。”

    想知道更多比尔•盖茨的个人生活吗？几年前，他在哈佛大学（Harvard）开学典礼上的演讲中便提到自己在读书的时候是如何没有女人缘：“拉德克里夫女子学院（Radcliffe， 1977年与哈佛大学合并）是一个适合生活的好地方。那时候这里有很多女孩子，而且大多数男生都是理工科的。这种状况为我创造了最好的机会，大家明白我说的是什么意思。可惜的是，我正是在这里学到了人生中悲伤的一课：机会大，并不等于你就会成功。

    而说到哈佛大学，很明显，盖茨并不喜欢自己被当作肄业生的榜样。他曾经对《纽约时报》（New York Times ）的作者这样说：“许多年轻人说他们不想上大学，因为比尔•盖茨当年就是中途辍学的。听到这种说法，我很是担忧。首先，虽然我没有等到拿到学位，但我接受了很好的教育。其次，每过一年，这个世界的竞争都变得更为激烈、更加专业，也更加复杂。如今，接受大学教育的重要性和曾经获得高中文凭的重要性是一样的。”这一点也请告诉你的孩子们。

    从纯粹的日常谈话集锦来看，不得不提到理查德•布兰森的书：《宛若维珍：商学院不会告诉你的那些秘密》（Like a Virgin: Secrets They Won't Teach You at Business School.）。这本书摘选了他的联合专栏文章，收录的话题五花八门，比如在老式的三巡马提尼酒午餐中的对话，最后则以坦诚的忏悔结束。

    布兰森至今仍然后悔不已的决策包括，当初实体音乐零售商受到MP3的猛烈冲击而连连亏损时，他并没有关闭维珍大卖场（Virgin Megastores）。布兰森回忆道：“我们没有迅速退出市场，很大程度上是因为我个人反对关闭这项业务。然而，损失不断扩大，意味着我们不得不卖掉（那些商店）……转而专注于我们可以作为颠覆者而不是被颠覆对象的市场。”

    像酷爱炫耀的作者一样，书中部分内容非常怪诞。比如，他用了整整一章的篇幅，讲述自己为何痛恨领带。但布兰森也针对客户服务等话题，在书中表达了自己的观点，尤其是公司对客户服务的错误理解方面。

    他写道：“全世界大部分拨打客户服务热线的人听到的都是形形色色荒谬不经的电话录音。”都是什么样的电话录音呢？比如：“您的业务我们对我们来说非常重要。请继续等候。”

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    "People do play computer games at work, but they also doodle with pencils. Do you take away their pencils? That's not the way a modern workforce is managed. You've got to trust people."

    So said Microsoft's (MSFT) chairman in 1996, according to Impatient Optimist: Bill Gates in His Own Words -- and, like most quotations in this pocket-sized book, it seems as timely an observation as it was back then. Editor Lisa Rogak, whose Barack Obama In His Own Wordswas a 2008 bestseller, has compiled sound bites from Chairman Bill by topic, from A (acquiring other companies) to W (working with his wife).

    The result is like eating salted peanuts: Once you start reading, it's hard to stop. Here's Gates on bigness: "Size works against excellence. Even if we are a big company, we cannot think like a big company or we are dead." On risk: "A little blindness is necessary when you undertake a risk. You have to have a little suspension of disbelief." On creativity: "We tell people if no one laughs at at least one of their ideas, they're probably not being creative enough."

    Some of Gates' remarks in these pages shed light on his second career as a major-league philanthropist, like this one, on why corporations should give away money: "Profits are not always possible when business tries to serve the very poor. In such cases, there needs to be another market-based incentive -- and that incentive is recognition. Recognition…attracts good people to the organization."

    Want to know more about his personal life? Here's a nugget from a commencement address he gave at Harvard a few years ago, about his lack of success with women while he was a student there: "Radcliffe [the women's college that merged with Harvard in 1977] was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were math-science types. That combination gave me the best odds, if you know what I mean. That's where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn't guarantee success."

    And speaking of Harvard, it's clear Gates doesn't relish his status as a role model for dropouts. "It concerns me to hear that young people say they don't want to go to college because I didn't graduate," he once told a New York Times reporter. "For one thing, I got a pretty good education even though I didn't stay long enough to get my degree. For another, the world is getting more competitive, specialized, and complex each year, making a college education as critical today as a high school diploma was at one time." Tell your kids.

    For sheer chattiness, it would be tough to beat Sir Richard Branson's new book, Like a Virgin: Secrets They Won't Teach You at Business School. Drawn from his syndicated column, the book rambles all over the place, like a conversation over an old-fashioned three-martini lunch, complete with candid confessions.

    One such concerns Branson's regret over not having closed Virgin Megastores when the brick-and-mortar music retailer, slammed by MP3s, started bleeding red ink. "We did not make a speedy exit in part because I resisted closing the business," Branson recalls. "But the scale of the losses meant we had to sell [the stores]…and focus on markets where we could be the disruptors, not the disrupted."

    Although parts of Like a Virgin are as apparently as whimsical as its famously flamboyant author -- there's a whole chapter on why he hates neckties, for instance -- Branson has emphatic ideas about topics like customer service, especially how companies get it wrong.

    "Most callers to customer helplines around the world are greeted with some variation of what's surely the most absurd statement ever recorded," he writes. And what might that statement be? It's this: "Your business is very important to us. Please continue to hold."