暴君老板进化史

    亨氏将消费者奉为神灵，为他们创造了全新的商品种类，批量生产的食品产品。虽然他的大专教育只学了几门会计课程，但这位天生的工作狂知道比竞争对手领先一步的最好办法是技术创新。他先进的匹兹堡工厂拥有一系列最新的设备和发明（想象一下机械化的腌菜计数器），堪称全美工业家的典范。一位广告先驱把20%的销售额投入产品宣传，这样高的比例在当时闻所未闻。他高度依赖当时的新媒体，比如广告牌和消费者杂志。亨氏也是第一批走向全球的美国企业家之一。1905年，他不顾公司董事会的激烈反对，设立了首个海外生产厂，几年后英国人就开始大量购买亨氏产品；焗豆很快成为了全国必需品。远远早于星巴克(Starbucks)、麦当劳((McDonald's)、甚至是可口可乐(Coca-Cola)，亨氏品牌就已经在全世界范围内获得了认可。(延伸阅读《Squeezing Heinz》。)

    但就像与他同时代的科技巨星一样，他也会让员工感到害怕。亨氏的秘书有一次曾经说：“他会暴跳如雷，而且确实有过这种事；经历过一次的人们都不愿再经历第二次。”"员工们不愿挑战亨氏所说或所做的任何事，即便他错得离谱。亨氏有一次向一位无家可归的人承诺，他可以在公司的食堂免费吃顿饭。亨氏冲向一位员工奥斯卡•史密斯，指着一个他认为是乞丐的人，告诉史密斯让这个人进去。虽然亨氏指的人事实上是公司的销售经理，史密斯感到必须遵照老板的指示。“不要表现出任何异常，”史密斯告诉这位已吃了饭且被惊呆的亨氏管理人员说。“亨氏先生告诉我，你得好好吃顿午餐，而他现在正看着我们。”

    亨氏去世半个世纪后，这家公司不再掩盖他的这个性格缺陷。正如1994年官方公司史的作者所指出：“他日记的字里行间就可以感受到一股火爆脾气。这说明他（亨利）可能有点颐指气使。”甚至连他的家人也害怕他。亨氏的妻子在他们结婚25年后过世，他终生未嫁的妹妹玛丽搬进了他匹兹堡的大宅做管家。据一位家族朋友称，玛丽抱怨说，这位暴脾气的哥哥“从不会理解与他一起生活给她带来的压力”——她最终有过两次精神失常。

    亨氏创建公司整整100年后，哈佛大学（Harvard）辍学生比尔•盖茨与自己在华盛顿州的高中好友保罗•艾伦创办了微软(Microsoft)。正如艾伦在其回忆录《Idea Man》中所述，与盖茨工作常常如同“身处炼狱”。盖茨总是奚落说：“这是我听到过的最愚蠢、最傻X的事。”盖茨是一位严厉的监工，他不能理解为什么不是所有员工都像他那样对工作如痴如迷。曾经有一位程序员连续工作了4天、每天工作20个小时，终于完成了一个项目后，想请一天假，结果盖茨知道后后暴跳如雷。六年后，艾伦就辞去了联席主管的职务。辞职的时候，盖茨这位15年的老朋友解释道，他再也不能容忍那些吹胡子瞪眼或“长篇大论地斥责”，“你的这些言语攻击让我在很多个小时内都没办法平静下来，安心工作。”        

    Heinz worshipped the consumer for whom he created a whole new class of goods, mass-produced food products. Though his post-secondary education consisted of just a few accounting courses, the ingenious workaholic understood that the best way to get a leg up on his competitors was through technological innovation. His state-of-the-art-Pittsburgh plant, which featured an array of the newest gadgets and gizmos -- think mechanized pickle counters -- was a model for industrialists throughout the land. An advertising pioneer, who plowed a then-unheard-of 20% of sales into trumpeting his wares, he relied heavily on the new media of the day such as the billboard and the consumer magazine. Heinz was also one of the first American entrepreneurs to go international. In 1905, over the fierce objections of his own board, he set up his first manufacturing site outside of America, and within a few years, the Brits were gobbling up many of his products; baked beans soon became a national staple. Long before Starbucks (SBUX), McDonald's (MCD), or even Coca-Cola (KO), Heinz achieved brand recognition all over the world. (For more about Heinz, see "Squeezing Heinz.")

    But just like his contemporary tech superstars, he could also terrorize his staff. As Heinz's secretary observed, "He could and did, become stirred to great angers; and no man with one experience of these willingly incurred another." Employees would be reluctant to challenge anything that Heinz said or did, even when he was way off base. Heinz once promised a homeless man that he could have a free meal in the company's cafeteria. Rushing up to an employee, Oscar Smith, Heinz pointed to someone he thought was the panhandler and told Smith to let the guy in. Though the man Heinz indicated was actually the company's sales manager, Smith felt compelled to follow his boss' directive. "Don't make any difference," Smith told the startled Heinz executive who had already eaten. "Mr. Heinz told me to see that you got a good lunch and he's watching."

    Half a century after his death, the company stopped trying to conceal this character flaw. As the author of the official corporate history published in 1994 noted, "Reading between the lines of his diary, one detects a formidable temper. It suggests he [Henry] may have been a bit of a bully." Even some family members were scared of him. After Heinz's wife of 25 years died, an unmarried younger sister, Mary, moved into his Pittsburgh mansion to serve as his housekeeper. According to a family friend, Mary complained that her explosive brother could "never understand the strain upon her" of living with him -- and ended up having two nervous breakdowns.

    Exactly a century after Heinz opened up shop, Harvard dropout Bill Gates teamed up with Paul Allen, his high school buddy from Washington State, to start Microsoft (MSFT). As Allen observed in his memoir, Idea Man, working with Gates was often like "being in hell." Gates's put-down of choice was "That's the stupidest f…ing thing I've ever heard." A tough taskmaster, Gates couldn't understand why all his employees weren't as obsessed with work as he was. After one programmer put in four straight 20-hour days to finish a project, Gates was outraged that he then asked for a day off. Allen stepped down from his role as a co-principal after only six years. In resigning, Gates's friend of 15 years explained that he could "no longer tolerate the brow-beating or 'tirades,'" noting that "the verbal attacks you use have cost many hundreds of hours of lost productivity in my case."