硅谷的一位冠军CEO要离职了，这个消息让人大吃一惊。

已经掌舵11年的Intuit（财捷）公司CEO布拉德·史密斯（Brad Smith）准备在明年1月1日让执行副总裁萨山·谷达兹（Sasan Goodarzi）接任，自己以执行主席的身份敦促公司实现过渡。在宣布决定前，本刊对史密斯进行了专访，他在采访中表示：“我不想成为就差半步没能把棒交出去的运动员。”“我想在自己还在学习区、还有动力的时候离开。”

公司在两周前宣布了这一决定，令人大吃一惊，一方面史密斯才54岁，另一方面拥有TurboTax、 QuickBooks及相关软件的Intuit近期市场表现异常出色。即使科技股整体股价偏高，Intuit的股价更是屡创新高，华尔街投资者对Intuit的未来却愈发乐观。六家机构将该股票评级为“强烈建议购买”，5月只有两家；没有一家建议卖出股票。

虽然史密斯即将离任的消息让人吃惊，但继任者人选却在大家意料之中。50岁的谷达兹主管Intuit的最大部门，该部门负责为小企业和个体户提供QuickBooks Online和其它服务；尽管规模庞大，却是去年Intuit增长最快的部门。谷达兹还曾主管Intuit的其他主要部门，比如负责销售TurboTax的个人用户业务，同样取得了出色业绩。史密斯说：“和11年前的我相比，现在的萨山准备更充分。”

谷达兹不仅会因为前任CEO的出色工作面临巨大压力，而且分析师都认为当前市场上股价整体偏高、难以持续，除此之外，他还将面临其它严峻考验。Intuit实现了从产品型公司到在云端出售服务的平台型公司的转变，这一转型是史密斯最重要的成就。但史密斯说，在这个项目上“我们还有很多工作要做”。对任何组织而言，实现这种根本性的转变都十分困难。而且，尽管Intuit在美国市场占主导地位，也已经进入了加拿大、澳大利亚、英国市场，但在其它国家却不为人知；竞争者中的后起之秀已经盘踞全球主要市场，对Intuit能否抓住未来最佳增长机会造成威胁。

出生在德黑兰的谷达兹所拥有的全球视角能有所帮助。他9岁时被父母送来美国读书。当时是1978年，短短数月之后，就发生了伊朗革命，美国大使馆被占领、52名美国人质被劫持逾一年之久。“很多人都觉得我是个坏孩子”，谷达兹说：“学前班时我成绩不好，被开除后转学去了公立学校。我的童年十分痛苦，也是这些痛苦塑造了现在的我。它让我成为梦想家，让我拥抱多样性。我最终振作起来，（从中佛罗里达大学）获得了电气工程师学位”。他还在西北大学凯洛格商学院获得MBA。分别在霍尼韦尔和英维斯集团工作后，谷达兹于13年前进入Intuit。

被问及全球市场的问题时，谷达兹首先表示Intuit“在美国和其它已经有业务的国家仍有大量上升空间”，接着说“今后十年，全球市场的增长将为公司带来重大机遇。”但史密斯说，问题在于“我们要有能力进行复制”，也就是说打造一个在多个国家都能通用的剧本。

大多数投资者最想问史密斯的问题是：为什么是现在？为什么在一个很多人才刚当上CEO的年纪而且公司正在全速发展的时候离开？为什么要在公司股票表现强势时离开？史密斯2008年1月出任CEO以来，Intuit的股票上涨了588%，远超纳斯达克230%和标普107%的涨幅。

史密斯回答了三点：公司已经准备好了，已经基本上实现了向以云端为基础的平台业务的转变；新CEO准备好了；他自己也准备好了。作为运动狂人，史密斯并不是说自己累了。去年，他的直接报告中的反馈意见说：“如果他能保持正常节奏，情况会更好。这人总是精力旺盛到亢奋。”在宣布决定的前一天，他去西雅图参加了Nordstrom的董事会，又飞回来在斯坦福大学一个以比尔·坎贝尔（Bill Campbell）命名的会议上发言，坎贝尔是硅谷传奇式的创业家导师，曾任Intuit公司CEO。

回答了时间问题后，下一个无法避免的问题就是接下来要做什么了。史密斯只提到了Intuit执行主席的新角色、Nordstrom和SurveyMonkey董事会成员以及在像史密斯的家乡西弗吉尼亚等“被忽略的地区”提升公共教育的想法。

我问他CEO生涯教会了他什么，他的答案或许能让我们对他的长期规划有一点概念。回答这个问题时，史密斯想了一会，说：“你能够改造自己，在保持本质核心不变的情况下，实现对公司或你自己的改造。”Intuit公司1983年成立以来，自我改造是它的核心竞争力。在不久的将来，很可能我们将看到一个重新改造过的布拉德·史密斯。（财富中文网）

译者：Agatha

In a surprise move, one of Silicon Valley’s champion CEOs is stepping down.

