风投大佬本•霍洛维茨畅谈五大管理经验

    风险投资家本•霍洛维茨在他的新书《难事之难：如何在没有简单答案的时候打造企业》中根据自己的亲身经历总结了5条宝贵的创业经验。

    由HarperCollins出版社出版的新书《难事之难：如何在没有简单答案的时候创建企业》（The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers）于今天面市。作者本•霍洛维茨在书中就如何组建和管理创业公司提出了自己的建议。

    霍洛维茨是风投公司安德森•霍洛维茨（Andreessen Horowitz）和软件公司Opsware的联合创始人，在这方面自然有资格发言。下面是他在这本书中给出的五条管理经验：

    1. CEO应该实事求是

    CEO这个群体往往天生乐观向上，原因不难发现：谁会愿意追随一个悲观失望的领导呢？如果管理者无法给公司带来光明前景，谁会愿意为这家公司工作呢？

    霍洛维茨在这本书中声称，诚实的品质远比乐观的态度重要。为什么呢？首先，它有助于建立信任。“在公司的发展过程中，沟通是最大的挑战，”霍洛维茨写道。“如果员工从心底里相信CEO，那么他们之间的沟通会比不信任的情况下有效得多。实事求是是建立这种信任的关键。”其次，向员工隐瞒问题实际上得不偿失。“要想建成一家伟大的科技公司，需要聘请许多非常聪明的人，”他写道。“拥有这么多高级人才，却不让他们帮助解决最难对付的问题，简直是巨大的浪费。”再次，CEO的诚实品质有助于形成一种正确的企业文化。“这种文化应该奖励、而不是惩罚那些说出问题的人，因为问题只有被凸显出来才能得到解决。”还有一个原因，实际上，员工们很容易看出来CEO有没有在某个问题上撒谎。

    2. 裁员要讲究正确的方法

    对于面临裁员难题的CEO，霍洛维茨给出的很多建议听起来像是常识：关注公司的未来发展而不是过去；不要拖延；讲清楚原因（提示：因为不这么做就无法达到你的目标）；培训下层经理，让他们自行处理裁员事务，而不是因为难处理就推给人事部门。但霍洛维茨的另一个观点并不那么显而易见：你处理裁员的方式不仅会对被解雇的人产生影响，对留下来的人也同样重要。裁员往往会破坏CEO在员工身上赢得的信任，要重建这种信任，CEO必须表现得公平而坦诚。霍洛维茨写道：“被解雇的员工与继续留在公司的员工之间的关系会比你与他们的关系更为紧密，因此，要对被解雇的员工保持适当的尊重。”总而言之，如何处理裁员会决定公司是重新走向辉煌，还是就此开始没落。

    In his new book The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, which arrives in stores today courtesy of HarperCollins, Ben Horowitz offers his advice on building and managing a startup company.

    As the co-founder of the firm Andreessen Horowitz -- not to mention the enterprise software company Opsware -- he should know. Here are five lessons from the book.

    1.) CEOs should tell it like it is.

    As a group, CEOs tend to be a constitutionally upbeat bunch, and it's not hard to see why. Who would follow a leader who is not relentlessly positive? Who would go work for a company whose top executive doesn't paint a rosy picture of the future?

    In The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, Horowitz says honesty is far more important than positivity. Why? First, it helps build trust. "As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge," Horowitz writes. "If the employees fundamentally trust the CEO, then communications will be vastly more efficient than if they don't. Telling things as they are is a critical part of building this trust." Second, concealing problems from your employees is self-defeating. "In order to build a great technology company, you have to hire lots of incredibly smart people," he writes. "It's a total waste to have lots of big brains but not let them work on your biggest problems." Finally, honesty in the CEO helps to build the right culture, "a culture that rewards -- not punishes -- people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved." Oh, and employees usually can figure it out pretty easily when a CEO is not telling it like it is.

    2.) There is a right way to lay people off.

    Much of Horowitz's advice to CEOs confronting layoffs sounds like common sense: Focus on the future of the company, not its past; don't delay; be clear about why you are doing it (hint: you fell short of your plan); train your managers to handle layoffs directly, rather than delegating the dirty work to HR employees. But Horowitz also makes a point that's not entirely intuitive: How you handle layoffs matters as much to those getting pink slips, as to those who stay. A layoff tends to break whatever trust a CEO has earned from his employees, and in order to rebuild that trust, the CEO has to be seen as fair and forthright. "Many of the people that you lay off will have closer relationships with the people who stay than you do, so treat them with an appropriate level of respect," Horowitz writes. In short, how you handle layoffs could be the difference between a shot at success in rebuilding your company and the beginning of a downward spiral.