董事长：微软必须改革企业文化

    约翰•汤普森是微软（Microsoft）资深软件高管，2012年加入微软董事会成员。他领导的委员会曾负责遴选史蒂夫•鲍尔默的继任者，并最终从内部选定了萨提亚•纳德拉担任公司CEO。汤普森在接受最新一期《财富》杂志（Fortune）的专访时谈到了自己担任CEO的虚拟仪器公司（Virtual Instruments），文化的重要性，如今的微软和25年前的IBM之间的相似性，以及微软CEO遴选不同寻常的公开性。

    《财富》杂志：根据你在IBM的经历，你认为公司文化有多重要？

    汤普森：每一位公司领导者都必须努力解决两个重要问题。第一，随着公司的发展，公司的管理制度是否做出了改变，以便适应公司规模的扩大和公司出现的变化？ 例如，如何考虑市场，如何考虑资源分配，如何考虑资本分配等。另外，公司的文化是否也相应做出了调整？

    我认为IBM学会的一件事是，他们在丧失垄断地位、不得不与大批规模更小、更灵活的公司竞争时，他们需要调整变革的频率和速度。郭士纳加入IBM后给公司带来了一种紧迫感。当时，许多人曾认为IBM并不需要这种压力。很明显，垄断已经成为过去，每一个细分市场都诞生了大批新的竞争对手。这时，就需要愿意做出调整的领导者：“这是我们要做的事情，那是我们不会做的事情。这些行为将受到奖励，那些行为会受到惩罚。”随着时间的推移，IBM的文化逐渐发生了改变。

    公司文化不会在一夜之间发生改变。更多的是一些微妙的影响，以及这种影响的一致性和可预见性。随着时间推移，这种影响将带来微妙的行为变化，而这些行为便是我们所谓的公司文化。

    微软的公司文化是否需要改变？

    我认为这个问题应该问问萨提亚。不过，我认为微软眼下的处境与上世纪90年代的IBM在有些方面非常类似。事实上，Windows系统的垄断地位一直在受到挑战。因此，我们必须与时俱进，改变或重新思考公司的管理制度和相关的公司文化。

    你如何理解微软遴选CEO如此备受关注的情况？

    首先，微软是全世界规模最大、最受尊敬的公司之一。我们之所以进行如此公开的外部遴选，主要是为了投资者。我们要让其他人确定，我们已经尽了最大的努力在进行调查，努力选择从长远角度考虑能为股东创造真正价值的领导者。微软是行业的领导者，在全球广受赞誉，也是全世界市值最高的公司之一，不可能把这样一家公司放在真空或试管中去完成这样的工作。这样一家公司的领导人选拔必须公开进行。

    坦白说，我认为很大一部分媒体报道并不真实，缺乏必要的事实依据。只要东拼西凑，串联在一起，就能编出一个故事来。而许多这样的故事并不真实。媒体称有人接受了公司面试，有人拒绝了这个职位，这些都是不实的传言。

    随着事件的发展，这件事吸引了人们极大的兴趣。各种流言蜚语层出不穷，让这件事受公众关注的程度超出了我的预期，我从没想过我本人也会受到这么高的关注。我只是应公司要求，接受了《华尔街日报》（Wall Street Journal ）的采访，后来在十二月份发表了博客，仅此而已。我公开做过的事只有这两件。

    结果，全世界都认为我拥有极大的权利。实际上，我只是和委员会其他成员一样，做了该做的事情。没错，我是委员会主席，但是，就我个人、以及我所做的事，进行添油加醋地描绘，硬生生制造出一种被普遍认同的观点，这是不符合事实的。