After 11 years at the helm, Intuit chief Brad Smith will hand over the job to Executive V.P. Sasan Goodarzi on January 1 and will oversee the transition as executive chairman. “I never wanted to be that athlete who loses half a step or can’t complete the pass,” he told Fortune in an exclusive pre-announcement interview. “I wanted to step down when I was still in my learning zone and still had gas in the tank.”

The announcement, made at the market close Thursday, came as a shock because Smith is only 54 and Intuit, maker of TurboTax, QuickBooks, and related software, is performing exceptionally well. Even as the share price has recently hit record highs in a generally pricey market for tech stocks, Wall Street analysts have become more upbeat about its future. Six of them now rate the stock a “strong buy,” up from two in May; none recommend selling.

While Smith’s move is surprising, his successor’s identity is not. Goodarzi, 50, runs Intuit’s biggest unit, which targets small businesses and the self-employed with QuickBooks Online and other services; despite its large size, it was Intuit’s fastest-growing division last year. He previously ran Intuit’s other main unit, the consumer business that sells TurboTax, and excelled there also. Smith says, “Sasan is better prepared to be CEO than I was 11 years ago.”

Goodarzi will face formidable challenges, leaving aside the problems of following a star predecessor and taking the reins when many analysts think stock prices generally are unsustainably high. Intuit has transformed itself from a product company to a platform company that sells services in the cloud—a transformation that is Smith’s most important achievement—but “we still have a lot of work to do” on that project, he says. Such fundamental change is hard in any organization. And while Intuit dominates in the U.S. and has a presence in Canada, Australia, and the U.K., it’s virtually unheard of elsewhere; upstart competitors are already becoming entrenched in major global markets, threatening to cut Intuit out of tomorrow’s best growth opportunities.

It helps that Goodarzi, born in Tehran, brings a global perspective to the CEO’s job. His parents sent him to school in the U.S. at age 9. It was 1978, just months before the Iranian revolution and the takeover of the U.S. embassy by students who held 52 Americans hostage for over a year. “A lot of people thought I was the bad guy,” Goodarzi told me. “In prep school my grades were not so good. I got kicked out and went to public school. It was an amazingly tough childhood that shaped a lot of what I am today. It shaped me in terms of being a dreamer and also in appreciating diversity. I eventually got my act together and got my electrical engineering degree” from the University of Central Florida. He also holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern. After stints at Honeywell and Invensys, he joined Intuit 13 years ago.

Asked about the global market, Goodarzi notes first that Intuit has “a tremendous amount of headroom in the U.S. and the countries we’re in,” then adds that “ten years from now international growth will be a huge leg of opportunity for the company.” The challenge, Smith says, is that “we have to develop an ability to rinse and repeat”—to create a playbook that can be used in multiple countries.

The question most investors will want to ask Smith is, Why now? Why leave at an age when most CEOs are just getting the job and when the company is firing on all cylinders? And especially, why leave when he has delivered such knockout stock performance? Since he became CEO in January 2008, Intuit stock has risen 588%, obliterating the Nasdaq’s 230% rise and the S&P’s 107%.

Smith answers by citing three factors: The company is ready, having largely achieved its transition to a cloud-based platform business; a new CEO is ready; and he’s ready. A fitness fanatic, he doesn’t suggest that he’s tired. Just last year, he got feedback from his direct reports saying, “A normalized pace would be good. This guy is always on hyperkinetic energy.” He spent his last day before the announcement in Seattle, where he’s on the Nordstrom board, then flying back to speak at a Stanford University conference named after Bill Campbell, a legendary mentor to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and a former Intuit CEO.

After Why now?, the inevitable question for Smith is What’s next? He mentions only his new role as executive chairman, plus his board service at Nordstrom and SurveyMonkey and his passion for improving public education “in the overlooked zip codes” like the area he came from in West Virginia.

A hint at a longer-term answer may come from his reply when I asked for the most important things he’d learned as CEO. Smith thought awhile and said, “You are capable of reinventing yourself, as a company or as a leader, while preserving the core of what you are.” Self-reinvention has been Intuit’s key competency since its 1983 founding. Some kind of reinvented Brad Smith is likely waiting in the not-distant future.