    《华尔街日报》的采访完全是按照微软惯例进行的，因为他们做的是一期有关史蒂夫•鲍尔默的介绍。对这个问题就到此为止吧。而至于博客，因为我们所有人都希望能在2013年底确定人选，这也是许多投资者的希望。但当我们知道在此之前不可能找到合适人选时，我们认为，要让所有人知道此事将在2014年完成，最简单的方式就是发表博客。结果，突然之间出现了这样的言论：“快看，汤普森又在媒体亮相了。”说实话，舆论的推波助澜远远超出我的想象。（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    John Thompson, a veteran software executive and a board member at Microsoft since 2012, led the committee that chose company insider Satya Nadella to replace Steve Ballmer as CEO. In an interview for the current issue of Fortune about Virtual Instruments, where Thompson is CEO, he also spoke about the importance of culture, similarities between Microsoft today and IBM 25 years ago, and the unusually public nature of the CEO search.

    Fortune: How important is corporate culture, reflecting on your tenure at IBM?

    Thompson: There are two important issues that every leader in every company grapples with. First, as the company grows, do the management systems of how you think about markets, think about deployment of resources, think about allocation of capital all change to accommodate a bigger and different company? And does the culture along the way change as well?

    I think one of the things IBM learned was when their monopoly ran out and they had to compete with a bunch of smaller, more agile companies, they needed to have a different rate and pace of change. And Lou Gerstner coming into IBM certainly brought about a sense of urgency that some would argue the company didn't really have at that time. And clearly the monopoly was gone, and clearly the market was loaded with a host of new competitors in almost every segment they were in. It required a leader who was willing to say, "Here's what we're going to do, and here's what we're not going to do. And here are the behaviors that will be rewarded, and here are the ones that will be punished." Over time, that changed IBM's culture.

    You don't change a company's culture overnight. It's more about the subtle influences and the consistency and predictability of those influences that over time drives that subtle behavior change that we call culture.

    Does Microsoft's culture need to change?

    I think that's a better question for Satya. But I would argue that there are some attributes to Microsoft today that do look vaguely like IBM circa 1990. The Windows monopoly is in fact under attack, and therefore we're going to have to change or think differently about the management systems and the associated culture of the company as time goes on.

    What do you make of the high-profile situation the Microsoft CEO search became?

    First off, it's one of the largest and most respected companies in the world. And the fact that we chose to do a very public external search was as much for our investors as it was for anyone else to make sure that we had done the best possible job we could of surveying the landscape and picking the leader that we thought would do the most to create real value for shareholders over the long term. And you can't take a company that's a leader in an industry, recognized globally, one of the largest market cap companies in the world, and do something like that in a vacuum or in a test tube. It's got to be done publicly.

    Candidly, I would have to say a very large percentage of the stuff that got written was just stuff. It wasn't necessarily grounded in truth. But if you could pick up a little germ here and a little germ there and you could string them together, you could write a story. And there were a lot of stories written that just weren't true. There were people who purported to have been interviewed for the job or who turned the job down that just wasn't true.

    And so as it went on, it became more interesting than anything else. As stories evolved or emerged or ebbed and flowed I never really expected to have -- for it to have the public profile that it did -- and I certainly never myself expected to have the public profile that I did. I did oneWall Street Journal interview at the request of Microsoft, and that's it. And we did the blog post in December. That's it. Those are the only two public things I did.

    But somehow the world got this view that I was bigger than life. I was doing my job just like the other directors who were a part of the committee. Yes, I was the chairman of the committee, but the characterization of me as this, you know, person who had this flame being fanned to create this pervasive view of who I was and what I was doing and all that, that's just not true.

    The Wall Street Journal interview was done at the bequest of Microsoft because they were doing a profile on Steve Ballmer. I'll just leave it at that. And in the blog post was we had all hoped -- many of our investors had hoped -- that we would be done by year-end 2013. And when it became apparent to us that we weren't going to achieve that, we felt that the easiest way to communicate with everyone that it was going to be a 2014 transaction was to put this blog post out. Well, all of a sudden it's like, "There's Thompson again in the press." Well, hell. So people made more of it than I thought, quite frankly.